Dr Melanie Bigold

Biography

From the age of 10, I trained at professional ballet schools (first, at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School in Canada, and latterly the Australian Ballet School in Melbourne, Australia). Though an injury ended that journey in 1994, I have drawn on my experiences and continue to explore the significance of the performing arts in relation to national culture (for example, I've written about the cultural reach of ballet at the start of Elizabeth II's reign).

I completed my undergraduate and master's degress in Canada at the University of Manitoba and University of Toronto, respectively. I majored in English during my undergraduate degree, and then went on to a master's in Drama at the University of Toronto. After my Master's, I went into a government job for Service Canada where I learned how useful and effective a humanities degree can be in transforming communication and processes. 

Eager to do more original research, however, I was awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) doctoral fellowship to complete my Dphil at the University of Oxford. My research project at Oxford aimed to recover the ideas and careers of significant British Enlightenment women. I was then awarded a Postdoctoral SSHRC Fellowship based at the University of Toronto, and was also a Plumer Visiting Fellow at St. Anne's College, Oxford. My post-doc work focused on early antiquarian interest in women's history.

I joined Cardiff University in 2008. During my time at Cardiff, I have held visiting fellowships at Chawton House Library, Hampshire, the Huntington Library, California, and a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship. I have also led workshops and training as part of the Women in Book History Symposium at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. I have worked extensively with National Trust Houses, as well as private collections.

Working in manuscript and print history, one is constantly reminded of the fragility of our source material, and the importance of knowledge preservation. There is so much unique material in archives and libraries around the world, and so many original and important stories still to tell. 

Publications

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Teaching

At Cardiff I teach on modules across the curriculum, including literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, drama, and book history. I always try to introduce students to research areas and material that they haven't been exposed to before, whether that be working with rare books and manuscripts, or with understudied historical genres. 

I have led a number of Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP) initiatives in Special Collections and Archives. These awards have enabled current Cardiff undergraduates to have paid placements on my academic research projects over the summer months. They are an excellent opportunity for undergraduates to gain experience of larger research projects, and to gain invaluable experience about the processes and practicalities of daily research, as well as the dissemination of research outcomes. Here are a few blog posts from some of the students who undertook this work:

https://cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/curop-2/

https://cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/bigold-curop/

https://scolarcardiff.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/exploring-womens-libraries/

I have previously held lecturing posts at Jesus and St. Anne's Colleges at Oxford; at the University of Toronto; and have participated in Erasmus teaching exchanges at the University of Oslo and the University of Stuttgart.

Research interests

I have a number of upcoming and/or ongoing research projects:

1. A Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship (2019-2022) to complete a monograph and database on Women’s Libraries and Book Ownership, 1660-1820. A short article on this project can be found on the Trust's website here: https://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/research-fellowships/women%E2%80%99s-libraries-and-book-ownership-1660%E2%80%931820

The Early Modern Female Book Ownership blog has lots of information on single books with female provenance. I contributed a blog post here: https://earlymodernfemalebookownership.wordpress.com/2019/10/28/james-howells-lexicon-tetraglotton-1660/

In the course of researching women's libraries, I've also rediscovered libraries belonging to their servants. In Cardiff's Special Collections and Archives we found records for a Welsh servants' library from 1815 that includes Welsh-language texts (you can read about that find here). However, over 60 years earlier, c.1750, the first Duchess of Northumberland created an even larger library (131 titles) for the servants at Alnwick Castle, Northumberland (you can read about that library here). 

2. I am one of the section editors for the Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online (http://emco.swansea.ac.uk/home/)

3. I have also been researching and writing a joint biography of George Ballard (an antiquarian and historian of learned women) and Elizabeth Elstob (an early anglo-saxonist and one of the women Ballard 'rediscovered'). 

Supervision

My primary expertise are in the period 1600-1800, and I welcome enquiries from potential graduates who would like to pursue research in the following areas:

• history of the book;
• reading and reception studies;
• manuscript culture (including marginalia and epistolary studies);
• women's writing and women's  literary history;
• philosophy, religion and literature in the long eighteenth century;
• life-writing:
• dramatic literature, dance, and performance studies;

I have extensive experience in public and private libraries around the United Kingdom, USA, and Canada, and practical experience in collaborating with national institutions like the National Trust. 

I have also supported several successful applications for postgraduate funding through the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership, and I would be happy to hear from prospective PhD students who are seeking funding under this scheme or from other bodies for research in areas that connect to my expertise. 

Current supervision

Stephanie Clayton

Research student

Past projects

Current and previous PhD supervision includes:

• The Emotional and Gendered Importance of Letter Writing in the Long Eighteenth Century in the Epistolary Network of the Canning Family.
• Eighteenth-Century Patronage
• The life and writings of Hester Thrale Piozzi
• Remapping Milton: Place, Space and Influence, 1700-1800
• Untimely Aesthetics: Shakespeare, Anachronism, and Prescence