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CSMCCentre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures

Photo: UHH/Denstorf

Logbook: The CSMC Blog

A logbook – the term first appears around 1800 – records all significant events during a voyage. It keeps track of the distance travelled, but also reports on special events and everyday happenings on board.

In this sense, the CSMC Logbook presents important news about what’s going on at the Centre. It tells the stories behind current research projects and introduces the people that keep the institute on course. In interviews, portraits, and spotlights, Logbook aims to spark curiosity about the world of written artefacts. 

20 September 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘The Further Back in History You Go, the More Likely it is that Only Inscriptions Remain’

Maya Stiller

Photo: Maya Stiller

This winter semester, Maya Stiller is the visiting professor for ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. In this interview, she provides insights into her multidisciplinary research, which lies in the unique intersection between art history, Korean Studies, and Buddhist Studies.
9 September 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Mummy Book Under the Microscope

The 'Mummy Book' in the CSMC Mobile Lab

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

When researchers in Graz announced in early summer 2023 that they had found a fragment of a 2,300-year-old codex, it was a scoop – it would be by far the world’s oldest fragment of a bound book. But is the ‘Graz Mummy Book’ really one? The Artefact Lab at the CSMC aims to find the answer.
6 September 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

From Plan to Practice: The Container Lab in India

The Container Lab in India

Photo: Marina Creydt/Robin Dammann

Power cuts, extreme temperatures, the onset of the monsoon – on its first trip, the UWA Container Lab is exposed to adverse conditions. Impressions from Puducherry, India, where chemist Marina Creydt wants to determine the production methods and provenance of historical palm-leaf manuscripts.
21 August 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Graduation Ceremony for MA Students

MA Graduation Ceremony

Photo: BLUENIKA I Veronika Krebs

The Asia-Africa Institute (AAI) at the University of Hamburg honoured all graduates of the classes of 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024 with a festive graduation ceremony. Among them were several graduates of the MA programme ‘Manuscript Cultures’, which is offered by the Graduate School of the CSMC.
3 June 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘Graffiti is Perhaps the Most Democratic of All Written Artefacts’

Graffiti in Dadanitic and Nabataean scripts, may date between 5th c. BCE and 2nd c. CE.

Photo: Christian J. Robin

In public spaces, we encounter no type of written artefacts as often as graffiti. Still, it took a long time for researchers to become interested in them. In this interview, Ondrej Skrabal explains why this is the case and why graffiti is vital for our understanding of past and present societies.
21 May 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Understanding Books as Objects, Belongings, Relations

Suzanne Akbari

Photo: Suzanne Akbari

This summer, medievalist Suzanne Akbari is visiting professor of 'Gender in Manuscript Cultures' at the CSMC. In our interview, she talks about the links between her seemingly disparate research interests and how she aims to diversify our understanding of global book history.
16 May 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘Tagging is Calligraphy’

Participants during the workshop 'The Calligraphy of Tagging'

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

Seeing the written artworks in urban landscapes with different eyes: on 13 and 14 May, the internationally renowned graffiti researcher Javier Abarca gave a workshop on the theory and practice of contemporary tagging at the CSMC.
14 May 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Entering the Kingdom of Zhangzhung

Impressions from the International Conference on Zhangzhung and Tibetan Studies

Photo: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

The Menri Monastery is hidden in the Himalayas. It is home to the largest collection of manuscripts on the Bon tradition, but hardly any scholar from the West gets access to it. This April, Agnieszka Helman-Wazny and a group of colleagues accepted a very special invitation.
3 May 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Looking Back: Girls’ Day and Boys’ Day 2024

girls' and boys' day

Photo: CSMC

The nationwide Girls’ Day and Boys’ Day help to break down classic role models in many professions, including science. This year, the CSMC participated for the second time.
2 May 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

X-Ray Views into Ancient Clay Envelopes

Group photo ENCI inauguration

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

On 29 April, in the presence of Senator Katharina Fegebank, UHH President Hauke Heekeren, and other guests, researchers from UWA and DESY presented the ENCI, the first and only mobile computer tomograph with which sealed cuneiform tablets can be read for the first time.
26 April 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Cultural Heritage Project in Akka Draws to a Close

