University of St Andrews Library Visiting Scholars 2018

Since 2014, we have welcomed a number of visiting scholars who wish to pursue their own research projects to make use of materials held in the Special Collections. These awards provide financial support towards the costs of travel and accommodation, while pursuing a research project directly relating to the Library’s collections. Special Collections is home to the Library’s historic collections of books, manuscripts, archives and photographs.

We look forward to welcoming the following five Special Collections Visiting Scholars to Special Collections over the course of summer 2018.

Rowan Bailey (University of Huddersfield) Thomas Malcolm Knox: Translator, Editor and Educator
Dr Bailey will examine the collected papers of Principal Knox, with particular reference to his role as an English translator of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. As a creative editor and producer of Hegel’s writings into English, Knox is an important voice at work in the reception of Hegel’s ideas at home and abroad. Knox translated Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, first published by Oxford University Press in 1975 and was awarded an Emeritus Fellowship in 1972 by the Leverhulme Trust to complete the manuscript for publication. In his short preface to the two volume edition, he thanks the Librarian and Staff at St Andrews University Library for assisting him in his many queries.

Matthew Holmes (University of Leeds) From Soap Bubbles to Biology: The Influence of Experimental Physics on D’Arcy Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1917)
Sir D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, Thompson was professor of natural history, first at Dundee and then at St Andrews, for an astonishing 63 years. He is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form. Dr Holmes will reconstruct Thompson’s relationship with experimental physics and how this interaction influenced his biology. He will also research whether Thompson formed part of a network of biologists who were struck by the applicability of physics to biology.

Lee Chichester (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Growth and Form: Structural Research in Art and Science 1917-1951
Lee Chichester will also research the papers of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Her research project will examine how Thompson’s immersion into the artistic environment of Dundee influenced his own thinking about form processes in nature and his methodology as a natural scientist.

Laura Doak (University of Glasgow) On Street and Scaffold: Political Culture in Restoration Scotland, c.1679-1685
Laura will examine local records held in Special Collections in her research, which focuses upon political culture and the performance of political ideas and arguments in Restoration Scotland, between the assassination of James Sharp, Archbishop of St. Andrews, in May 1679 and the failed rising led by the Earl of Argyll in spring 1685. Laura is primarily concerned with extra-literary cultural media, such as proclamations, rebel declarations and public executions.

Jose Neves (Ulster University) The impact of photographic printing processes upon visual narrative in photobook form between 1840 and 1880
Dr Neves will use the collection of photographically illustrated books at the University of St. Andrews Library to establish a correlation between photographic printing processes and the apparent scarceness of cumulative and relational visual narratives in late nineteenth- and early twentieth century photobook production.

We will be arranging Visiting Scholar talks over the summer, please check the website for details over the next few weeks.