Announcement of Scaliger Institute research fellowship winners
With support of several companies, including Brill Publishers, Elsevier and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guest per year to consult and examine material in the Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received a large number of applications this year from domestic and international scholars.
New fellowships
Two new Fellowships were launched in 2026: the Bibliotheca Thysiana Fellowship and the Du Plessis-Mornay Fellowship. The first Bibliotheca Thysiana Fellow has started her research and later this year we hope to welcome the first Du Plessis-Mornay Fellow.
And the winners are:
Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship
Andi Alfian (Syracuse University, Department of Religion USA), “Following Crocodiles”: Multispecies Relations in Sulawesi, 19th–21st Centuries.
Marie Ngiam (Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo, Norway): Global Itineraries of Wood: Material Culture and Indonesian Environmental History (1650-1850).
Nurul Fatin Afifah (Populi Center, Jakarta, Indonesia), Women's Education and Early Women's Movements in the Dutch East Indies: The Politics of Epistemic Authority, 1910–1940.
The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship program, sponsored by the Lingling Wiyadharma Foundation, offers the opportunity to three students or scholars to spend up to three months conducting research using the Southeast Asian and particularly the Indonesian special collections at UBL.
Brill Fellowship
Liese Dictus (KU Leuven, België): A Literary cave of Wonders: New Ancient Greek in the Bibliotheca Thysiana.
Emma Gagnon (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA): Picturing Indonesia in the Dutch Republic.
Wenxin Jin (Ca'Foscari University of Venice and Sorbonne Nouvelle University): The Unofficial Translations of American Confessional Poetry in the Post-Maoist Era, Its Interaction with the Post-Maoist Official Poetry Scene, and the “Confessional Fever” in Post-Maoist Poetry.
Yvonne Bleyerveld (Huygens Instituut, Den Haag): zestiende-eeuwse tekeningen uit het Prentenkabinet.
Benedetta Brogi (Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy): The Role of the Leiden Apographs’ Marginalia in the Textual Constitution of Antipater of Thessalonica’s epigrams.
Shimels Ayele Yalew (Antwerp Cultural Heritage Sciences (ARCHES), Universiteit van Antwerpen, Belgium & Department of History and Heritage Managment, Bahir Dar University, Ethiopia): A Study of Materials and Techniques of Ethiopic Manuscripts.
The long-running Brill Fellowship is sponsored by Leiden-based Brill publishing house and awards one or more fellowships yearly to researchers working on Brill publishing areas in the Humanities.
Juynboll Fellowship
Ismet Ipek (The manuscript Institution of Türkiye, Istanbul, Turkey): Between Aleppo, Istanbul, Leiden, and Amsterdam: Shahin Kandi as a Trans-Imperial Scribal Agent.
Clément Salah (The Queens College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom): Maliki law before its Canonisation: Evidence from the Leiden Collections.
The Juynboll Fellowship, sponsored by the eponymous Juynboll Foundation, annually supports up to two scholars studying Special Collections related to Islam in the Arabic world.
Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship
Akiyoshi Tani (University of Tokyo, Japan): Materiality and provenance of photo albums of 19th-century photography from/of Japan in various photo collections of Leiden University Libraries.
The Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship, sponsored by the Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation, sponsors scholarly research in the Leiden Special Collections regarding Japanese culture and language.
Robert van Gulik Fellowship
Shi Ye (Shanghai Normal University, China): Revised Edition of A Study on the Dutch Sinologist Robert van Gulik.
The Robert van Gulik Fellowship, sponsored by the Robert van Gulik Fund, supports the advancement of research into the sinological collections of the UBL.
Elsevier Fellowship for Digital Scholarship
Zingbei Huang (Department of the History of Science Tsinghua University, China): Structuring Experience in Print: A Digital Humanities Survey of 16th-century medical Observations of Pieter van Foreest and Johannes Schenck van Grafenberg.
The Elsevier Fellowship for Digital Scholarship, sponsored by the academic publisher Elsevier. It supports scholars who conduct scientific research based on the extensive Digital Collections of UBL.
Bibliotheca Thysiana Fellowship
Gloria Moorman (Faculty Affiliate of the Center for Italian Studies, University of Notre Dame (USA): Joan Blaeu, Antonio Bosio, and the Early Printed Book: The Ownership of Discovery between Leiden and Subterranean Rome (c. 1578-1700).
The Bibliotheca Thysiana Fellowship, sponsored by the Bibliotheca Thysiana Foundation, supports research into materials held in the library located at the Rapenburg canal and the Thysius archives held in the University Library, supplemented with materials from the rich UBL Special Collections.
Scaliger Institute
Founded by UBL and the Faculties of Arts, Theology and Philosophy (now the Faculty of Humanities) on the 425th anniversary of Leiden University in June 2000, the Scaliger Institute aims to stimulate and facilitate the use of the Special Collections of UBL in both teaching and research. The Scaliger Institute hosts several fellowship programmes for visiting scholars, some with a broad scope, like the Brill Fellowship, and others in specific fields of research, like the Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship and the Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship. Elsevier also offers a Fellowship for Digital Scholarship, specifically aimed at research in the extensive Leiden Digital Collections.
We thank all the sponsors of the fellowships in this round: Brill Publishers, the Juynboll Foundation, the Lingling Wiyadharma Fund, the Isaac Alfred Ailion Foundation, the Robert van Gulik Fund, The Bibliotheca Thysiana Foundation, the Commission de l’histoire et de la Bibliothèque des Églises Wallonnes and Elsevier.