Surface cleaning of books

Photo: CSMC

The al-Jazzar Mosque of Akka once housed one of the largest mosque libraries in Palestine. Today, only part of the collection is still on site – and was at risk of destruction. The CSMC has now finished a set of emergency measures to create long-term conditions for the preservation of the collection
8 April 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Container Lab is on its Way to India

Two containers of the Container Lab

Photo: Esfandiari/UHH

To research valuable manuscripts around, the world, UWA has developed a mobile Container Lab. On 7 April, it was sent abroad for the first time. Over the next one and a half years, it will be used in India to analyse palm-leaf manuscripts that are part of the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage.
25 January 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘The Challenge is to Combine Lightweight Construction and Radiation Protection’

Christian Schroer

Photo: CSMC

ENCI is a globally unique mobile CT scanner for sealed cuneiform tablets. In this interview, Christian Schroer explains the main challenges during the construction of ENCI and talks about the current fine-tuning before it is used in the Louvre.
25 January 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘ENCI Gives Us Access to a Wealth of Source Material’

Cécile Michel

Photo: CSMC

With ENCI, Assyriologists gain access to numerous previously inaccessible sources. In this interview, Cécile Michel explains the purpose of the clay envelopes in which many cuneiform tablets are hidden and talks about her expectations for the first field trip with the new device to the Louvre.
18 January 2024|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Preserving Artefacts and Sharing Knowledge: One Year in Our Nepal Project

Written Artefacts of Nepal

Photo: Bidur Bhattarai

Over the past years, the CSMC office in Kathmandu has become a vibrant centre not only for the preservation of manuscripts but also for encounters and exchanges with local people – from politics, culture, academia, and the general public. In our image gallery, we look back on the year 2023.
7 November 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Portraitist of Pages

Philip Loersch

Photo: Tim Plamper

The artist Philip Loersch is the new Artist in Residence at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’. In our interview, he talks about how he came to draw pages, why old encyclopaedias inspire him, and what he wants to experiment with during his time at the Cluster.
1 November 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘We Have to Consider the Possibility of Female Scribes’

Julia Bruch

Photo: Julia Bruch

Julia Bruch, the new guest professor for ‘Women in Manuscript Cultures’, gives insights into the research questions she will investigate at CSMC: are there fundamental differences between the manuscripts of men and women? And can we attribute anonymously transmitted texts to men across the board?
27 October 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Remembering Malachi Beit-Arié (1937–2023)

Malachi Beit-Arié

Photo: CSMC

All of us at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures mourn the death of Professor Malachi Beit-Arié, who passed away in Tel-Aviv on 17 October 2023.
11 September 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘Everything is Connected through Atmospheres of Unreadability’

The Feverish Library

Photo: UHH/Esfandiari

This autumn, Axel Malik turns the SUB Hamburg into ‘The Feverish Library’. In our interview, he talks about the impact of art in public spaces and why libraries are the ideal environment for his unreadable signs.
30 August 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Risks and Rewards

Timbuktu

Photo: Nicolas Réméné

The manuscripts of Timbuktu are irreplaceable documents of the cultural history of West Africa. Since 2014, the CSMC has been working on site to preserve them. While the security situation in the country worsens, the final courses of the ‘Timbuktu Manuscript Training Project’ took place this summer.
15 July 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Leaving Traces: The TAG Conference in Hamburg

TAG Conference

Photo: TAG Conference

At this year’s edition of the TAG conference, 20 speakers from 14 countries from five continents gathered in Hamburg to discuss a cultural phenomenon whose significance scholars have only just started to appreciate.
5 July 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Exhibition on the ‘Written Treasures of Hamburg’

UWA/SUB

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

Until 2 October, a joint exhibition of the State and University Library Hamburg and the ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ shows extraordinary manuscripts from the holdings of the SUB and the Cluster’s research on them. A bilingual online catalogue tells the stories behind the artefacts.
30 May 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Art of Writing

Beyond Visualising Language

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

An unusual programme, an unusual venue: ‘Beyond Visualising Language’ at Deichtorhallen Hamburg brought together researchers of the Cluster and artists working with the medium of script. Impressions of two intensive days.
4 May 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Girls' Day and Boys' Day at CSMC

