Research project
P. J. Cosijn Research Fellowship
The P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship is an initiative to give promising BA and MA students of Leiden University with an interest in Anglo-Saxon Studies the opportunity to conduct research on Old English language and literature. The Cosijn Fellowships are part of the ERC-funded project ‘Early Medieval English in Nineteenth-Century Europe [EMERGENCE]’. Cosijn Fellows can work on specific case studies and/or contribute more generally to the activities of the EMERGENCE project.
- Duration
- 2024 - 2028
- Contact
- Thijs Porck
- Funding
-
European Research Council (ERC)
The P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship celebrates the work of Peter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899), Leiden University’s first Professor of Old Germanic and Anglo-Saxon. Cosijn devoted his life to the study and teaching of language, as a school teacher, lexicographer, editor of various journals, linguist and university professor. His works include text-books for Dutch language teaching, an edition of the Old Dutch psalms, an Old English dialect grammar (Altwestsächsische Grammatik [1883-1888]) and a collection of textual notes on Beowulf (Aanteekeningen op den Béowulf [1892]) . In the year of his untimely death, he was rector magnificus of Leiden University and held a public lecture on Anglo-Saxon poetry (Over Angelsaksische poëzie).
Internationally renowned as a critical scholar of Old English, Cosijn was also a devoted teacher who did his utmost to support his students. As such, both his work and attitude are the inspiration for the P.J. Cosijn Research Fellowship.
Vooreerst omdat ik de vaste overtuiging heb, dat er van U iets te maken is en ik het als mijn plicht beschouw hen, die de wetenschap liefhebben en daarvoor ijverig werken, den weg te wijzen die mij de ware voorkomt. Ik word daar niet voor betaald. Maar een leraar aan een Universiteit is daartoe zedelijk verplicht.
[First, because I am firmly convinced that something can be made of you and I consider it my duty to show those, who love scholarship and work diligently for it, the way that seems to me to be the true one. I do not get paid for this. But a teacher at a University is morally obliged to do so.]
[P. J. Cosijn to a student, 8 August, 1880]
The P. J. Cosijn Research Fellowship can be combined with the course ‘Case Based Research’ of the Research Master Arts, Literature and Society.
Cosijn Fellows
- 2024: Suzanne Klare, “Beowulf in Dutch Children’s Literature”
- 2024–2025: Adrie Huijbrechts, “Alfred the Great in Nineteenth-Century Germany”
Related research
Main project: Early Medieval English in 19th-Century Europe (EMERGENCE)
Subprojects:
- Navigating Networks through Scholarly Correspondence: Epistolary Exchange of Knowledge on Early Medieval English
- P. J. Cosijn Research Fellowship
- Claiming Beowulf as a European Epic: Non-Anglophone Appropriations of an Old English Poem
- Cædmon, Cynewulf and the Continent: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Christianity in 19th-century Europe