The Undergraduate Research and Leadership Scholarship is a two-year scholarship funded by alumni, offered to first-year students, which enables students to develop their research and leadership skills through participating in academic research projects and attending residential and one day events. The Scholarship is unique in that it funds students to participate in live research, as well as developing their skills for future research and leadership roles in employment or further study. Furthermore, it offers scholars the opportunity to attend networking events to meet other UGRLS scholars and researchers, as well as providing scholars with the chance to attend conferences related to their project. The scholarship is one of the most prestigious offered at the University of Leeds, and I’m greatly looking forward to fully engaging with both the scholarship and the research project.
I am a first-year International History and Politics student, and I’m greatly interested in the life-course of objects, such as how they are affected by outside influences and why they are moved to different places of residence. I’m also interested in the social history of the 20th century, and after having never studied neither antique dealers or the antique trade, I’m looking forward to learning more about the subject. I also love primary sources, so the chance to work with primary materials like sales ledgers and photographs greatly attracted me to this fantastic project.
The ‘Where is it Now?’ aspect of the project is what I’m most looking forward to, especially finding out how and why antiques changed hands, and the opportunity to develop both my primary source skills and ability to handle and care for archived materials are arguably my other favourite aspects of the project. My personal favourite of the ‘Where is it Now?’ antiques is the ‘Fine Italian Marquetrie Bureau Bookcase’ (http://csaam.leeds.ac.uk/archives-where-is-it-now/where-is-it-now-number-4/) and I can’t wait to start working with the team to try and track this down.
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