CSMC News

30 June 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

I Have a Spell for That!

Manuscripts from the Wellcome Collection

Photo: Wellcome Collection

In West African manuscript cultures, written artefacts were produced to address all kinds of life problems, offering their owners relief if used correctly. PhD researcher Jannis Kostelnik investigates what these manuscripts can tell us today about the lives of their owners and colonial history.

27 June 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘Information about Learned Women is Hidden in Texts about Male Scholars’

Photo: Britta Frede

Britta Frede is the new guest professor of ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. In this interview, she shares insights into her search for traces of women’s roles within Islamic scholarly culture, as well as the challenges that make uncovering these hidden histories so difficult.

25 June 2025|CSMC News

Charting History: Documentary Follows the Mobile Lab to Venice

What untold stories lie within the very fabric of one of the world’s most famous maps? In early 2025, researchers from the Mobile Lab travelled to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice to study the renowned Fra Mauro Map up close. A captivating new short film documents their journey.

24 June 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

33 Metres of Buddhist Cosmos

Photo: © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Stiftung Humboldt Forum im Berliner Schloss / Martina Stoye

The Museum of Asian Art in Berlin is home to perhaps the most spectacular surviving ‘Traiphum’, a Thai leporello of Buddhist cosmology. CSMC alumnus Peera Panarut explores the rich stories of this manuscript together with Martina Stoye, curator of South and Southeast Asian Arts.

16 June 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Observing Mathematics in the Making

Thomas Harriot observing the Moon with a telescope. Painting by Rita Greer.

Photo: Rita Greer

Thomas Harriot studied the motion of falling objects independently of Galileo, discovered Snell’s law of refraction before Snell, pioneered interpolation before Newton, and invented binary before Leibniz. Stefano Farinella studies the notebooks of this remarkable and still remarkably unknown figure.

13 June 2025|CSMC News

Understanding Reading Practices

Photo: CSMC

Much of what we know today about everyday reading practices in Arabic writing cultures comes from so-called audition certificates. The CSMC has made these valuable documents accessible to researchers for the first time on an online platform. A new version now offers open access to over 5,000 sources.

10 June 2025|CSMC News

New Web Tool: Transcriptions and Annotations for Manuscript Research

Photo: CSMC

TAMAR, a new web tool providing transcriptions and visualisations of Biblia pauperum manuscripts, enhances access, research, and teaching. The tool can also be used for other research projects.

6 June 2025|CSMC News

CSMC Hosts Meeting of the Hanse University Alliance

Photo: CSMC

Representatives of the Hanse University Alliance (HAU) gathered in Hamburg on 5 and 6 June. The meeting kicked off at the CSMC.

5 June 2025|CSMC News

‘What Brought Us Together was Our Appreciation of the Totality of the Written Artefact’

The authors at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. From left to right: Joud, Michael, and Rawda.

Photo: CSMC

‘The Legal Document in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period’ was the title of a conference and PhD workshop that three members of the CSMC Graduate School attended in Copenhagen this month. During this event, they realised that nothing in this title can be taken for granted.

23 May 2025|CSMC News

Job Vacancies at UWA: Doctoral Researchers

Photo: CSMC

In 2026, the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts (UWA) will enter its second phase. We are now looking for new colleagues to join our team as doctoral researchers.

23 May 2025|CSMC News

Job Vacancies at UWA: Postdoctoral Researchers

Photo: CSMC

UWA is also seeking to hire postdoctoral and advanced postdoctoral researchers to pursue research projects that fit our overall comparative research profile. The deadline for applications is 22 June 2025.

22 May 2025|CSMC News

UWA Awarded Cluster of Excellence Status

Photo: CSMC

The Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts has succeeded in the main competition for funding from the German Research Foundation. UWA will thus continue its research until at least the end of 2032 – a significant milestone for written artefact research at the University of Hamburg.

21 May 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Hamburg’s Red City Book in the Artefact Lab

Photo: CSMC

It is an important piece of local Hamburg history: the Red City Book from the late 13th century is one of the key sources for understanding the city’s legal and commercial development in the Middle Ages. To gain insights into its history of production, it was brought to the Artefact Lab at the CSMC.

