Research Activities

Research is undertaken by curatorial staff for exhibitions, conference papers and publications - both scholarly and general - as well as by Research Fellows, interns and doctoral students.

The Museum has a long-running Research Fellowship programme with a variety of annual short- and long- term institutionallyfunded opportunities focusing on the Museum’s collections and subject matter.

The Museum also sponsors doctoral research and holds an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership as part of the Thames Consortium (with the National Archives and the National Portrait Gallery).

Finally, we have a research internship programme which provides an opportunity for doctoral students to spend 5 weeks at the Museum researching an aspect of our collections.

In 1999 the Museum instigated the development of an online maritime history journal, the Journal for Maritime Research (JMR), now published with Taylor and Francis. The Journal publishes the latest research in maritime history and is edited in-house at the Museum.

In terms of research projects, the Museum has recently been awarded an AHRC Network grant on Joseph Banks: Science, Culture and the Remaking of the Indo-Pacific World in collaboration with University College London, the Royal Society, the National Portrait Gallery, the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Recent completed research projects have included the Leverhulme-funded project on victualling the Navy with the University of Greenwich and the AHRC-funded major research project researching the Board of Longitude in collaboration with the University of Cambridge.