CSMC News

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...

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|CSMC News

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|CSMC News

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|CSMC News

‘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.

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