Girls' Day / Boys's Day 2023

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

The nationwide Girls' Day and Boys' Day help to break down classic role models in many professions, including science. This year, CSMC participated for the first time, with great success: committed researchers and curious kids made the fully booked event a highly rewarding experience.
6 April 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Elena Chepel Starts Visiting Professorship ‘Women in Manuscript Cultures’

Elena Chepel

Photo: Elena Chepel

This summer semester, Elena Chepel from the University of Vienna becomes the first researcher to take up the new Visiting Professorship ‘Women in Manuscript Cultures’ at CSMC. Here she talks about her plans for her time in Hamburg and explains the role gender issues play in her own research.
30 March 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Inscribing Funerary Spaces

Friedhof Ohlsdorf

Photo: Staro1

Wherever people commemorate their dead, they use written artefacts. What do funerary inscriptions look like in different cultures, who do they target, and what do they reveal about a society? From 30 March to 1 April, the international workshop ‘Inscribing Funerary Spaces’ explores these questions.
17 March 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Postcards from Thailand

Postcards from Thailand

Photo: Helman-Wazny/Grabowsky

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Volker Grabowsky travel through Southeast Asia to preserve the knowledge of a fading manuscript culture. After their stay in Laos, they have crossed the border into northern Thailand. Making paper the traditional way, they learn there, requires a head for heights.
6 March 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Postcards from Laos

Postcards from Laos

Photo: Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

The forests and villages around Luang Prabang belong to the few places in the world where the Lao tradition of making manuscripts is still alive. Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Volker Grabowsky have set out to preserve the knowledge of a fading culture. Here they share some impressions of their journey.
16 February 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Martin Jörg Schäfer

Martin Jörg Schäfer

Photo: Martin Jörg Schäfer

In ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. In the case of Martin Jörg Schäfer, the latter was part of no less than the most prominent theatre scandal in the German-speaking world.
16 January 2023|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Ethics and Artefacts

Cécile Michel

Photo: CSMC

Researchers, especially if they work with cultural heritage objects, often face situations that require their moral rather than their scientific judgement. Cécile Michel explains how the Ethics Working Group and Committee can provide help – and when researchers have to take responsibility themselves
27 December 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

5 Questions to Agnieszka Helman-Wazny

Photo: Agnieszka Helman-Wazny

In ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. This time, Agnieszka Helman-Ważny explains what studying paper has to do with learning about other cultures – and why her alternative career would have been in forensics.
9 December 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts

Shervin Farridnejad

Photo: Shervin Farridnejad

Since autumn 2022, the Chair of Iranian Studies at Universität Hamburg has been held by Shervin Farridnejad, who is an expert in Zoroastrianism. Once a world religion, the faith now only has a small group of followers. They keep alive a tradition whose ideas are considerably older than its writings.
25 November 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

A City Becomes Colourful

Eine Stadt wird bunt

Photo: Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte

In the early 1980s, much of Hamburg presents a picture of charmless concrete deserts – until it becomes a hotspot of the young graffiti culture. The exhibition ‘A City Becomes Colourful’ tells of the many metamorphoses of a scene that (literally) wrote a chapter of the city’s recent history.
14 November 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Thies Staack

Thies Staack

Photo: Thies Staack

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. This time, we talk to Thies Staack, a sinologist studying two very different kinds of Chinese manuscripts: ancient legal texts and late-imperial medical recipes.
30 September 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Sylvia Melzer

Sylvia Melzer

Photo: Sylvia Melzer

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. This time, we talk to Sylvia Melzer. A computer enthusiast since her childhood, she is now at the forefront of developing AI methods for the humanities.
8 September 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

José Maksimczuk

José Maksimczuk

Photo: José Maksimczuk

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. This time, we talk to José Maksimczuk, who runs a new Research Field dedicated to a kind of written artefact we all know and most of us produce: notebooks.
5 August 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Olivier Bonnerot

Olivier Bonnerot

Photo: Olivier Bonnerot

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, what motivates them, and their favourite written artefacts. This time, we talk to Olivier Bonnerot, who gets as excited about chemistry as he does about Greek myths and thus found the perfect area to work in: archaeometry.
2 August 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

