The Society has recently partnered with Wiley on an extensive digitisation programme of substantial parts of its pre-1945 Collections. Digitised materials are now available for research through the Wiley Digital Archives (WDA) platform.
Our Collections contain over two million documents, maps, photographs, paintings, periodicals, artefacts and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration.
The richness and potential of the Collections really lies in our ability to make connections between materials in many different formats, drawing together items scattered across the different parts of the collections to build up a richer portrait of a given place, person or expedition. In addition to enabling access to hundreds of thousands of digitised items and materials, the new WDA platform helps to facilitate making such connections through its suite of user features.
Wiley Digital Archive applications
For the last two years we have been delighted to offer Wiley Digital Archives Research Fellowships. These Fellowships provide successful researchers with access to the Wiley Digital Archives for six months, to pursue a focused research project on a part-time basis. Fellows are not expected to work on their project on a full-time basis, and applicants are encouraged to use this opportunity to pilot new projects and/or to support and enable their existing research. Please note that there is no direct financial support provided through the scheme. Deadlines are usually in mid-December. We will post details here of future deadlines.
Application form (DOC)
Terms and conditions (DOC)
The projects supported cover a wide range of topic areas, advancing knowledge and providing new insights on a number of key themes, including providing new insights into the science and technology of exploration, making use of innovative new digital methodologies, highlighting hidden and forgotten histories, exploring under-researched parts of the Collections, and more. To read more about each of the projects, new materials that are found, and how the digital archive is enabling new kinds of scholarship please see the interviews and talks linked below.
2021-22 recipients
We are delighted to announce our WDA Research Fellowship recipients for 2021-22.
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Nokmedemla Lemtur (University of Göttingen, Germany): Labour in the lofty peaks: tracing lives of high altitude porters in the Mount Everest Expeditions (1921 – 1953) Read our interview with Nokmedemla
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Maria Sebastian Sebastian (University of the Balearic Islands, Spain): Travelling women. Depictions of the Mediterranean area in the narratives of Emilia F. Noel and Margaret Hasluck
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Joy Slappnig (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK): Marshall Islands stick charts and the idea of the ‘Indigenous map’
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Jonathan Westaway (University of Lancashire, UK): Encountering the Indigenous body in the Himalayan Borderlands: Gurkhas, Sherpas, and the embodied construction of 'Martial' and 'Mountain' Races in British India, 1890-1947
2020-21 recipients
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Alicia Colson (Independent): From ‘Banishment’ to ‘Cool’: a chairborne exploration of a ‘forgotten archipelago’ - Santa Catarina, Brazil Read our interview with Alicia
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Sherezade Garcia Rangel (Falmouth University, UK): Unbound Beauty: Venezuela according to the Wiley Digital Archive Read our interview with Sherezade
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Emily Hayes (Oxford Brookes University, UK): (Un)commonplace knowledge: geographical relativity in the fin de siècle Read our interview with Emily
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Sandra Hayward (Independent): Hidden treasures: low-latitude historical aurorae and their relevance to future space flight Read our interview with Sandra
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Rick Mitcham (Kindai University, Japan): Corresponding Geographies: A Critical Exploration of Walter Weston’s Contact with the Royal Geographical Society, 1892-1924
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Fred Morton (University of Botswana, Botswana): Cattle People: The Tswana & Metsemegologolo: Multimodal Landscape of African Urbanisms
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*Joanne Norcup (University of Warwick, UK): The life and legacies of the 1998 British Council / Royal Geographical Society exhibition (1998) Photos and Phantasms: Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston’s photographs of the Caribbean (1908 – 1909)
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Catherine Oliver (University of Cambridge, UK): Animals in the Royal Geographical Society’s archives Read our interview with Catherine and watch the 'Be inspired' talk
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Karen Rann (Queen’s University Belfast, UK): Moving Mountains: early uses of isobaths and contour lines on maps Read our interview with Karen
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Bradley Rink (University of the Western Cape, South Africa): Airmindedness redux: Growing tourism and worldliness through aeromobility in Africa Read our interview with Bradley
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Shaun Seah (Columbia University, USA): ‘Watch on Deck – the Orientalist gaze of tourists, naval officers and colonial officialdom along the Straits of Singapore’ (1850-1950)
*awarded but not taken up.
If you are interested in learning more about how to use the Wiley Digital archive, please see our resource.