Universiteit Leiden

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Research project

Leiden-Birmingham Strategic Collaboration Fund

The Leiden–Birmingham Strategic Collaboration Fund provides support for colleagues from Leiden University and the University of Birmingham to undertake a research stay at one of the two partner institutions.

Contact
Miriam Müller
Funding
Leiden–Birmingham Strategic Collaboration Fund
Partners

University of Birmingham and the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC)

Background

Leiden University and the University of Birmingham have developed strong institutional and academic ties through ongoing collaboration over recent years. Building on this foundation, we are seeking to support and grow our strategic partnership. This joint seed fund is designed to deepen existing partnerships and expand interdisciplinary networks across both institutions. It aims to:

  • Advance shared research priorities and build cognate areas of excellence;
  • Enhance access to expertise, facilities, and opportunities for educational exchange;
  • Strengthen institutional links to help researchers build collaborative networks.

Activities

2026: Connectivity Between East and West: Leiden-Birmingham Fellowships

The Leiden–Birmingham Network Initiative offered fully funded short-term research fellowships for scholars from Leiden University and the University of Birmingham. Supported by the Birmingham–Leiden Strategic Collaboration Fund, the scheme primarily targeted early career researchers, including postgraduate researchers and postdoctoral fellows, while also welcoming applications from senior academics.

The fellowships supported research stays of typically two to four weeks focused on the theme “Connectivity between East and West,” with particular attention to the material and manuscript cultures of the Southern Levant from 700 BCE to 700 CE. Projects were designed to foster research synergies between the two institutions, drawing on shared expertise and collections, including library, museum, and archival resources in Leiden and Birmingham.

Fellowships covered travel, accommodation, visa costs, and a small budget for a research or networking activity such as a workshop or guest lecture. Fellows were expected to reside at the host institution and to participate actively in its academic life. Fellowships were awarded for periods in 2026, with final selections announced in January of that year.

Leiden University fellowships will take place in 2026; more information will be published on this page.

2025: Memory in Antiquity

This project sought to create a research group to explore the uses and meanings of memory in ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East. It capitalised on the broad interest in memory in the humanities and social sciences and provided a forum for researchers to reflect on the processes of remembering and forgetting, how these were identifiable in the ancient sources, and what role they played in the construction of ideas about the past. Related to contemporary experiences such as migration, this project spoke to various audiences and translated lessons from the past into an engaged dialogue about the future.

The project envisaged two related workshops in which participants explored the implications of two aspects of memory. First, a one-day workshop at Leiden, held in late March 2025 with ten speakers mostly from Leiden and the Netherlands who engaged in response to five keynote lectures, centred on the concept of remembering. Iconographic representations and the construction of lived experience in ritual landscapes provided productive case studies to illustrate approaches to this topic.

The second one-day workshop took place in Birmingham in late April 2025, with a majority of discussants from Birmingham and the UK, and focused on material and linguistic aspects of the process of forgetting. Exploring themes such as iconoclasm, damnatio memoriae, and how events are ‘written out’ of historical narratives, forgetting was characterised as a crucial practice for understanding both the past and the present.

Given the background and expertise of the two organisers, the initial workshops had a clear focus on Egyptological research and acted as a pilot project to test the feasibility of the group. Invited colleagues from neighbouring disciplines such as Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Ancient History, Archaeology, Art History, and Middle Eastern Studies contextualised the Egyptological case studies. These workshops sought to establish a formal connection between the two universities, with a view to developing joint research and teaching activities around the theme of memory in the ancient world.

A final activity contributed to further collaboration and relationship building in another strategic area, namely Egypt, with the aim of developing trilateral activities. The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC), an academic centre based in Cairo and affiliated with the University of Leiden, provided an academic nexus between Birmingham, Leiden, and Egypt. The organisers presented the results of the two preceding workshops to a local audience at the NVIC, using their time in Cairo to pump-prime future research activities.

Events

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