Born in Bologna in 1711, Laura Bassi was the first woman to take up a professorship in Europe and the second to earn a doctorate. Her extraordinary career as an academic spanned nearly five decades, for much of which she was a galvanizing figure for the scientific culture of eighteenth century Europe. Bassi’s admirers included the likes of Voltaire in France, who preferred Bassi’s academy to that of London’s, and Dorothea Erxleben in Germany, the first woman to earn a medical doctorate, who notably found inspiration in Bassi’s fierce struggle for equal opportunity for women. Bassi’s career culminated in her succession to the chair of physics (then known as natural philosophy) at the University of Bologna in 1776 – a role in which her husband, Giuseppe Veratti, was her assistant.
The Laura Bassi Scholarship was established by Editing Press in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed, within their disciplines. The scholarships are open to every discipline and are awarded three times per year: December, April, and August. The value of the scholarships are remitted through editorial assistance as follows:
Master’s candidates: $750
Doctoral candidates: $2,500
Junior academics: $500
These figures reflect the upper bracket of costs of editorial assistance for master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and academic journal articles, respectively. All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of full-time employment. There are no institutional, departmental, or national restrictions.
Deadlines
Winter 2021
- Deadline: 15 December 2021
- Results: 3 January 2022
Spring 2022
- Deadline: 27 March 2022
- Results: 20 April 2022
Summer 2022
- Deadline: 27 July 2022
- Results: 20 August 2022
In addition to the Laura Bassi Scholarship, the Bassi Foundation is also pleased to provide a small number of postdoctoral grants, the sizes of which vary by year.
Australian Early Medieval Association Gazette 