CSMC News (2021)

The fifth edition of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures’ series Artefact of the Month (AoM), authored by Alexander Weinstock, has been published. Titled Traces of a Scandal. The Prompt Book for Friedrich Ludwig Schröder’s Othello Adaptation in Hamburg, the article describes the case of the opening night of Shakespear's Othello  in...

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures welcomes back Dr Imre Galambos as a remote Petra Kappert Fellows. Following a first stay in 2021, Dr Galambos will be with CSMC for a three-months period from May to July 2021. A specialist in the history of Chinese writing, Chinese manuscripts and epigraphy, and Dunhuang studies, he will focus on the...

CSMC and the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ congratulate visiting professor Jost Gippert  on the new ERC Advanced Grant for the project titled ‘The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories (DeLiCaTe)’.
The development of alphabetic scripts in the context of Christianisation in the early 5th century CE meant the...

Thanks to the efforts of Professor Dr Jost Gippert, CSMC could once again extend its international cooperations. A MoU has been signed with the renowned Armenian 'Matenadaran' Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts Foundation. This partnership opens new opportunities for joint activities in the fields of codicology, preservation...

The fourth edition of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures’ series Artefact of the Month (AoM), authored by Kim Young and Barbara Wall, has been published. Titled The 612 Day-Long Odyssey: A Transcription of 'The Journey to the West' in Colonial Korea, it follows the question of what might have motivated an unknown scribe to copy out a...

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures is pleased to announce the establishment of a new committee to advise researchers on all matters pertaining to the ethical conduct of research (for instance on how to handle non-publishable data). At present, the committee consists of Cécile Michel, Ralf Möller, and Jost Gippert who can be contacted...

CSMC welcomes back three Petra Kappert Fellows for a second stay.

William G. Boltz and Ulfat Abdurasulov will join the Centre from April to June, albeit remotely. Professor William G. Boltz specialises in the origin and early development of the Chinese writing system, on the philological analysis and textual criticism of Classical Chinese texts and...

The research and conservation work of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Nepal has been the subject of a number of articles in Nepalese publications.

In his piece entitled ‘Tri.Vi. Kendrīya Pustakālaya Pramukhakā Rupamā Tīna Varsa’ (‘Three Years as Chief in the TU Central Library’), IP Adhikari, former Chief of the Tribhuvan...

The first five meetings of the seminar series Forms of manuscripts and their description: Rolled up Manuscripts have been scheduled on the following dates. The meetings will start with an introduction and subsequent sessions on rolled up manuscripts:

Monday, 12 April 2021, 2.30-4.00 PM CET

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures congratulates Darya Ogorodnikova on successfully defending her doctoral dissertation titled Soninke Ajami manuscripts in Islamic education: a reconstruction of scribal practices summa cum laude.

The defense took place on 18 March 2021.

In the final installment of our series of video interviews,  Dr Bidur Bhattarai, Project Coordinator of ‘Preserving the Written Cultural Heritage of Nepal’,  speaks on the project’s manuscript preservation efforts, supervising work in Nepal from Hamburg, and the fundamental difference between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’.

Date of recording: 19 October 2020

The organisers of the ICDAR 2021 Workshop on Computational Paleography welcome submissions of original, previously unpublished work that is relevant to the Topics of this workshop, including work on on-going projects presenting preliminary, mid-term or pilot data. Applicants may choose between two submission formats:

The third edition of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures’ series Artefact of the Month (AoM), authored by Sophia Victoria Krebs of the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, has been published. Titled ‘All is Fair in (Love) Letters and War – An Unusual Letter from Ludwig Börne to Jeanette Wohl’, it takes a look at how being displeased could...

The various projects at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures yield a wealth of research data from both the humanities and the natural sciences, ranging from digital images and 3D scans of written artefacts to the raw data and results of material analyses and multispectral imaging. CSMC strives to make as much data as possible available...

A new Visual-Pattern Detector (VPD) has been developed by Dr Hussein Adnan Mohammed as part of his research work into pattern recognition and computational writing analysis. Dr Mohammed’s VPD is a software tool that can be used to automatically recognise and allocate visual patterns (such as words, drawings and seals) in digitised manuscripts. The...

In the penultimate episode, Professor Dr Jan van der Putten, Head of ‘Digital Repository of Endangered and Affected Manuscripts in Southeast Asia (DREAMSEA)’, shares his thoughts on dealing with lockdowns, improving the cooperation with universities across Southeast Asia, and the challenge of coordinating American, Asian, and European time zones.

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On 17 February 2021 at 6 PM CET, Roberta Zollo, PhD student at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, joins Dr Jeanette Kokott, curator at the museum MARKK, in a virtual discussion about the process of setting up the exhibition ‘The Power of Writing: The Manuscript Culture of the Toba Batak from North Sumatra’.

To attend, please use the...

The second edition of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures’ series Artefact of the Month (AoM) has been published. Titled ‘Efficacy is in the prayer, not in the image. Or vice versa?’ and authored by Dr Sabiha Göloğlu of the University of Vienna, this edition takes a look at the extraordinary religious images in an eighteenth-century...

Episode seven of our new video series Working from Home Around the World is online. Dr Merryl Rebello, Coordinator of the Graduate School at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, on online teaching, how to not leave anyone behind in group discussions, and where the doctoral students actually work from right now.

Date of...

Professor Cécile Michel’s work on ancient cuneiform clay tablets features in a BBC article on the emergence of the well-documented role of women in ancient Assyrian merchant society from 1900 to 1850 BC. Read the full article here.

In her 2020 book Women of Assur and Kanesh: Texts from the Archives of Assyrian Merchants, Professor Michel, Head of...

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures is excited to partner with the Book and the Silk Roads / Old Books New Science Lab (University of Toronto, Canada) and the EFEO (École Française d’Extrême-Orient, Pondicherry, India) to support the preservation and study of palm-leaf manuscripts in Central Kerala, India. Starting in February 2021...

Episode six of our new video series Working from Home Around the World is online. In this episode, Professor Dr Kaja Harter-Uibopuu, Co-Spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ and Spokesperson of Research Field B, speaks on staying in contact virtually, plans for next year, and travel restrictions opening up time...

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures has added a new project to its ‘Cultural Heritage’ section. Here, CSMC brings together projects focusing on the ‘heritage’ meaning of written artefacts, i.e. the need for preservation, the identity-defining role of written artefacts, and the transformation of written heritage over times so that it...

The focus of the new issue no. 14 of CSMC’s journal 'manuscript cultures' is the written heritage of the Batak, a large ethnic group from North Sumatra, Indonesia. The issue, edited by Jan van der Putten und Roberta Zollo, is a catalogue of two parallel exhibitions that were held in Hamburg in 2020. It describes various Batak manuscripts and other...

The Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) cordially invites you to the three-day (online) workshop titled 'History, Art and Epic in Medieval Manuscripts'.

The workshop will be held at the following dates:

Tuesday, 19 January 2021, 02:00-04:00 pm CET
Wednesday, 20 January 2021, 02:00-04:00 pm CET
Friday, 22 January 2021, 04:00-06:00 pm...

The fifth part of our new video series Working from Home Around the World is online. In this episode, Peera Panarut, Research Associate at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’, talks about the impact of restricted access to manuscripts, digitisation efforts in the field of Thai philology, and the role of online teaching.

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Please note that due to changes in the registration process for the virtual lecture series ‘Maps and Colours’, participants now receive information on how to attend the lectures on Zoom via email using this registration form. Registration is only required once and the link you receive upon registration will be valid for the remaining lectures. Go...