Four new talented overseas postdoctoral researchers are set to join the University of Oxford thanks to awards by The British Academy.

Projects funded by this round of the scheme will support new research into a wide range of topics from the function of music in the acquisition of knowledge to the Communist Movement in Burma and the study of Syro-Armenian polemics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

The awards are allocated under the Newton International Fellowships scheme, which contributes to the establishment of new international research links and is funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Newton International Fellowships are worth up to a total of £119,250 each – including relocation costs – and enable talented early career researchers from any country overseas to work for two years at a UK institution of their choice.

Professor Dan Grimley, Head of Humanities at Oxford University, said:

‘I am delighted that such talented early career researchers will be joining the University under the Newton International Fellowships scheme, and I look forward to the results of their collaborations with colleagues across our Humanities faculties.

‘The Newton scheme aims to forge links between research and policy, which is closely aligned with our knowledge exchange work and our conviction that the long view of the humanities is essential to recovery from the pandemic.’

The award-holders include:

• Dr Alexandre Cerveux (University of Oxford) – The function of music in the acquisition of knowledge according to medieval Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic philosophical texts
• Dr Andy Hilkens (University of Oxford) – Community, communication, cooperation and conflict: John bar Andreas (d. 1155/56) and Syro-Armenian polemics in the eleventh and twelfth centuries
• Dr Roman Kuhn (University of Oxford) – Communicating Enlightenment in Ephemeral Poetry: Subversion, Sociability, and Gossip in 18th-Century Poésies Fugitives
• Dr Ning Zhang (University of Oxford) – Chinese Sent-Down Youth and the Communist Movement in Burma (1968-1989)

Dr Andy Hilkins, Newton International Fellow at the University of Oxford said:

‘I am grateful to the British Academy for awarding me this prestigious fellowship. It will allow me to spend the next two years working at one of the leading universities in the UK and indeed the world.’

‘The Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford is one of very few institutions that host researchers in the fields of Syriac as well as Armenian studies, so this is the ideal environment to perform my research, which focuses on the interaction between Syriac-speaking and Armenian-speaking Christians in the pre-modern Middle East and in the Caucasus.’

The 2023 round of Newton International Fellowships is now open to applicants until 16 March 2022.