The University of East Anglia (UEA) and the British Library (BL) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2022 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.

The library of Robert Cotton (1571–1631) has been described as 'the most important collection of manuscripts ever assembled in Britain by a private individual'. This CDP offers a unique opportunity to produce an original piece of research on the origins and/or 17th-century development of Cotton's extraordinary collection. Among possible research questions, to be established by the student in consultation with the supervisors, are the methods by which Cotton and his successors acquired their manuscripts, their collecting principles, their relationships with other scholars, collectors and politicians, and the role of women in the formation of the library.

This project will be supervised by Dr Thomas Roebuck and Dr Katherine Hunt, University of East Anglia, who are experts in early modern scholarship and collecting practices; and Julian Harrison and Dr Andrea Clarke, lead curators of Medieval and Early Modern Manuscripts at the BL. The award holder will be based at UEA, and will also be based at the BL for a significant proportion of the studentship.