Institute staff
Find out more about the staff who lead the Rylands including our researchers and PhD students.
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Guyda Armstrong, Director of the John Rylands Institute and Professor of Italian
Guyda is an early modern textual scholar who works at the intersection of book history, information design, and languages. Before joining the JRRI, as Faculty Digital Humanities Lead she directed the Manchester Digital Collections project. She leads on digital and computational approaches to the collections, media studies, and links to the creative industries.
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Stefan Hanß, Deputy Director and Scientific Lead of the John Rylands Research Institute and Professor of Early Modern History
Stefan works on early modern material culture and global history. His award-winning research explores new methodological trajectories in material culture studies, like digital microscopy and proteomics, and advances the scientific analysis of cultural heritage in collaboration with laboratories worldwide. As Scientific Lead, Stefan will promote the development of scientific approaches to the Rylands collections.
View research profile
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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
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Professor Ira Rabin, Simon and Hallsworth Visiting Professor in the Material-Scientific Study of Manuscripts, Prints and Cultural Heritage
Ira works at the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin, and is Principal Investigator for Material Analysis at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), University of Hamburg. As Simon and Hallsworth Visiting Professor, Ira collaborates with the JRRI on strategic development, scientific infrastructure, capacity-building, expertise sharing, to create an environment for successful interdisciplinary collaboration and internationalisation, as well as teaching and training provision.
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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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Catherine Evans
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Reflecting Devotion: Lustrous Materials in Seventeenth-Century England, Scotland and Ireland
View Catherine Evans' 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
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
Visiting Early Career Research Fellows (2021 / 2022)
- Richard Bellis - Trading Body Parts in Britain, 1759-1850
- Jenny Buckley - A Paper Mind: Material Fictions and Print Afterlives, 1700-1820
- Ben Jackson - Consuming Clergymen: Religion, Masculinity and Objects, c1603-1830
- Melek Karatas - The Atelier as Network: Illumination, Agency and the Production of Vernacular Literature in France, 1320-1500
- Christine Slobogin - Anonymous Anatomies: A Critical History of Visual Medical Anonymization in Britain and America, 1870-1955
