Institute staff
Find out more about the staff who lead the Rylands including our researchers and PhD students.
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Hannah Barker, Director of the John Rylands Research Institute and Professor of British History
Hannah is a historian of industrial revolution England. She is Chair of Manchester Histories, a charity which works with people across Greater Manchester to transform lives through history and heritage, a Historical Advisor for the National Trust and a feoffee of Chetham’s charity.
View research profile
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Guyda Armstrong, Senior Lecturer in Italian and Digital Humanities Lead
Guyda is an early modern literary scholar who works at the intersection of book history, information design, and languages. As Faculty Digital Humanities Lead she directed the Manchester Digital Collections project, and is responsible for developing new digital and computational approaches for research across the Rylands collections.
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Aaron McGaughey, Grant Writer
Aaron works with Humanities researchers and JRRIL fellows to develop projects and apply for funding. Prior to joining The University of Manchester, he gained a PhD in Russian History from The University of Nottingham and worked on funded projects with partners from heritage, library and local history organisations.
Email Aaron McGaughey
Researchers
Find out more about the many researchers and PhD students working with the Rylands.
Postdoctoral Research Fellows
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Jake Benson
Research Associate, Persian Manuscripts
View Jake Benson's research profile
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Zsófia Buda
Research Associate, Hebrew Manuscripts
View Zsófia Buda's research profile
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Catherine Evans
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Reflecting Devotion: Lustrous Materials in Seventeenth-Century England, Scotland and Ireland
Email Catherine
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Sonia Favi
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Travel in Tokugawa Period Japan (1603-1868): Identity , Nation and Social Transformation
View Sonia Favi's research profile
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Kate Gibson
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Looked-After Children: Fostering and Adoption in Britain, 1700-1839
View Kate Gibson's research profile
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Benjamin Pope
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, The Opression of the Nobility: Town, Country and Identity in Medieval Germany
View Benjamin Pope's research profile
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Brian Wallace
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, God from Machines: Techonology and Magic in Nineteenth Century Imperial Encounters
Contact Brian Wallace
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Talia Zajac
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Royal Women, Cultural Exchanges, and Rus’ Ecumenical Marriages, circa 1000-1250
Contact Talia Zajac
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Rebecca Whiteley
Shreeve Fellow in the History of Medicine, The Visual Culture of Midwifery Training in Early Nineteenth Century Manchester
View Rebecca Whiteley's research profile
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PhD students
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Elizabeth Gow
Elizabeth’s research explores and analyses the book collecting of Enriqueta Rylands, founder of the John Rylands Library, to reveal what she acquired, how and for what purpose.
Read about Elizabeth's research
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Roxana Gregor-Som
Roxana’s research focuses on the social structure of the landowners and tenants in Hermopolis in the period after 400.
Read about Roxana's research
Visiting Early Career Research Fellows
Visiting Early Career Research Fellows (2020 / 2021)
- Ana Dias - Image in Iberia and the Medieval West ca. 700-1080: an Intellectual History
- Caroline Henaghan - Premenstrual Tensions in the 1830-1930 Archive: Taking a Medical History of Disordered Menstruation
- Anna Jamieson - A Touch of the Blue Devils: Women, Mental Health and Self-Care in England, 1750-1850
- Emily Price - Conversation, Consumption, and Conversion in Early Modern Europe, c. 1580-1700
- James Watts - Landscape, Environment, and British Imperial Identity, 1860-1914
- Hannah Yip - The Clergy and Artistic Recreation in Early Modern Britain
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Richard Bellis
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2021-22, Trading Body Parts in Britain, 1750-1850
Read about Richard's research
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Jenny Buckley
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2021-22, A Paper Mind: Material Fictions and Print Afterlives, 1700-1820
Read about Jenny's research
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Ben Jackson
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2021-22, Consuming Clergymen: Religion, Masculinity, and Objects c.1603–1830
Read about Ben's research
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Melek Karatas
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2021-22, The Atelier as Network: Illumination, Agency and the Production of Vernacular Literature in France (1320-1500).
Read about Melek's research
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Christine Slobogin
Visiting Early Career Research Fellow 2021-22, Anonymous Anatomies: A Critical History of Visual Medical Anonymization in Britain and America, 1870-1955.
Read about Christine's research
