Slater Fellowship

The Slater Fellowship is provided by University College and offers the post holder full board and accommodation for one University term and membership of University College’s Senior Common Room.

To be eligible for the post, applicants must hold a senior position at another University and have research interests that fall within the scope of IMEMS.

Current Fellow(s)

Professor Mary Watt

(12 January - 20 March 2026)

Professor Watt holds a Ph.D. in Italian Studies and a J.D., both from the University of Toronto.  Her research examines medieval and early modern Italian literature and culture, and Dante’s Divine Comedy in particular. Watt has twice been appointed as a Goggio Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto and is the author of The Cross that Dante Bears: Pilgrimage, Crusade, and the Cruciform Church in the Divine Comedy (2005); Dante, Columbus and the Prophetic Tradition: Spiritual Imperialism in the Italian Imagination (2017); and Dante’s Golden Legend: Auto-hagiography in the Divine Comedy (2021). 

As a Slater Fellow, Mary will continue work on her current book project, with special attention to chapter 3, “We Are All Pilgrims Who Seek Italy,” in which she examines the transformation of pilgrimage during the Grand Tour era, when European visitors reinterpreted traditional religious experiences through their engagement with Italian poetry, art, and culture. Working closely with the Wharton Papers will enhance the comparative dimensions of her analysis, especially when juxtaposed with the writings of Ann Flaxman (wife of Wedgwood artist John Flaxman) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, both of whom rejected traditional religious paradigms in favor of more modern, secular interpretations of Rome.