EARLY CAREER RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES

Research undertaken at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology is highly diverse, ranging across the departments of Antiquities, the Cast Gallery, Conservation, Eastern Art, the Heberden Coin Room (numismatics) and Western Art.  Particular research priorities for the departments can be found below.

We welcome approaches from postdoctoral researchers carrying out collections-based research in these areas who are interested in holding externally funded fellowships in the Museum.

Advice and support can be provided to suitable applicants for independent research fellowships, including:

• British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowships
• Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships
• Marie Curie Individual Fellowships
• Newton International Fellowships
• Wellcome Trust Fellowships

If you are interested in applying for funding to work at the Museum, please contact the most relevant potential supervisor for your research area. See the People pages for the relevant contact details.

For applications for all funding schemes apart from Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships, a summary research proposal and CV should be provided at least four months in advance of the scheme submission deadline.

In order to allow time to apply for internal match funding we ask that potential applicants contact their potential Ashmolean supervisor with a brief overview of their intended project and a CV by 31 July of the year preceding the February closing date. The supervisor should then inform the Ashmolean Research Coordinator (currently Daniel Bone), who will provide a template Expression of Interest form which will need to be completed by the applicant and returned to the Research Coordinator, ready for review at the start of the new academic term (early October).

Particular research priorities (in order of priority for each department) include:

Antiquities

• Sudanese collections
• Greek vases

Conservation

For the first two topics below we are particularly interested in characterisation, material interactions, sources and mitigation strategies:

• Museum dust and its effects on objects on open display (casts, furniture, sculpture)
• Museum pollutants and effects on objects on open display (cast, furniture, sculpture)
• Sustainability and environmental control

Eastern Art

• Indian paintings
• Islamic pottery
• Japanese paintings
• Eastern Art collection provenance

Heberden Coin Room

We welcome approaches from postdoctoral researchers carrying out research in all areas of numismatics. Subjects of particular interest are: 

• Coin Hoards of the Roman Empire
• Roman Provincial Coinage
• Bactrian, Indo-Greek, and Indo-Scythian coinages
• Late Byzantine numismatics
• Modern (post 1800) coinage and banknotes
• Post 1600 coinages of South Asia and the Far East
• Commemorative medals

Western Art

• Decolonization and the history of the collections

• The Wellby Collection of mainly 16th-17th century Kunstkammer objects
• The Pissarro Collection
• The Douce Collection of print and drawings
• The Russian Art Collection

For any other research queries contact the Research and Impact Manager at harriet.warburton@glam.ox.ac.uk