19 January 2010

Leverhulme fellowship for Dundee professor

Professor Peter Kitson, from the University of Dundee’s English Department, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship to write a book examining Britain’s relationship with China in the late-18th and early-19th centuries.

Professor Kitson has received a grant of £87,000 from the Leverhulme Trust for his project, 'Representation and Exchange: Britain, China and the Far East, 1770-1840'.

The fellowship provides funding for the University to create a two-year lectureship in Romantic Literature to fill in for Professor Kitson while he researches and writes his book.

Professor Kitson explained that the project will see him explore the representation of China in British literature and culture in the period, as well as examining the nature of the relationship between the two great empires.

'Overall, I’ll be looking at literary and other sources to see how the Qing Empire of China was represented in this period,' he said. 'A number of the sources I’ll be looking at are writings from British missionaries to China in the early nineteenth century.'

'This includes translations of the Bible into Chinese, and also translations of Chinese classical writings as the texts of Confucius and Chinese novels and dramas. Indeed, early Sinology in Britain is almost exclusively built on such missionary sources.'

'The book will look at the impact of this exchange on British writing including popular drama, political satire, and travel writing. Science is another crucial area where important exchange took place between the west and the east.'

'It is often perceived that the west was far more advanced in this respect, but, in fact, there was a definite of exchange of knowledge with British travellers keen to obtain and exploit Chinese know-how, especially with regards to agriculture and the applied sciences involving porcelain, silk and tea production and the Chinese keen to acquire western knowledge of astronomy and weapon manufacture.'

'There are also extensive diplomatic documents to examine, as Britain sent two crucial Embassies to China in a failed attempt to establish modern diplomatic relations with the Qing Empire.'

'The failure to set up clear trading and diplomatic protocols with China led to the dreadful expedient of flooding China with Opium grown in British-governed India as an attempt to redress the trading imbalance occasioned by the insatiable demand for tea.'

The highly prestigious and competitive Leverhulme Major Research Fellowships are awarded to 'enable well-established and distinguished researchers in the disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences to devote themselves to a single research project of outstanding originality and significance, capable of completion within two or three years'.

This award further establishes the reputation and profile of Dundee’s English Department for research excellence and impact in Romantic-period studies and the global contexts of literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Professor Kitson's project will begin in September 2010 and he will return to the English programme at Dundee in January 2013. Professor Kitson is also the current President of the English Association and President of the British Association for Romantic Studies.

Further details of the award can be found at www.leverhulme.ac.uk/news/Major-Research-Fellowship/.

Notes to editors:

The Leverhulme Trust, established at the wish of William Hesketh Lever, the first Viscount Leverhulme, makes awards for the support of research and education. The Trust emphasises individuals and encompasses all subject areas.

With annual funding of some £50 million, the Trust is amongst the largest all subject providers of research funding in the UK.

The Trustees place special weight on:

• the originality of the projects put to them;
• the significance of the proposed work;
• the ability to judge and take appropriate risk in the project;
• the removal of barriers between traditional disciplines.

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