The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group

By Mathilde Mioche

The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) is a collective of eight postgraduate students and early-career researchers who bonded in Oxford over their passion for medieval manuscripts. We host a seminar series through which we hope to gather a community of emerging scholars, from the University of Oxford and beyond, around the study of medieval books and the art of illumination.

Starting in Hilary Term 2024, OMMG seminars will take place twice monthly on Friday afternoons. We will discuss the most exciting recent research; share our own projects and ideas in a supportive environment; learn from lectures and tutorials given by experienced colleagues; and examine medieval manuscripts together during library visits.

By promoting exchange between scholars with diverse specialisms and different levels of experience, OMMG aims to turn the study of medieval books and illuminations into a more collaborative pursuit. We know that working with manuscripts is often a solitary business, where knowledge is acquired over silent and cautious one-on-one meetings with a delicate object. We want to share the wonder we experience before the material, visual and textual complexity of illuminated codices, as well as the interrogations or frustrations we have as we encounter obstacles in our research. The OMMG seminar series will provide manuscript enthusiasts with a stimulating platform for learning practical and analytical skills from peers as well as experts. We would love you to join us!

To subscribe to our mailing list, participate in library visits, propose a presentation of your research for work-in-progress meetings, or submit any queries, please write to: Elena Lichmanova.

Programme for MT 2024 (Fridays, 5pm, Merton College)

Week 1 (18 Oct, 3pm, Weston Library)  Andrew Honey | Bodleian Library: Cataloguing Medieval Bookbindings at the Bodleian: Manuscripts from Reading Abbey as a case study. Limited places, write to the email below by 16/10/2024 

Week 3                       Work in Progress Meeting Hawkins Room
1 November               We are still accepting applications. If you would like to present your work in progress and receive our feedback, write to the email above by 28/10/2024

Week 4                       Reading Group: Audience and the Senses
8 November               K. Rudy, ‘Introduction’, Touching Parchment: How Medieval
ONLINE                       Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts (vol. 2, 2024)
Write to the email    E. Duffy, ‘Ch. 1. A Book for Lay People’, Marking the Hours: 
above to join             English People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570 (2008)

Week 5                       The New College Library Visit
15 November            Study and Discussion of Illuminated Manuscripts
                                   Limited places, write to the email above by 8/11/2024

Week 7                       Eleanor Jackson | British Library
29 November            Medieval Women in Their Own Words: 
Mure Room                Curating the British Library Exhibition 

Week 9                       Bonus: Casual trip to see the ‘Medieval Women in Their 
14 December             Own Words’ exhibition at the British Library together
Saturday noon           Write to the email above to join

About Us

Irina Boeru is a third-year DPhil student with a background in Medieval and Modern Languages and Medieval Studies. Her research analyses travel narratives in French and Latin illuminated manuscripts, specifically chronicles of the fifteenth-century conquest of the Canary Islands.

Fergus Bovill graduated with a BA in History of Art from the University of York. He is currently pursuing an MSt in Medieval Studies, with a dissertation on the assemblage of medieval manuscript cuttings into albums by nineteenth-century bibliophiles and connoisseurs.

Charly Driscoll completed an MSc in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh and is now studying for a DPhil in Medieval English. Her project investigates how the material features of medieval manuscripts reveal their individual histories.

Elena Lichmanova is a third-year DPhil student with a background in History of Art and Medieval Studies. Her research examines the origins and early history of marginalia in medieval manuscripts, focusing on illuminated English Psalters of the thirteenth century.

Mathilde Mioche completed an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture with a dissertation on illuminated Insular Gospels. She is currently preparing a doctoral project on the formal and medial mutations of the Dance of Death since its emergence in the fifteenth century.

Ana de Oliveira Dias is a historian of early medieval visual and intellectual culture with a specialisation in manuscript studies. She received a PhD in Medieval History from Durham University in 2019 and is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the project Crafting Documents, c. 500—c. 800 CE at the University of Oxford.

Celeste Pan is a third-year DPhil student with a background in English and Medieval Studies. Her research considers the production of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in medieval northern Europe, specifically a group of liturgical Bibles from the Rheno-Mosan region.

Klara Zhao is a first-year MPhil student in Egyptology preparing a dissertation inspired by Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists. She developed a special interest in medieval French poetry during her BA in French and Linguistics, which she continues to nurture.

Image: Saint Augustine teaching. Paris, Bibl. Mazarine, MS 616, fol. 1r.