Jake Benson and Eugene Matanky Win J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award

2 April 2026

Photo: Jake Benson/Eugene Matanky

The award for the best dissertation on any aspect of manuscript studies goes to two researchers this year: Jake Benson and Eugene Matanky both convinced the jury with their works in Persian Studies and Jewish Philosophy, respectively.

Jake Benson, who did his PhD in Persian Studies at Leiden University, wrote his dissertation on paper marbling, called abrī (clouding) in Persian, which emerged during an initial ‘first wave’ in the long sixteenth century. Marblers dispersed colours on liquid surfaces, sometimes manipulated them, then carefully placed sheets of paper over top to capture the floating meandering pebble, swirled, or simple bisected droplet motif monotype designs. Prior scholars speculated marbling originated in ancient or mediæval East Asia, then ‘travelled’ to the Islamic world. However, physical evidence indicates an initial wave of abrī independently arose from fifteenth-century experimental methods in Greater Iran and Transoxiana, then rapidly rippled across South Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and Europe. Marblers disseminated methods when emigrating or recorded them in written accounts that circulated. As it spread, substituting materials for those unavailable resulted in regional equivalents. Others lacking information also tried to imitate the designs, hence ‘first wave’ marbling simultaneously proliferated via such uninformed modes as well as minimally to fully informed transcultural exchanges. In The Advent of Abrī: The First Wave of Paper Marbling in the Long 16th Century (ca. 1496–1616), Jake ‘tackles and rectifies several misconceptions related to the origin and paternity of this craft, its evolution and spreading’, highlights the jury. ‘The spreading of technical knowledge and artistic models are also precisely described and extensively argued’.  

Eugene Matanky completed his PhD in Jewish Philosophy at Tel Aviv University. His dissertation is entitled Esoteric Labor: The Making of Cordoverean Kabbalah. Integrating the fields of history of knowledge and material philology, it analyses early modern Hebrew manuscripts from the Safedian kabbalistic circle of Solomon Alqabeṣ and Moses Cordovero to illuminate the unrecorded processes involved in their generation and reception. By examining the invisible labour preserved in student notebooks, draft fragments, and complex codex layouts, Eugene’s study reveals the written artefact as a dynamic site of socio-material negotiation involving a collaborative infrastructure of teachers, authors, disciples, and editors. He posits that by examining how kabbalists generated their Jewish knowledge, we can better comprehend why they did so. In the eyes of the jury, his work ‘breaks new ground by bridging the divide between intellectual history and manuscript studies.’ Eugene provides an ‘interdisciplinary roadmap that treats the physical page as a primary witness to the social and intellectual labour fundamental to the history of human thought.’

The J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award honours the best doctoral thesis defended in each year that contributes to any aspect of the study of manuscripts and other written artefacts. The award includes a prize money of 5,000 Euro in total and a fellowship for a research stay at CSMC. 

Johan Peter Gumbert (1936-2016) was Professor and Professor Emeritus of Western Palaeography and Codicology at Leiden University from 1979 to 2001, and an expert on Latin and Dutch manuscripts. As a frequent guest at the Universität Hamburg, he was associated with the CSMC from its very beginning as well as with the COMSt-Network (Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies).

Previous winners of the award are Jeremiah Coogan (2021), who is currently a fellow at CSMC, Hui Sun (2021), Mallory E. Matsumoto (2022), Madalina Toca (2022), Elif Sezer (2023), Daria Kohler (2023), and Yitz Landes (2024).