The Literary Encyclopedia Research Award 2026 - Results Round One

We are pleased to report that we received many interesting and stimulating projects, which indicate the strength, viability and richness of literary research. The assessment of our senior editorial board was based on a combination of factors which included research need vs. environmental awareness; stage of research development; access to alternative sources of funding; finally, and above all, the inherent scholarly merit of the proposals submitted for consideration, their timeliness, structural coherence and likely impact. The projects we have decided to reward are original, historically informed and potentially conducive to significant research results; we are pleased to be able to extend our support to such valuable and inspiring work.

First place - £750 each

• Sabiha Huq, Professor, Department of English and Humanities, BRAC University, Dhaka, Bangladesh – Ibsen’s Green and Blue Cartography
  Conceived of as research due to result in a monograph, the project seeks to examine the relationship between literature, place, and the environment through the works of Henrik Ibsen. Drawing on approaches from environmental humanities, particularly green and blue humanities, the study explores how Ibsen’s upbringing, travels, and experiences of different landscapes influenced his creative imagination and shaped the representation of nature in his plays. Through visits to key locations associated with Ibsen’s life in Norway and elsewhere in Europe, the research investigates connections between specific places and the works produced there, while also considering how environmental experience informed his language and literary style. The project will additionally incorporate analysis of selected theatrical performances and archival material from relevant theatres. By combining literary, environmental, and cultural approaches, the monograph aims to offer a new perspective on Ibsen’s work and its engagement with nature.
• Aurora Eide, PhD Candidate and Contributor, University of Agder, Norway – Sapphic Gardens: Queer Modernist Nature and the Futurity of Poetic Communities
  The project employs a queer ecological archival methodology to examine the poetry, gardens, and communities of three understudied modernist writers: Elsa Gidlow, Natalie Barney, and Sylvia Townsend Warner. Challenging the urban bias of both queer and modernist studies, it investigates the garden as a queer literary space and explores how material traces such as photographs, gardening manuals, and landscapes can illuminate lesbian histories and poetic practice. By bringing queer ecology into dialogue with literary modernism, the research offers new perspectives on the relationship between nature, identity, community, and creativity. The project aims to produce a scholarly monograph and, in the longer term, the first full biography of Elsa Gidlow. The proposal is highly original, theoretically innovative, and addresses a significant gap in both queer literary history and modernist studies, with strong potential for lasting scholarly impact.

Second place - £500 each

• Sarah Walton - Assistant Profesor and Contributor, Marshall University - Serialised Guidebooks and the Making of Nineteenth-Century Travel
  This book project examines John Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers as collaborative, multimedia publishing ventures that shaped both 19h century tourism and literary culture. Drawing on archival materials relating to the Murray firm and major Victorian authors, it explores how guidebooks influenced writers such as Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, Mark Twain, and Henry James, functioning not only as practical travel aids but also as literary and epistemological frameworks. A key component of the project is a chapter on Mark Twain, which will analyse archival materials from his personal papers to investigate the underappreciated role of guidebooks in works such as The Innocents Abroad and A Tramp Abroad. The project is intellectually engaging and offers an original contribution to Victorian studies, travel writing, media history, and print culture./li>
• Sheelalipi Sahana, Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh - Missionary Storytelling and the Construction of Colonial Childhood in India’s Women and China’s Daughters
  This project investigates the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society’s periodical India’s Women and China’s Daughters (1880–1957) as a key site for the construction and dissemination of colonial narratives about Indian children. Combining literary analysis, narrative ethnography, and decolonial visual methodologies, it examines how articles, illustrations, photographs, and testimonies promoted missionary ideals of childhood, conversion, and moral “rescue” while supporting broader imperial and evangelical agendas. As part of a wider postdoctoral project on the colonial documentation of children in India, the research seeks to uncover the role of British women in shaping these narratives and to challenge the assumptions embedded in the missionary gaze. The project is original, methodologically sophisticated, and makes a significant contribution to postcolonial studies, childhood studies, visual culture, and missionary history.
• Pat Santalices Torres, PhD Candidate, Columbia University - Poetics of Confinement: Materiality, Transmission, and the Ontology of Literature in Latin American Political Imprisonment
  This project examines literary production under political imprisonment in 20th century Latin American dictatorships, focusing on alternative forms of communication developed by prisoners under conditions of extreme isolation. Centred on Memorias del calabozo by Mauricio Rosencof and Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro, it argues that practices such as wall-knocking and improvised Morse code did not merely preserve literary activity but generated radically new forms of authorship, transmission, collaboration, and meaning. As part of a broader dissertation on aesthetics and political imprisonment, the research offers an original methodological intervention in literary studies. It is also a particularly timely and important project, engaging with questions of political repression, ethics, resistance, and human creativity under authoritarian conditions that continue to resonate amid contemporary global conflicts, democratic challenges, and debates about freedom of expression.