News

Four new British Academy Fellowships for Durham

(10 July 2006)

Four outstanding Durham scholars in diverse fields of Archaeology, Geography, Theology and Anthropology have been elected Fellows of the British Academy.

The Fellowships are the top UK academic distinction in the humanities and social sciences, and are widely regarded as a 'knighthood' or 'damehood' in learning and research, equivalent to FRS - Fellow of the Royal Society - in the sciences. It is believed to be the first time that four Durham fellows have been elected as an FBA in the same year. Each year the Academy elects up to three scholars as Senior Fellow - and one this year goes to Professor Rosemary Cramp, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, who is a longstanding leading authority on the Anglo-Saxons. The other new Fellows are: Professor James Dunn (Theology), Professor Ray Hudson (Geography) and Professor Paul Sillitoe (Anthropology). Professor Cramp CBE recently produced the seventh volume, South-West England, for the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (based in Durham). The project is now funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council but was initiated by the British Academy who publish the volumes. This year’s display in the British Academy foyer is the sculpture project. Professor Cramp has published a first volume of Wearmouth and Jarrow Monastic Sites for English Heritage and volume 2 is being indexed. Professor Dunn is currently working on the second volume of a projected trilogy, Christianity in the Making, which will cover the first 150 years of Christianity. Volume 1, Jesus Remembered, was published in 2003. His fourth volume of collected essays was published in 2005. Professor Sillitoe’s current research covers tropical farming systems and natural resources management and appropriate technology. He looks at development, including sustainability and its relation to the natural environment, and also cultural aspects and changing the social order. He has long-standing interests in the Pacific, and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Professor Ray Hudson is a professor of geography and the Director of the Wolfson Research Institute at the Queen’s Campus, Stockton, which is a growing centre for research in regional development and health studies. His main research interests are in economic and social regeneration in north east England; globalization and localisation; and political and economic restructuring in Europe.