The Amy Wygant Bursaries are named in memory of our late colleague and Editor of the Society’s Journal. The Amy Wygant Research Bursaries are intended to provide financial support for the research projects of members of the Society. The Society will award bursaries from £500 up to £2000. This is a competitive scheme and not all applications can be approved. Examples of previous successful project bids can be found at the bottom of this page, all of which have led to substantial research outcomes.
The bursaries are available to support primary research in any area of early modern French studies. All applicants must be existing members of the Society. All members of the Society are eligible to apply, except for the members of the Bursary Sub-Committee (consisting of the Chair, President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Society) who will determine the awards.
The Bursaries are not intended to fund the purchase of material objects such as books and laptops, but to support other costs such as travel, accommodation and living expenses incurred for the purpose of a particular research project. We would also consider making a contribution towards any research publication costs.
Applications should demonstrate that Bursaries are sought to support a clearly defined, discrete piece of research which will have an identifiable outcome. It is expected that the Society’s Bursaries will be acknowledged in all ensuing publications.
Applications for the Research Bursaries should include a text of not more than 500 words, setting out the details of the research project; and also a detailed breakdown of the expenses envisaged. They should include a full statement of what other financial support is available, together with a reference from one academic referee.
Please send applications for Research Bursaries to the Society’s Secretary, Dr Emma Herdman, by e-mail: [email protected]. We welcome applications at any time, and announce recipients of the awards in May of each year. The deadline for applications is 1st April 2026. Awards will be announced in the course of the following month.
Previous Research Award Holders and Projects
2026
John O’Brien (Durham) and Marc Schachter (Durham)
Contribution towards publishing costs for The Right to Resist: La Boétie’s ‘On Voluntary Servitude’ and Three Monarchomach Treatises (Boydell & Brewer).
2025:
Carrie Heusinkveld (Cambridge)
Archival research on books owned and annotated by Jean Racine for a PhD project on human-nonhuman interactions in Racine’s work.
Emily Kent (independent)
Archival research on a project on the afterlife of Marin Mersenne’s ideas, entitled “From Eden to the Antilles: Genesis and the Mendicant Reading of Nature in the French Atlantic (c. 1620 to 1720)”.
[2024 No applications were approved]
2023: Anton Bruder (Utrecht University)
Contribution towards publishing costs for a monograph entitled Recovering the Medieval in the French Renaissance: A Study of Claude Fauchet’s Veilles ou Observations (1555) (Droz).
Katherine Stratton (St Andrews)
Archival research for a PhD project on ‘Dexterous Destriers: The Literal and Figurative Horse as Educator in Sixteenth-Century France’.
2022: Michaela Kalcher (University of Oxford)
Archival research on French revolutionary diaries.
Lisa Nicholson (University of Oxford)
Research for a bilingual edition of the correspondence of Hortense Mancini.
[2021 No applications were approved]
2020: Dana Lungu (University of Bristol)
Research for her monograph entitled: ‘Médée’, ‘Clytemnestre’, and ‘Phèdre’: Female Heroism Revisited in Seventeenth-Century French Tragedy.
[2019 No applications were approved]
2018: Anton Bruder (King’s College, Cambridge)
‘The significance of Claude Fauchet’s treatment of ancient Gaulish history in his Antiquitez gauloises and françoises (Book I).’
Michael Harrigan (currently unaffiliated)
Research for his edition entitled: Life and Death in the Early Plantations: The Letters of Jean Mongin and Claude Bréban, to be published in the Modern Humanities Research Association Critical Texts series.
[2017 No applications were approved]
2016: Michael Meere (Wesleyan University, CT)
‘Skull Cups, Ghosts, and Murder: Seventeenth-Century French Dramatic Adaptations of the Rosamond and Alboin Story.’
2015: Niall Oddy (Durham University)
Archival research in Paris on the diplomatic correspondence of François Savary de Brèves, ambassador to Constantinople and later to Rome, and on unpublished MS travellers’ accounts.
Philippa Woodcock (Warwick University)
Archival research in Venice on the perils faced by French travellers and French maritime shipping in the Venetian Stato da Mar, 1580-1620.