The Bayly Prize was established by friends and colleagues to mark the outstanding contribution of Professor Sir Christopher Bayly FBA to the study of world history and that of Asia in particular. It is an £2500 award for a distinguished thesis in an Asian subject falling within the scope of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society or of Modern Asian Studies. The thesis must have been examined and approved for the PhD degree at a British University in the year preceding entry to the competition. It was first awarded in 2018 and has been awarded annually since.

The winners have been:

• 2018 - Johannes Lotze (University of Manchester) for the thesis, Translation of Empire: Mongol Legacy, Language Policy, and the Early Ming World Order, 1368-1453.
• 2019 - Lexi (Alexandra) Stadlen (London School of Economics) for the thesis, Weaving lives from Violence: Possibility and Change for Muslim Women in West Bengal.
• 2020 - Liana Chase (School of Oriental and African Studies) for the thesis, Healing ‘Heart-Minds’: Disaster, Care, and Global Mental Health in Nepal’s Himalayan Foothills.
• 2021 - Mallika Leuzinger (University College, London) for the thesis, Dwelling in Photography: Intimacy, Amateurism and the Camera in South Asia.
• 2022 - Sonia Wigh (University of Exeter) for the thesis, The Body of Words: A social history of sex and the body in early modern South Asia.
• 2023 - Thomas Barrett (University of Oxford) for the thesis, Foreigners and the Making of the Chinese Diplomat.

There are administrative documents, invitations, publicity and photographs from the award events.

The Royal Asiatic Society has irregularly sponsored research fellows. This material contains correspondence and administrative papers connected to this. At present there is only archival material for Professor Om Prakesh Kejariwal.

The Society's collections have always been open for researchers to come and use. This in turn has generated additional information concerning the collections both formally through articles and research papers and informally through correspondence. The Society has also sought to promote its collections through both events and articles. The papers within this series concern these activities. Though much of the administration of these activities does not create items of archival value, the ones kept were deemed to be of use for future researchers.

This archive consists of correspondence, documentation, reports and allied material concerned with the loans of the Collections of the Society to other institutions predominantly for exhibition but sometimes for more long-term care. The Society has not kept comprehensive records throughout its history. Further information pertaining to the Loans from the Society can be found in the Minutes for the meetings of the Council and Library Committees. Loans continue in the life of the Society. More recent ones are held in the Society's records management system and will be transferred to the archive in due course.

This archive consists of correspondence, documentation, reports and allied material concerned with the conservation of the Collections of the Society. The Society has not kept comprehensive records throughout its history. Further information pertaining to the conservation of the collections may be found in the Minutes for the meetings of the Council and Library Committees. Conservation continues in the life of the Society. More recent records are held in the Society's records management system and will be transferred to the archive in due course.

This catalogue contains documents created in the administration of the Collections of the Society which have not been covered by the other Collections catalogues, including articles written about the history of the Library and its collections, reports and strategy documents, administrative correspondence, journal and periodical exchanges and job descriptions.