20 May 2025|CSMC News

Open Days at the Kerala Manuscript Preservation Centre in Thrissur

Photo: Olga Nowicka

On April 28 and 29, the Kerala Manuscript Preservation Centre in Thrissur hosted Open Days, offering visitors an opportunity to learn more about the ongoing preservation, digitisation, and cataloguing efforts carried out in the ‘Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives’ (DiPiKA) Project.

19 May 2025|CSMC News

Roberta Zollo Successfully Defends her PhD Dissertation

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Roberta Zollo on defending her doctoral dissertation and completing her PhD in Indonesian and Malay Studies! The viva voce examination took place on 19 May 2025.

16 May 2025|CSMC News

Yitz Landes Wins the J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award

Photo: Yitz Landes

We are pleased to announce the winner of this year’s J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award: Isaac (Yitz) Landes wins the prize for his outstanding thesis on ‘The Transmission of the Mishnah and the Spread of Rabbinic Judaism, 200 CE–1200 CE’.

13 May 2025|CSMC News

Exhibition Showcases Research Inside the Container Lab

Photo: Theresa Alappat

Why are the palm-leaf manuscripts of Southeast India so valuable, and what happens inside the Container Lab where CSMC researchers examine them on site? An exhibition at the French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) provides insights into the cultural and technical aspects of the project.

8 May 2025|CSMC News

The Matter of Writing

Photo: CSMC

At the Hamburg State and University Library (SUB) last week, CSMC researchers and Philip Döbler, Managing Director of the Hamburg-based company Leuchtturm1917, discussed the present and future of handwriting in the digital age. A particular focus was on the subject of ‘thinking by hand’ in notebooks.

7 May 2025|CSMC News

Manuscript Treasures from Afro-Eurasia

Photo: De Gruyter

The new volume of the SMC book series explores the complex web of spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional interactions that influenced the production and reception of manuscripts in the Mediterranean world from late Antiquity to the 15th century.

2 May 2025|CSMC News

Jenny Gabel Successfully Defends Her PhD Dissertation

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Jenny Gabel on defending her doctoral dissertation and completing her PhD in Computer Science! The viva voce examination took place on 28 April 2025.

25 April 2025|CSMC News

Taking Stock: DREAMSEA Completes Its First Project Phase

Photo: DREAMSEA

DREAMSEA, a large-scale project for the preservation and digitisation of Southeast Asian manuscripts, is about to embark on its next phase. A public event at the CSMC gave an overview of the initiative’s achievements and future prospects.

24 April 2025|CSMC News

Tsinghua University Delegation Visits CSMC

Photo: CSMC

Last week, the CSMC welcomed a delegation from the Research and Conservation Center for Unearthed Texts (RCCUT) at Tsinghua University, Beijing, one of the leading research hubs in East Asia for the study of ancient Chinese manuscripts.

23 April 2025|CSMC News

Patterns and the Visual Organisation of Written Artefacts

Kalpasutra. India (Gujarat), late 14th c. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Acc. no. 1997.133.

Photo: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The conventions that govern the production and use of written artefacts are often taken for granted. Yet they are essential to ensure that these artefacts can fulfil their role within a particular writing and reading culture. A new Occasional Paper focuses on the visual organisation of written artefacts.

16 April 2025|CSMC News

Tracing the Provenance of Tibetan Bon Manuscripts

Photo: CSMC

The Mobile Lab has returned from a measurement campaign at the University of Oslo Library. To open up new avenues for research into the materiality of Tibetan and Highland Asian manuscripts, the team conducted the first comprehensive and in-depth material characterisation of its kind.

10 April 2025|CSMC News

Girls’ Day and Boys’ Day at the CSMC

Photo: CSMC

On 3 April, girls and boys throughout Germany were able to get a taste of professions that stereotypically are reserved for the opposite gender. The CSMC took part in the format for the third time, providing insights into the world of transdisciplinary research on written artefacts.

