The book cover for Lincoln Readings, showing the battle of Lincoln in 1217.

Introducing Lincoln Readings of Texts, Materials, and Contexts: Supplementum to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources

The University’s Medieval Studies Research Group recently took over the editorship of  the peer-reviewed annual, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources (formerly the Journal of Medieval and Renaissance History, est. 1964).  To celebrate and showcase the diverse range of research that we do here on written, visual, and material sources, our first volume included contributions by nine members of University of Lincoln staff. We are delighted to report that this has now been published Open Access by ARC Humanities Press, thanks to the support of the University , especially Professor Stuart Humphries, and to the help of Claire Arrand at Lincoln Cathedral Archives: Lincoln Readings of Texts, Materials, and Contexts (oapen.org)

Edited by Dr Graham Barrett and Prof. Louise Wilkinson, Lincoln Readings of Texts, Materials, and Contexts: Supplementum to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, features peer-reviewed essays by nine Lincoln classicists, medievalists, and an early modernist. The essays cover topics including early doctrinal controversies, early Church councils, the Greek alphabet, disputes in thirteenth-century Rutland, the charters, letters, and seal of Lady Nicholaa de la Haye, castellan of Lincoln and sheriff, the proprietary queens of Jerusalem’s documents, the law and liturgy of trial by water in early medieval Iberia, a fourteenth-century aisled base-cruck building at Ketsby House Farm, and Mayflower materials in the Wren Library of Lincoln Cathedral.

The Lincoln-based contributors were: Drs Michael Wuk, Giustina Monti, Robert Portass (now Cambridge), Anais Waag (one of our Leverhulme ECRs), Graham Barrett (now Durham), and Profs  Mark Gardiner (with Jenne Pape), Anna Marie-Roos, Louise Wilkinson, and Jamie Wood (with Marta Szada).

The cover of the book, Lincoln Readings of Texts, Materials, and Contexts, showing the Battle of Lincoln in 1217.

Lincoln Student Secures PhD Placement at the British Library: Joining the Medieval and Renaissance Women Project

This October (2022), Paula Del Val Vales, a University of Lincoln History PhD student, is joining the British Library for a six-month-long PhD placement with their ‘Medieval and Renaissance Women Project’.

This new major project aims to digitise 80 manuscripts and 200 documents related to medieval and renaissance women from all over Europe. These include illuminated and finely decorated manuscripts, medical treatises and religious works (e.g., psalters and books of hours), as well as a variety of charters and documents concerning different aspects of women’s lives. This is a wide selection that showcases the various roles of women as patrons, readers, book-owners, collectors, and writers. The manuscripts and documents will be catalogued and made accessible to the wider public through the British Library website, contributing to enlarging our current knowledge on the history of medieval and renaissance women.

During the six months, Paula will catalogue several of the documents and manuscripts, write blog posts for the British Library, and promote this new and exciting project focused on women’s history; before re-joining the University of Lincoln to continue with her PhD thesis in History on “The Queen’s Household in the Thirteenth-Century: An Anglo-Iberian Comparative Study”, supervised by Prof. Louise Wilkinson and Dr Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo.

Well done, Paula! This is a wonderful achievement.

Award Success for Student-Led Project on Making Lincoln Cathedral’s Medieval Manuscripts Accessible

The Medieval Studies Research Group is delighted to announce that two students from the School of English and Journalism, Abigail Laycock and Elizabeth Egan, supervised by our own Dr Renee Ward and Mrs Claire Arrand, have been awarded the Dean’s Choice Award from the Dean of Lincoln Academy of Teaching and Learning (LALT), Dr Kate Strudwick, for their Undergraduate Research Opportunities Scheme (UROS) project, ‘Excavating the Archives: Making Lincoln Cathedral Library’s Middle English Manuscripts Accessible’. Over the summer, Lily and Abbie undertook research on the archive’s collection of manuscripts in or with Middle English texts and prepared materials (text and image) that will be housed on University Library’s Special Collections LibGuide as well as on the Lincoln Cathedral Library’s website, making the content available to both public and academic audiences. To read more about the project, please follow the link here. The award is a splendid achievement and reflects the University’s close relationship enjoyed by its staff and students with Lincoln Cathedral and its collections.