Research Fellow; Early Modern Spanish Maritime History

Organisation/Company UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON Research Field History Philosophy Religious sciences Researcher Profile Recognised Researcher (R2) First Stage Researcher (R1) Final date to receive applications 12 Oct 2026 - 00:00 (UTC) Country United Kingdom Type of Contract Other Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure?

No

The University of Southampton is seeking to appoint a postdoctoral Research Fellow to join the European Research Council-funded project Uncharted Maritime Worlds (UMW):
An Integrated Digital History of Seaborne Trade from European Archives, led by Professor Craig Lambert.

Uncharted Maritime Worlds is a major European Research Council project investigating the development of seaborne trade, shipping and maritime networks from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It will bring together large quantities of previously fragmented archival evidence from across Europe to reconstruct patterns of maritime activity and develop new ways of analysing the people, ships, ports and trading networks that connected the early modern world.

The Research Fellow will take primary responsibility for identifying, collecting and analysing evidence from Spanish archives relating to maritime trade, shipping and overseas commerce between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. You will undertake extensive archival research in Spain, identify and transcribe early modern Spanish manuscript sources, and extract and structure historical information for incorporation into the project's integrated digital database. You will work closely with other members of the UMW team to integrate Spanish evidence with archival data collected elsewhere in Europe and contribute to the project's comparative historical research.

You will have a PhD (or equivalent) in History or a closely related discipline and research expertise in early modern Spain and/or the Spanish Atlantic, maritime or commercial history. Excellent written and spoken Spanish and English, advanced ability to read sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Spanish handwriting, and experience of conducting research in Spanish archives are essential. You will also have experience of extracting and analysing historical information from archival sources and working with historical datasets, databases, or digital humanities methods.

You will join an interdisciplinary research team of historians and digital specialists and will have opportunities to develop your own research and publications within the wider aims of the project, as well as contributing to collaborative publications, conferences, digital resources and other UMW outputs. The position will involve periods of archival research in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.

The post will be based in History in the School of Humanities at the University of Southampton.