The Belcher Visiting Fellowship in Victorian Studies
The Belcher Visiting Fellowship in Victorian Studies was established through a legacy left to the College by the renowned Pugin scholar, Dr Margaret Belcher, who read English at St Hugh’s in the late 1950s. It is open to academics from any discipline who have obtained their doctorate, and are working in the broad field of Victorian Studies. Previous holders of the Visiting Fellowship include distinguished historians, art historians, and literary scholars. The position is fixed-term, and is offered for a period of no longer than 12 months. It is awarded annually by open competition.
The Fellowship carries no salary and Belcher Fellows are not employees of the College, although they have full dining rights and office space at St Hugh’s, as well as generous expense allowances. The Fellowship is therefore usually held by an academic on paid research leave from another institution. It is sometimes possible to help with the costs of a teaching buyout for the successful candidate.
Applications for Belcher Fellowships for the academic years 2027/28 and 2028/29 are now open, with a closing date of 30 September 2026. Further particulars are available on the college’s Vacancies page here. Any inquiries about the Fellowship should be directed to Alex Middleton.
Dr Margaret Belcher (Credit: The Pugin Society/Michael Fisher)
Belcher Fellow 2026/27
Matthew Wells, Belcher Visiting Fellow in Victorian Studies
Matthew Wells is Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. He studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art and completed his doctorate in the History of Design programme at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Royal College of Art. Before joining Manchester, he taught at ETH Zurich from 2018 to 2022. He was awarded the Theodor-Fischer-Preis in 2019 by the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich and elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2023.
His research examines the relationship between architecture, technology, and political economy in the long nineteenth century, with a focus on Britain. He is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023) and Survey: Architecture Iconographies (2021). His research has also appeared in Architectural History, The Burlington Magazine, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians.
As Belcher Visiting Fellow, Matthew will be working on Imperial Logistics: A Global History of British Architecture, 1776–1914. The project examines the buildings and infrastructures that enabled the movement of people, commodities, and information across the British empire and its wider commercial networks. Moving between mainland Britain and sites across the world, it argues that architecture was not simply a representation of empire, but part of the material systems through which imperial and commercial expansion operated.
Previous Belcher Fellows
Professor Lucy Hartley (2025/26)
Lucy Hartley is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For more information please click here.
Dr Robert Saunders (2024/25)
Robert Saunders is Reader in Modern British History at Queen Mary, University of London. For more information please click here.
Professor Ruth Livesey (2024)
Ruth Livesey is Professor of 19th Century Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway University of London. For more information please click here.
Dr Joanna Hofer-Robinson (2024)
Joanna Hofer-Robinson is a Lecturer in the English and Comparative Literary Studies Department at the University of Warwick. For more information please click here.
Dr Kate Nichols (2023/24)
Kate Nichols is Associate Professor in Art History at the University of Birmingham. For more information please click here.
Professor Pamela K. Gilbert (2023)
Pamela K. Gilbert is the Albert Brick Professor of English at the University of Florida. For more information please click here.
Dr Oindrila Ghosh (2022/23)
Oindrila Ghosh is Associate Professor of English at Diamond Harbour Women’s University. For more information please click here.
Professor Sharon Aronofsky Weltman (2022/23)
Sharon Aronofsky Weltman is Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Texas Christian University. For more information please click here.
Professor Jessica R. Valdez (2022).
Jessica R. Valdez is Assistant Professor of Nineteenth-Century British Literature at Louisiana State University. For more information please click here.
Professor Mark Turner (2021)
Mark Turner is Professor of Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Literature at King’s College London. For more information please click here.
Professor Martin Hewitt (2020/23)
Martin Hewitt, the inaugural Belcher Fellow, is a historian of Britain and its culture in the nineteenth century. For more information please click here.
