Abande Mohammed Shettima has passed his viva voce examination, thus completing his PhD in African Languages and Linguistics.

Starting in July, an exhibition on the ‘Written Treasures of Hamburg’ will show highlights from the holdings of the Hamburg State Library, demonstrating how research at CSMC employs individual objects to develop overarching approaches to understanding written artefacts of all eras and places.

At the Bodleian Library in Oxford, two members of the Cluster made a remarkable find: written on the pages of a miniature Qur’an, they found an encrypted message from the 16th century. Patiently, they decoded the encrypted text. Yet, the solution of this puzzle confronted them with many new ones.