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.