Gale and Bodleian Libraries at University of Oxford Announce the Gale Scholar Asia Pacific, Digital Humanities Oxford Fellowships

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., Feb. 25, 2021 — The Bodleian Libraries and Gale, a Cengage Company, are delighted to announce the launch of the Gale Scholar Asia Pacific, Digital Humanities Oxford Fellowships program. Funded by Gale, the fellowships will support three scholars for a three-month period of research into a digital humanities related topic at the University of Oxford, using the Centre for Digital Scholarship of the Bodleian Libraries. The goal of the program is to encourage emerging digital humanities scholarship in the Asia Pacific region and progress the contribution of non-Western and regional perspectives in the field of digital humanities research.

The Bodleian Libraries and Gale would like to congratulate the following candidates awarded the fellowships in 2021/2022 as well as highlight the projects they will be pursuing:

Dr. Tuo Chen, research assistant professor, faculty of history,
Nankai University, China
Project: Dr Chen’s project, The Communication Circuit of Chinese Christian Books (1807-1949), aims to extend his doctoral work on Chinese and Western Book culture and cultural exchange by examining Chinese Christian books.
Dr. Hsuan-Ying Tu, assistant professor in early modern history, school of history and researcher of the Research Centre for Digital Humanities,
Renmin University of China
Project: With her project, Clientage, Politics and the Elizabethan Regime: Digital Humanities and New Perspectives, Dr. Hsuan-Ying Tu will use the digital humanities to unravel the web of deliberately complex papers left by Elizabethan ‘spymaster’ Francis Walsingham and others and explore ways to visualize these webs of data and power relationships.
Dr. Mark Byron, associate professor in modern and contemporary literature, department of English, University of Sydney
Project: Dr. Byron’s project, Digitizing Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt: The Beckett Digital Manuscript Project and Beyond, aims to widen historical understanding of the novel by placing it within the historical context of its composition during the Second World War. Dr. Byron’s ambition is to open complex manuscripts to a wider readership through building digital ‘clues‘ and pathways so readers can explore contexts and the relationships of this work to contemporary issues of political radicalisms and migration.

"Welcoming our first cohort of Gale Fellows is tremendously exciting. They are a group of leading researchers and academics who will advance their respective fields through exploring new forms of scholarship using digital techniques and approaches," said Richard Ovendon, Bodley’s librarian in the University of Oxford. "The Bodleian Libraries are excited at the prospect of working with these three talented individuals as they pursue ambitious projects that will advance our understanding of the humanities, based on our rich holdings of primary sources in both physical and digital form."

Along with access to the special collections of the Bodleian Libraries, the fellows will be able to access Gale Primary Sources and the Gale Digital Scholar Lab to assist them with their digital humanities initiatives.

"We are thrilled at sponsoring these fellowships and know these three scholars will enjoy a rich experience at the University of Oxford," said Terry Robinson, senior vice president and managing director of Gale International. "Gale will continue to publish rich and varied primary document archives and are fully committed to the ongoing development of the Gale Digital Scholar Lab which, I’m sure the three scholars will make use of at Oxford. Our commitment to enabling digital scholarship is at the core of our values and I look forward to many years ahead of cooperating with the Bodleian Libraries and the University of Oxford."

The fellows will start their new posts at the University of Oxford between October 2021 and May 2022. They will be expected to present their work at TORCH (The Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities) and can propose to develop a digital resource or other innovative output during their time at Oxford.

To learn more about the fellowship projects, visit the Digital Humanities Oxford Fellowships webpage.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage, an education technology company serving millions of learners in 165 countries, advances the way students learn through quality, digital experiences. The company currently serves the K-12, higher education, professional, library, English language teaching and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 60 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit: www.gale.com/intl.

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About the Bodleian Libraries
The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. It includes the principal University library – the Bodleian Library – which has been a legal deposit library for 400 years; as well as 27 libraries across Oxford including major research libraries and faculty, department and institute libraries. Together, the Libraries hold more than 13 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals and outstanding special collections including rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, art and printed ephemera. Members of the public can explore the collections via the Bodleian’s online image portal at digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk or by visiting the exhibition galleries in the Bodleian’s Weston Library. For more information, visit www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Media Contact:
Kayla Siefker, Gale, a Cengage company
248-915-9624
[email protected]