Nadine Bregler Successfully Defends Her PhD Dissertation

18 March 2025

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.

Nadine Bregler wrote her dissertation on Collecting Literary Works: Types of Medieval Chinese Multiple-Text Manuscripts (MTMs) from Dunhuang (9th and 10th centuries). Multiple-Text Manuscripts are collections of various literary texts bound together in a single manuscript. The study aims to understand why these manuscripts were created and how they were used by examining different types of texts they contain. These texts include transformation texts, rhapsodies, poems, children’s educational material, and other literary works. By analysing the manuscripts, the dissertation uncovers the reasons behind the selection, compilation, and arrangement of texts in these collections. To do this, it considers various factors such as the physical features of the manuscripts (like the handwriting, text layout, and titles), the people involved in producing them, and the institutions that might have commissioned them.

The work was supervised by Michael Friedrich.