7 April 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Writing Mechanics and the Evolution of Southeast Asian Scripts

Photo: Department of Culture of Bali Province

How does the physical interaction with the writing surface shape the act of writing itself, and how do scripts evolve to optimise the writing process? Malgorzata Grzelec and Laura Gallardo have joined forces to investigate the evolution of scripts that were historically written on palm leaves.

3 April 2025|CSMC News

Diana Lange Takes Up Professorship in Berlin

Photo: Diana Lange

Diana Lange is moving from the University of Hamburg to the Humboldt University of Berlin, where she will take up the professorship for the History and Cultures of Central Asia. At the CSMC, she has been leading a research project on the mapping of Tibet.

2 April 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

A Long Way Back

Photo: Roberta Zollo

How did so many objects from Indonesia end up in the collections of museums in Lower Saxony? Roberta Zollo, an alumna of the CSMC Graduate School, is part of a team that seeks to find an answer to this question. ‘We need to revise our understanding of German colonial history,’ she says.

1 April 2025|CSMC News

International Conference on Manuscript Cultures in the Caucasus

Photo: CSMC

Researchers from the CSMC and its partner institutions, the Matenadaran in Yerevan (Armenia) and the Kekelidze Center in Tbilisi (Georgia), came together for a major workshop to discuss their recent work on dating and provenancing manuscripts from the region and their plans for future collaboration.

21 March 2025|CSMC News

Material Choices in Written Artefacts

Liturgical book displayed on a book cradle by an Ethiopian orthodox priest. The unsupported sewing structure of the manuscript allows it to be opened at a wide angle. Lalibela, Monastery of Naʾakkʷǝto Laʾab.

Photo: Alan Davey

The production of each written artefact is connected to a series of decisions about which materials to choose and which techniques to use to craft them. A new Occasional Paper provides an overview of a dynamic new research field at the UWA Cluster of Excellence that investigates material choices.

19 March 2025|CSMC News

NLI and UWA Provide Remote Access to Archival Material

Photo: NLI

Together with the National Library of Israel (NLI), UWA has digitised the estates of important Jewish-German intellectuals. These archives as well as further material can now be accessed online remotely for the first time.

18 March 2025|CSMC News

Nadine Bregler Successfully Defends Her PhD Dissertation

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Nadine Bregler on defending her dissertation, thus completing her PhD in Sinology! The viva voce examination took place on 18 March 2025.

7 March 2025|CSMC News

CSMC Releases English-Chinese Glossary of Manuscriptology

Photo: CSMC

To facilitate communication between researchers East and West, a team of experts at the CSMC and partner institutions has published a glossary providing Chinese translations of terms used in manuscriptology and related fields.

28 February 2025|CSMC News

CSMC Researchers Analyse Early Qur’anic Manuscripts in Gotha

Mobile Lab field trip to the Gotha Research Library

Photo: CSMC

A team from the Mobile Lab returns today from a two-week field trip at the Gotha Research Library where they examined early Qur’anic manuscripts in the collection to shed new light on the history of these objects.

20 February 2025|CSMC News

New Edition of the Gotha Manuscript Talks

Photo: Gotha Research Library

This spring, the Gotha Manuscript Talks, a series organised by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with Konrad Hirschler at the CSMC, returns with lectures on four Wednesday evenings from 5 March to 7 May.

14 February 2025|CSMC News

Shifting Scripts

Photo: Mahdi Moslehi

Talks, panel discussions, and workshops: This April, a multifaceted event jointly organised by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G) and the CSMC explores the intersections of Arabic and Persian graphic design with cultural, political, and artistic narratives.

10 February 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘We Exist in the Gaps Between these Fixed Identities’

Photo: Haus für Poesie, Natalia Reich

In the medium of writing, language takes on a visual, rule-based form. Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson’s calligraphic art defies these rules and questions the boundaries between different kinds of script – and with them the self-image of their users. In early 2025, she is Artist in Residence at the CSMC.

6 February 2025|CSMC News

Dmitry Bondarev Named Professor of African Studies

Photo: UHH/Menz

Dmitry Bondarev has earned an international reputation for his expertise in West African manuscript cultures. The University of Hamburg has now named him Professor of African Studies.

