About the Program
The American Trust for the British Library (ATBL) Transatlantic Fellowship Program is a co-sponsored series of transatlantic fellowships that connect the research collections of the British Library with the holdings of select American institutions.
The ATBL’s Transatlantic Fellowship Program supports research projects that make use of collections in any department in the British Library as well as those housed with a partner institution in the United States. The term “transatlantic” refers not necessarily to the subject matter of a Fellow’s proposed project (though projects with transatlantic subjects are always welcomed), but instead to the transatlantic collaboration between the ATBL, on behalf of the collections of the British Library, and the holdings of an American partner organization.
The Program especially welcomes graduate students, recent PhDs, early career scholars, adjunct faculty, independent scholars, librarians, or curatorial staff who otherwise do not have access to departmental research funds.
For questions, please email fellowships@atbl.us.
What does “Transatlantic Research” look like?
Hear from our current and former Fellows:
“The opportunity to spend time at both the British Library and the Clements Library created an amazing synergy in my research as I could trace imperial correspondence across both archival collections.”
“My dissertation explores what it meant for [Henry ‘Box’] Brown, who was formerly enslaved in Virginia, to re-present common American landscape images to English audiences. While written descriptions of these images exist in newspaper advertisements and reviews, the painted canvas itself is lost, and research at the British Library and other collections helped me establish a better idea of what the show may have looked like and how it was received.”
“The ATBL Transatlantic Fellowship allowed me to expand the archive for my first book project by looking at records of theatrical spectatorship in unpublished sources like letters, souvenir programs, and draft manuscripts.”
“I want to say thank you to the ATBL again . . . my fellowship was so important to that work and what I will be doing in the future (I’m taking a year with the Society of Fellows at Columbia before beginning my job as assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon) . . . this fellowship also led to a digital humanities project that focuses on primary source image recognition—we just received a grant to run it from Johns Hopkins.”
Hear from Our Partner Organizations
Read Our Past Fellows’ Research Reports
The 2024–2025 ATBL Transatlantic Fellowships are designed to support at least four weeks of research between both the British Library and the American Partner Organization, with at least one week of research time at each institution. A projected schedule of study will be outlined as part of the Fellowship application. The successful applicant, hailing from any academic discipline, will propose a research project that makes equal use of primary source material found in any collection of the British Library as well as in the American Partner Organization.
The amount of the Fellowship will be $5,000 USD, and the Fellow will join the ATBL as a complimentary one-year Library Fellow for the calendar year following completion of the Fellowship Program as well as receive a complimentary one-year membership with the Modern Language Association (MLA).
The American Trust for the British Library and its Transatlantic Fellowship Partner Organizations do not discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender expression, age, height, weight, physical or mental ability, veteran status, military obligations, and marital status when considering Fellowship applicants. Any demographic information related to the above may be voluntarily provided by the Fellowship applicant on the online application form, but this information will be collected solely for internal recordkeeping and will neither be available or accessible to the review committees of the American Trust for the British Library and Partner Organizations, nor be considered in relation to the applicant’s submitted materials as part of their formal Fellowship application.
The review committees of both the American Trust for the British Library and the American Partner Organization will abide by a conflicts of interest policy which recuses review committee members from evaluating candidates with whom members directly work or share current institutional affiliations, or of whom members have direct and personal knowledge. All applications will be assessed in relation to the applicant’s demonstrated connections between the proposed research topic and the collections to be consulted at both the British Library and the American Partner Organization according to the criteria specified by each individual Fellowship Program.
Learn more about the impact of the ATBL Transatlantic Fellowship and help support the program today!