Like its sister organisation, the Royal Society, the British Academy is so venerable and established that it can manage just fine with a name abbreviated to the point of being cryptic. As it happens, they both do have longer official names: The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical and Philological Studies. One is the most distinguished association of British scientists, the other of British scholars in the Humanities, and to be a Fellow of either one is a signal honour. Both bodies were for many years neighbours of MHRA, in that we held functions and did some business at 1 Carlton House Terrace, London: the Royal Society occupies numbers 6 to 9, with the British Academy just next door at numbers 10 and 11.

The Academy elects 50 to 60 Fellows each year, not counting foreign corresponding members, but because it covers so many bases, the number in any one discipline is very much smaller. In 2026, just four modern linguists were elected. We congratulate the Hispanist Kirsty Hooper and the French film and literature critic James Williams. But perhaps we can be forgiven for drawing particular attention to:

  • Susan Harrow, Ashley Watkins Chair of French Language and Literature, University of Bristol, the General Editor of our Legenda imprint, and
  • Carolin Duttlinger, Professor of German Literature and Culture, University of Oxford, and Ockenden Fellow in German, Wadham College Oxford, the chair of Legenda's Visual Culture series.

Our warmest congratulations to Carolin and Susan. Altogether four of Legenda's series editors are now Fellows of the British Academy, with the others being Simon Gilson (elected 2022) and Wen-chin Ouyang (2018). Ritchie Robertson (elected 2004) also deserves mention here, since he served as editor of Germanic Literatures from its inception right up to last year. Legenda's founder, Malcolm Bowie, was elected in 1993 just before the enterprise got going.

full news feed • subscribe via RSS