The Impulse to Write

Exceeding Colophon

Photo: Axel Malik

On the CSMC's Open Day, Axel Malik published his brochure 'Exceeding Colophon'. In his preface, art historian Bruno Reudenbach explores some basic questions raised by Malik's art: 'Is what he creates really "writing" as such? If "writing" is the wrong term for it, which word should we use instead?'
22 July 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Excellence in Jazz

Jazz performance

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

‘Spotlight: Written Artefacts’ was the title of the CSMC’s Open Day in June. At the end of the event, however, the spotlight was on two musicians: Piotr Michalowski – in his main profession a renowned Assyriologist – and John Hughes. Watch the full performance online.
30 June 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Ann-Sophie Hellmich-Schwan

Hellmich-Schwan

Photo: Ann-Sophie Hellmich-Schwan

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, current work, what motivates them, and about their favourite written artefacts. In this episode, we talk to Ann-Sophie Hellmich-Schwan and her research on the spatial dimensions of early modern European archives.
3 June 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Graffiti Growing Up

Mirko Reisser (DAIM)

Photo: Mirko Reisser

Hamburg in 1989: school grounds are split into ‘poppers’ and punks. Mirko Reisser is quickly turning into a well-known figure in the graffiti scene. Thirty years later, both he and the scene have changed. What stays the same is in four letters: D A I M.
30 May 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

'This Work Can and Should Serve as a Permanent Impetus'

DAIM

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

A triptych by Hamburg graffiti artist Mirko Reisser alias DAIM has recently been put up in the foyer of the CSMC building at Warburgstraße 28. In his speech given on the occasion of the unveiling of this work, art historian Bruno Reudenbach explores a simple question: why here?
19 May 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

‘If that works, it will be like winning a gold medal’

RFA16

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

Pondicherry’s palm-leaf manuscripts have been included in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, but the origin of many of them is still unclear. Giovanni Ciotti, head of the 'Palm-Leaf Manuscript Profiling Initiative', intends to discover the story behind them in the new Container Lab.
22 April 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

A Textbook Example of Medieval Sword Fighting

Sword fighting

Photo: Royal Armouries Museum

The oldest surviving instruction book on sword fighting in Europe is still being used to learn this art today. 'Royal Armouries Fecht1' not only taught Cornelius Berthold how to hold the weapons, but he also learnt a lot about the manuscript itself, which is still raising questions to this day.
8 April 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Johanna Seibert

Johanna Seibert

Photo: Johanna Seibert

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, current work, what motivates them, and about their favourite written artefacts. In this episode, we talk to Johanna Seibert, who is the coordinator of Equal Opportunity at CSMC.
1 April 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Seals and Sealing

Seals and Sealing

Photo: Beijing, Palace Museum

Sealing is a key technique to authenticate written artefacts. But what does the choice of material for a seal depend on? And how can the study of seals benefit from analytical and computational methods? A two-day workshop at CSMC explored a range of questions about the practices of authentication.
25 March 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

TianYu Shi

TianYu Shi

Photo: TianYu Shi

In our series ‘5 Questions to…’, members of CSMC chat about their background, current work, what motivates them, and about their favourite written artefacts. In this episode, we talk to TianYu Shi, whose work on epitaphs sheds slight on the history of Chinese society beyond the official records.
18 March 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Impressions of the Teijgeler Collection

Object from Teijgeler collection

Photo: CSMC

In December 2020, CSMC received a generous donation of special written artefacts from René Teijgeler, a renowned researcher and advisor in the field of Critical Cultural Heritage. Our photo gallery provides an impression of the diversity of his collection.
11 March 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Alessandro Bausi

Alessandro Bausi

Photo: Photo Studioline Dammtor, Hamburg

In our series '5 Questions to…', members of CSMC chat about their background, current work, what motivates them, and about their favourite written artefacts. In this episode, we talk to Alessandro Bausi, co-spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence and the only professor for Ethiopian Studies in Germany.
4 March 2022|Logbook: The CSMC Blog

Excavating in Egypt

Leah Mascia

Photo: Javier Martínez García

Extreme heat, strong winds – and at every turn the danger of accidentally damaging unique cultural objects. Excavations in Egypt are a physical and mental challenge for everyone involved. In her report, Leah Mascia describes the difficulties and the joy, and shares the story of a very special find.
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