Student Scholarships: BAA Winchester and Hampshire Annual Conference, Deadline 25 April 2026

The British Archaeological Association has a limited number of student scholarships are available for their Winchester Conference (20–24 July 2026), covering the conference fee, four nights’ accommodation, and all included meals, refreshments, receptions, lectures, and site visits.

Following previous visits in 1845, 1893, and 1980, the BAA is delighted to return to Winchester for the fourth time in  2026. From its early days as Venta Bulgarum, Winchester developed into an important Anglo-Saxon centre under Alfred the Great and subsequently became a heartland of the tenth-century monastic reform. Site of crown-wearings, synods,  and parliaments, and home to major monastic houses and scriptoria, the royal treasury, pilgrimage sites, and a mint, it remained a major royal and ecclesiastical city—and so a centre of artistic production—through the post-Conquest period. In more recent times, Winchester has become one of the most extensively and systematically excavated cities in the UK  and remains replete with important medieval buildings and archaeological remains. The surrounding county of Hampshire is similarly rich with treasures from the Roman period as well as the medieval: royal, military, monastic, and parochial. 

Lectures will cover aspects of the city and county’s art, architecture and archaeology from late Antiquity through the early,  high, and late Middle Ages. It is anticipated that site visits in the city will take in the Cathedral and Close, the Westgate and the Castle, Wolvesey Palace, Winchester College, and the Hospital of St Cross, amongst others. Whilst much of the conference will be spent exploring Winchester itself, there are also plans to travel out into Hampshire for further site visits, including a half-day visit to Romsey Abbey, and an excursion to Portchester and the Meon Valley. 

Scholarships are awarded to those studying at postgraduate level and to those who have been awarded research degrees in these areas within the last two years. The scholarships are funded by the generosity of BAA members and the number awarded varies according to the funds available. The maximum number of scholarships to attend a BAA summer conference for any one individual is two. The deadline for applications is 25 April 2026.

How to apply: 

Email conferences@thebaa.org with:

• a brief CV
• at least one academic reference (it is the responsibility of the applicants to either send the academic reference with the application or to make sure their nominated referee sends it in)
• a brief statement on the reasons for wanting to attend the conference and how it might relate to your own research

Find out more about the conference scholarship here