Announcing the J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award 2025

10 November 2025

Photo: J.P. Gumbert

We are delighted to invite nominations for the J. P. Gumbert Dissertation Award 2025. This award honours the best doctoral thesis in any field related to the study of manuscripts and other written artefacts, defended between 1 September 2024 and 31 December 2025.

Eligible dissertations may focus on any period or region and can come from diverse disciplines such as art history, history, codicology, epigraphy, material sciences, palaeography, or philology. The winner will receive prize money of 5,000 EUR and a fellowship for a research stay at CSMC.

The J. P. Gumbert Dissertation Award was first launched in 2021. Last year’s recipient was Isaac (Yitz) Landes, who wonthe prize for his outstanding thesis on ‘The Transmission of the Mishnah and the Spread of Rabbinic Judaism, 200 CE–1200 CE’.

This award commemorates Johan Peter Gumbert (1936–2016), Professor and Professor Emeritus of Western Palaeography and Codicology at Leiden University, and a renowned expert on Latin and Dutch manuscripts. Professor Gumbert was a frequent guest at the University of Hamburg and contributed significantly to the CSMC and the Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies (COMSt) Network from their inception.

Further details on eligibility, the nomination process, and conditions of the award can be found here:

• J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award Announcement (PDF)

The deadline for nominations is Friday, 6 February 2026, 12:00 pm CET.