5 February 2025|CSMC News

The Container Lab on the Movie Screen

A new film takes a look behind the scenes of an extraordinary scientific endeavour: ‘Our Container Lab. Mission 1: Palm Leaf Profilers’ follows the laboratory containers and our researchers on their journey to India to the historic manuscripts of Tamil Nadu.

4 February 2025|CSMC News

CSMC and École nationale des chartes Agree on Partnership

Wing of the Richelieu quadrilateral on the rue des Petits-Champs side, housing the library of the École nationale des chartes.

Photo: Adelphilos

The CSMC has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the École nationale des chartes in France. The agreement marks the beginning of a promising cooperation with a leading institution in the field of preservation of written artefacts.

3 February 2025|CSMC News

What’s it Like to Do a PhD on Written Artefacts?

In a new video, two of our current doctoral researchers, Malgorzata Grzelec and Daniel Kudo Tovar, give insights into their work on paper structures and Peruvian music archives, respectively, and talk about life in Hamburg and their future plans.

30 January 2025|CSMC News

The Materiality of Forgery

Photo: CSMC

In 2022, a plagiarism scandal involving the forensic scientist Matthias Graw caused a stir. Graw was accused of plagiarising his doctoral thesis from a book that turned out to be a forgery. The CSMC’s Artefact Lab was involved in the analyses that led to his exoneration. Now the case is being heard in court.

29 January 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Challenge of Making Imperfect Paper

Photo: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny/ Malgorzata Grzelec

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Malgorzata Grzelec want to understand the different technologies that have traditionally been used to produce arguably the most complex of all writing supports: paper. For this purpose, they are working together with the papermaker Gangolf Ulbricht.

27 January 2025|CSMC News

New Professors at UWA

Photo: Henning/Kara/Schneider/Weiß

Four professors are joining the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts, bringing expertise in four very different research areas: Barbara Henning in Turkish Studies, Cem Kara in Alevi Studies, Julia Schneider in Chinese Studies, and Agnes Weiß in Microbiology.

23 January 2025|CSMC News

Ann Lauren Osthof Successfully Defends Her PhD Dissertation

Photo: CSMC

Congratulations to Ann Lauren Osthof on defending her dissertation, thus completing her PhD in Archaeology! The viva voce examination took place on 22 January 2025.

20 January 2025|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Second Digital Life of a Guestbook

Photo: Sebastian Schirrmeister

The Jerusalem guestbook of Miryam and Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl is a small object of only 200 pages – yet it opens doors to more stories than a single researcher can uncover. Sebastian Schirrmeister wants to use new digital techniques to explore this microcosm and link it to larger bodies of knowledge.

16 January 2025|CSMC News

TV Documentary Shows Investigations into the ‘Mummy Book’

Photo: ORF

A TV documentary spotlights the spectacular case of the ‘Mummy Book’ – the supposedly oldest codex fragment in the world, found in Graz in 2023. It also shows the investigations of the object at the CSMC, which play a crucial role in clarifying the open questions surrounding the ‘Mummy Book’.

13 January 2025|CSMC News

Mobile Lab Team Back from Italian Journey

Photo: CSMC

For our Mobile Lab, the turn of the year 2024/2025 was marked by a tour de force through northern Italy. In changing formation, the team spent several weeks in Venice and Verona, examining a series of spectacular objects in famous museums and libraries.

9 January 2025|CSMC News

Genealogical Manuscripts in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Photo: De Gruyter

Across time and space, and for a range of reasons and motives, humans have been establishing practices and media for cultivating and presenting knowledge about past and present kin. The new volume of SMC is about one of the most important material manifestations of this knowledge: handwritten artefacts.

8 January 2025|CSMC News

Mysterious Damage: Valuable Manuscripts from Kairouan, Tunisia Analysed in Hamburg

Photo: CSMC

Numerous artefacts from one of the world’s most important collections of Islamic manuscripts are affected by an unusual form of degradation. In late 2024, a delegation from Tunisia brought 15 objects to Hamburg and analysed them together with the experts of the Artefact Lab at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC). Tarek Baccouche...

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