For three decades, The Charles Wallace India Trust has funded one Visiting Research Fellowship per year at the University of Edinburgh. The Fellowship is held at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, in association with the University’s Centre for South Asian Studies. The Fellowship is for three months and is for arts and humanities research (including South Asian film, literature, history etc). Applicants must have a background in the arts and humanities, as social science topics fall outside of the Fellowship's remit. Applicants must be Indian citizens, resident and pursuing their academic careers in India. They must have a doctorate and be under 45 at the time of application. Anyone who has received a CWIT grant in the past five years would not be eligible.
The Fellowship provides a grant for living expenses in the UK which is currently at the monthly rate of £1,400, and a contribution of £700 towards the cost of fares, payable on arrival in the UK.
The CWIT Fellow has a private office in the Institute, with all the usual research facilities, and is a member of IASH’s lively research community. They will be expected to play a full part in the activities of the Institute, as well as working closely with colleagues in the Centre for South Asian Studies, and to give one seminar at IASH and one at the Centre on his/her current research work during their tenure.
Applications for the 2025-26 round will open in January 2025, and close on 28 February 2025. The application portal link will be posted here when applications open in January.
A webinar was offered on Monday 9 December for postdoctoral scholars interested in applying for IASH Fellowships for academic year 2025-26. The deadline for most applications is 25 April 2025, so this session allowed time to ask questions and prepare an application.
Representatives from some of our partners spoke about the programmes, and IASH staff gave insights into the facilities and funding available, as well as hints and tips for crafting a successful application.
The webinar recording is available here.
References
- A minimum of two and a maximum of three confidential references are required.
- At least one referee should come from outside the institution of the applicant.
- Referees should comment on the nature and quality of the research proposal, as well as on the qualifications of the applicant.
Applicants for the next round should ask their referees to send references by email to the Institute Director at iash@ed.ac.uk by 17:00 UK time on 28 February 2025.
Former holders of the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellowship
Former holders of the CWIT Fellowship at IASH and the title of the research project they were working on:
- 1995, Dr C.S. Patil, Directorate of Archaeology & Museums, Mysore
The Panchatantra in Sculptural Art - 1996, Mr Jayaram Poduval, Department of Art History, M.S. University, Baroda
The Correlation of Christian Art of Kerala and European Art - 1997, Dr Shrinivas Padigar, Department of Ancient Indian History & Epigraphy, Karnatak University
Vaishnava Themes in Sculpture - 2000, Professor R. Vasantha, Department of History, Sri Krishnadevaraya University, Anantapur
The Origins of Chess - 2002, Dr Chinna Rao Yagati, Educational Records and Research Unit, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
Christian Missionaries and the Emergence of Dalit Consciousness: Andhra during late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries - 2003, Dr Geetanjali Pandey, Writer
A collection of short stories about Indian women immigrants - 2004, Dr Awahendra Sharan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi
Environment and the Contemporary Urban Experience in Delhi - 2006, Dr Veena Naregal, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi
New Cultural Histories: Thematising Bilingualism in Contemporary India - 2008, Dr Rajesh Kumar, Department of Political Science, PPN College, Kanpur
Revisiting Kargil: Was the Stability/Instability Paradox at Play? - 2009, Dr Arima Mishra, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics
The Healing Practice of Divya Yoga - 2010, Dr Modugu Sridhar, Centre for Economic and Social Studies, Hyderabad
Scientific Innovations and the State: Making of Agriculture in Colonial and Postcolonial India - 2010-11, Dr Susmita Chatterjee, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
‘Practising’ Goddesses, Theorising Feminism: Challenges and Prospects - 2011-12, Dr Piyush Mathur, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla
Environmental Citizenship: Lessons from the Contemporary History of India’s Tribal Communities - 2012-13, Dr Sabyasachi Dasgupta, Department of History, Visva Bharati University, West Bengal
The Role of the Sepoy in Colonial and Postcolonial Armies - 2013-14, Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Council for Social Development, Hyderabad
Mapping Dalit Politics in Contemporary India: A Study of UP and AP from an Ambedkarite Perspective - 2014-2015, Dr Aarti Wani, Department of English, Symbiosis College of Arts & Commerce, Pune
Addressing the Local: the Tamasha Film - 2016-2017, Dr Avishek Ray, National Institute of Technology, Silchar
Genealogies of the ‘Vagabond’ in the Age of Tourism - 2017-2018, Dr Nilanjana Mukherjee, Department of English, University of Delhi
Framing the Himalayas - 2018-2019, Dr V.J. Varghese, Department of History, University of Hyderabad
Taming Wilderness as Modernity: Migration, Agrarian Expansion and the Re‐making of Syrian Christians in Kerala, 1850 ‐ 1970 - 2019-20, Dr Umesh Kumar, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University
(Re)Framing the ‘Honour Killing’ Phenomenon: Contextualising the Literary Response to Gendered Violence through Translation - 2020-21, Dr Navaneetha Mokkil, Center for Women’s Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Encountering the Body: Cinematic Practices and the Scenography of Protests in India - 2021-22, Dr Bharti Arora, Tagore Government Arts and Science College, Pondicherry
Making Resistances, Performing Decoloniality: Peasants’ Negotiations of State in Select Hindi Fiction of Postindependence India - 2022-23, Dr Arka Chattopadhyay, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar
The Bengali Avant-Garde Novel and World Form: Re-Inventing Modernism - 2023-24, Dr Vivek V. Narayan, Ashoka University
Stolen Fire: Caste Scripts and Anti-Caste Politics in South India, 1806-1941