Curran Fellowship Grant for Sue Chen

Associate Professor Sue Chen has been awarded the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals’ Curran Fellowship Grant ($7000) for her project ‘”Preparing the Child for Science”: Victorian Children’s Periodicals and Scientific Literacy.’

The Curran Fellowships are a set of travel and research grants intended to aid scholars studying 19th-century British magazines and newspapers in making use of primary print and archival sources. Made possible through the generosity of the late Eileen Curran, Professor Emerita of English, Colby College, and inspired by her pioneering research on Victorian periodicals, the Fellowships are awarded annually. See more details here (from https://rs4vp.org/awards/curran-fellowship/ . 

Sue Chen’s project investigates how children’s periodicals mediated scientific knowledge for a young audience and helped them gain scientific literacy during the long nineteenth century. It aims to track the role that the British periodical press had in the transnational circulation of scientific knowledge from Britain to formal (Australia) and informal (China) parts of the British Empire through children’s periodicals.

She will be travelling to the UK to conduct archival research at the British Library and SOAS Library.