The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) invites Expressions of Interest proposals for new, innovative research projects developed for the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme.

The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design, and performance, housing a collection of more than 2.6 million objects, spanning over 5,000 years of human creativity. The Museum holds many of the UK's national collections and houses some of the greatest resources for the study of architecture, furniture, fashion, textiles, photography, sculpture, painting, jewellery, glass, ceramics, book arts, Asian art and design, theatre and performance. Further information about the Museum and our collections can be accessed here.

The Museum is home to an active, interdisciplinary research community, bringing together academics, curators, librarians, archivists, conservators, scientists, creative practitioners, students and many more  collaborators. The V&A was the first national museum to establish a dedicated Research Department and research continues to be one of our core strategic activities. Today, the V&A Research Institute (VARI), supported by a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, directs the Museum’s research strategy, academic partnerships, and postgraduate programmes, including the long-standing and highly successful MA and PhD programmes in History of Design, co-delivered with the Royal College of Art. Our researchers participate in a rich programme of activities at VARI and beyond, including regular research seminars, conferences, and workshops.

They are welcoming applications which speak to any area of their collections or practices (including heritage science and conservation, archives, the National Art Library, and spanning the V&A’s family of sites – the V&A in South Kensington, V&A East, V&A Museum of Childhood, V&A Wedgwood Collection, V&A Dundee). But they are particularly interested in projects which fall into one (or more) of the following areas:

• - Photography

• - Sustainability

• - Environmental humanities

• - Digital Cultures/digital collections/digital humanities

• - Histories of collecting and collections, including contested and ‘difficult’ histories

• - Legacies of colonialism in the V&A collections

• - Museums and Community engagement

• - Embodied and other forms of museum learning

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Please note that due to a major collection move from Blythe House in Olympia to a new collections store and research facility in East London, due to open in 2024, a number of collections are currently inaccessible and will remain so until 2024 (collections affected by the move include: Asia, Theatre and Performance, Fashion, Textiles, Furniture and the Archive of Art and Design).   

The V&A operates a two-stage application process for the BA Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme:

1. Expression of Interest (7 September 2021, 12:00 noon);

2. Application to British Academy (14 October 2021).

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This call is for stage 1 – Expression of Interest only. Selection at the EoI stage is not an offer of a Fellowship, but a confirmation of the V&A’s commitment to host a candidate, should their application to the British Academy be successful.

Applications should be submitted by filling in the Expression of Interest form by 7 September 2021 (12:00 noon). Candidates do not need to have identified a prospective V&A mentor. VARI will work with applicants successful at the EoI stage to identify the most suitable Museum mentor. In turn, applicants successful at the EoI stage are expected to be available to work closely with VARI in September and October to develop the full  application.

Application deadline: 7 September 2021

For more details about the role and to apply, visit: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=pqhybT5ixEK4FwRbTfKt1D132sgfyEZCpsCxkS3tnydUNDlNWjcyOTlFTUlZT1dJN0o0NFQ4T0dJVi4u