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CSMC
CSMCCentre for the Study of
Manuscript Cultures

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J. P. Gumbert Dissertation Award

J. P. Gumbert

The CSMC dissertation award is named in honour of Professsor Dr Johan Peter Gumbert (1936-2016). He 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, Professor Gumbert was associated with the CSMC from its very beginning as well as with the COMSt-Network (Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies).

Guidelines for nominations

The successful dissertation contributes to any aspect of the study of manuscripts and other written artefacts from fields such as art history, history, codicology, epigraphy, material sciences, palaeography, or philology. Its research focus can be on any period or region. The dissertation must be written in English.

Nominations can be submitted by the first or second supervisor or by the doctoral students themselves. Members of CSMC or Universität Hamburg are excluded. Nominations must include:

  • the doctoral dissertation thesis
  • one review by the supervisorand final PhD certificate
  • curriculum vitae
  • a half-page statement describing in which respect the dissertation has established new grounds for the study of written artefacts beyond one discipline.

J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award 2023

Nominations for the 2023 edition of the award can be submitted until 31 March 2023, 12:00 pm CEST. The official announcement can be downloaded here. 

Previous Winners

2022

Mallory E. Matsumoto (Brown University): Sharing Script: Development and Transmission of Hieroglyphic Practices among Classic Maya Scribes

Based on epigraphic and palaeographic analysis, the author places classic Maya hieroglyphs in socio-political context and argues that variation in how scribes wrote reflects the decentralised trajectories through which they exchanged knowledge about the writing system and how to use it.

Madalina Toca (KU Leuven): Letters from Pelusium. Studies in the Reception, Formation, and Historicity of the Isidorian Epistolary Corpus

By the means of a comparative study of compiling practices of excerpting and rearranging the letters of the fifth century epistolary corpus attributed to Isidore of Pelusium, the author traces the emergence of distinct Isidorian reception profiles reflected in thematic collections across Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Slavonic manuscript traditions.

2021

Hui Sun (Universität Heidelberg): Funerary Lists from Early Chinese Shaft Tombs

Through a combination of codicological and philological data with archaeological and ethno-sociological theories, the author arrives at a new understanding of the usage of funerary lists from early Chinese shaft tombs (5th c. BCE-1st c. CE).


Jeremiah Coogan (University of Notre Dame): Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity

Analysing Eusebius of Caesarea’s fourth-century reconfiguration of the Gospels as a window into broader questions of technology and textuality in ancient and medieval Christianity, the author traces a neglected history of Gospel reading.