Skip to main content

Birkbeck’s Bloomsbury Group Writer in Residence at Birkbeck, University of London

'All that seemed to matter was that at last we were free, had rooms of our own and space in which to be alone or to work or to see our friends’ *
- Vanessa Bell 

The School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication at Birkbeck, University of London is home to world-class research and teaching in the arts and humanities, including English and Creative Writing.

Currently based at 43-46 Gordon Square, our buildings once hosted the Bloomsbury Group, a loose collective of artists and writers who first met at 46 Gordon Square in 1905 (the writers meeting on Thursdays, the artists on Fridays). 46 Gordon Square was the first Bloomsbury Group house, and home to the writer Virginia Woolf and her sister the painter Vanessa Bell, having been leased by their family in 1904. The economist John Maynard Keynes moved in to 46 Gordon Square in 1916, and subsequently leased the house next door. Birkbeck’s Keynes Library currently serves as a seminar room.

This Birkbeck’s Bloomsbury Group Writer in Residence Fellowship seeks to celebrate Birkbeck’s rich literary and cultural history and its associations with the Bloomsbury Group. The fellowship does not come with a stipend, but offers the Writer in Residence an office space during the academic year 2024-25 (October 2024 to the end of March 2025) in the quarters once occupied by Woolf. The Writer in Residence will be granted library access during their tenure, and will be invited to attend our range of public events throughout the year, and expected to contribute to two student workshops and one public talk (remunerated).

Application

Applications are invited from writers of any genre living in the UK, who are not already employed full-time at another university.

  • To apply, you must submit a cover letter outlining your writing plans for the duration of the fellowship, explaining how you might contribute to the life of the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication (maximum two pages.)
  • A brief CV (less than three pages) should also be included in the submission.
  • Please submit the cover letter and CV as a single file to Professor Fintan Walsh, Head of the School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication by 10 May 2024 at f.walsh@bbk.ac.uk.

The Fellow will be selected by a committee of academics in Birkbeck School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication.

*In Christopher Reed, Bloomsbury Rooms – Modernism, Subculture and Domesticity (2004)