23 students from 17 countriesNew MA Cohort Gets Started

19 October 2022

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

With the beginning of the winter semester, a new cohort of students has started studying the MA programme ‘Manuscript Cultures’ at the Graduate School of CSMC. The programme is composed equally of modules in the humanities and the natural sciences, which makes it unique in Germany.

This year, 23 out of 70 applicants were admitted to the MA programme ‘Manuscript Cultures’. The students come from China, Colombia, Germany, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Romania, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the UK. The disciplines represented in this group include African Studies, Art History, Ethiopian Studies, Greek Studies, Islamic Studies, Medieval and Modern History, Sinology, Thai Studies, Jewish Philosophy and Religion, and Turkish Studies.

The programme is unique in Germany insofar as it consists of modules in the humanities and the natural sciences in equal proportions. The modules in the humanities include, among other things, an instruction to the relevant fundamentals of codicology, paleography, textual criticism, and cataloging. The modules in the natural sciences cover the relevant basics in physics, chemistry, and biology, and provide an instruction to the theory and methods of scientific materials analysis of manuscripts.

‘The aim of the programme is to make it more common for the next generation of scholars to take a cross-disciplinary, holistic approach to manuscript research’, says Shervin Farridnejad, the Head of the Master’s programme. ‘Our students can benefit from looking beyond the boundaries of their respective disciplines and taking into account the materiality of written artefacts right from the start.’ For Shervin Farridnejad, it is the first year as Head of the programme. He has recently taken over from Alessandro Bausi, who had been in charge since its inauguration in 2017, when the programme started with just one student. Since then, he had contributed significantly to the steady growth and refinement of the course. 

The duration of the course is one year. More information on the contents, relevant application deadlines, and qualifying scholarships is available on the website of the programme.