Professor Angela Esterhammer (English) is one of six University of Toronto professors awarded Chancellor Jackman 6-month Faculty Research Fellowships in the Humanities for 2025-26.
Her project, John Galt and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Economy, will analyze the cultural transformations of the post-Napoleonic era through a focus on the Scottish-born writer and entrepreneur John Galt (1779–1839).
Recipients of the fellowship are tenured faculty at U of T, and each six-month Faculty Research Fellow receives a half-year leave from the normal teaching and administrative duties to undertake research (including travel) on their project.
“I’m honoured to receive this fellowship and grateful for the opportunity to pursue my research as part of the JHI community, says Professor Angela Esterhammer. “John Galt’s works have a lot to tell us about the way authorship and reading habits were evolving in the early nineteenth century. I’m excited to explore his experiments with genre and media, his hybrid forms of history and fiction, and his expansive geographies – including his career in Canada.”
Esterhammer was selected for her record of excellence in research and for the merit of her proposal. Six-month fellows are invited to participate in the intellectual life of the JHI in the year following their fellowship, often by contributing a short talk to the JHI’s YouTube channel.
“Professor Esterhammer’s research is a shining example of how our faculty members are world leaders in advancing not only the study of literature but also our understandings of cultural history and communication,” says Professor Robert McGill, Acting Chair of the Department of English. “I’m delighted that her excellence has been recognized with a Jackman Humanities Institute Fellowship, and I’m excited by the opportunity that it affords her to further her remarkable work.”