UWA 2026–2032

CMU 1 will reframe UWA’s fundamental commitment to a material-based approach, highlighting that the materials employed in producing WAs are rarely without alternatives. Materialities of writing usually exist in the plural, hence the usage of one set of materials rather than another requires explanation. CMU 1 thus focuses on the production of WAs as a vital aspect of their lifecycle. It highlights the importance of material choices within WAs cultural and historical contexts and considers both technological options and cultural capabilities that may influence selection of materials when producing WAs.

Key questions include how originators – understood as agents responsible for producing WAs – selected from various available materials and existing modes of visual organisation, while considering alternatives and pragmatic factors such as resource availability and cost. Material options are highly diverse across writing cultures and it is against this background that CMU 1 explores the ways in which symbolic meanings and social significance impact decisions in WA production. It concentrates on two main axes, 1) the human agents involved in this production, e.g. considering their social, political, and religious backgrounds, technical and technological knowledge, the attribution of value to certain materials etc., and 2) the writing materials used, including the availability of writing materials and (perceived) material properties that may have influenced choices in WA production.

UWA is deeply aware of the ethical implications of its research and the fact that its methods must be in line with the highest ethical standards. We continually reflect upon the fact that studying written heritage is fraught with complex moral conundrums and relies on difficult considerations and choices. CMU 2 will enlarge on one specific topic that has repeatedly emerged in the work of the cluster’s Ethics Working Group and that demands a dedicated forum, the ethics of natural science-based material analysis of WAs. It deals with the fact that the material analysis can have significant consequences for the artefacts themselves. As the artefacts we analyse embody cultural heritage from regions across the world, our methods – even if applied with the best of scholarly intentions – may be inappropriate for the communities who own them.

CMU 2 will rethink the simplistic dichotomy between destructive/invasive vs non-destructive/non-invasive analysis. Against the background of a conflicted history of material analysis in WA studies, it seeks to increase awareness of the changing nature of ethical and sustainable standards over time. Ethical Analysis, hence, will be organised around three main axes, 1) Stress Level Scale (the potential invasiveness and destructivity of any analytical method), 2) Decision-Making processes (avoiding one-size-fits-all proposals and promoting case-sensitive assessments) and 3) Sustainability (avoiding harm to WA in the long run and considering ecological side effects).

Within UWA II’s overall attempt to enrich the study of WAs as material objects by highlighting their flexibility and adaptability, CMU 3 will develop an analytic framework for understanding the life cycles of WAs in terms of content, materiality and context.

Dynamic processes of recontextualisation, reappropriation and reconfiguration are inherent parts of a WA’s life cycle following its initial production phase. Transmission of WAs can thus be understood as a series of – often transformative – events and phases that leave their traces on the WA and create layers of material, significance and context. What a WA is considered to ‘be’ at different moments of its existence is determined by its previous transmission. A comprehensive approach to a WA, its biography and its accumulated cultural significance hence necessitates attempts to trace and reconstruct those (material) marks of transmission that have become an integral part of the object.

Accordingly, CMU 3 will conceptualise the biographical phases of WAs, with special attention to moments of change. We will put centre stage 1) the various forms of caring for WAs in their subsequent life cycles; 2) phenomena of destruction or degradation; 3) and the scholarly retrieval, de- and recontextualisation, and examination which leave their own traces on the object and/or within its context.

With our long-standing commitment to working on the ground with local communities worldwide, UWA has developed an acute awareness of local emergencies. The transmission of WAs frequently occurs in contexts of crises, as have become ever more obvious in the course of the projects managed by UWA’s Cultural Heritage Unit. Some recurring fundamental questions faced by these projects have laid the foundation of CMU 4: What course of action should be taken when research is affected by conflicting pressures from governments and civil societies? How should the differences between emic and etic collection care and management practices be negotiated? How do we reconcile our ethical principles about collection care and management with those of our partners?

CMU 4 will create a platform to address these issues in order to equip UWA II to navigate crises, both conceptually and practically. Three axes of inquiry will help us implement our task: 1) formulating a definition of crisis and a conceptual typology of dangers to WAs; 2) developing checklists for assessing the levels of endangerment and selecting appropriate methods of safeguarding; 3) developing low-cost and easy-to-handle techniques of preventive and remedial conservation, preferably using locally available materials and integrating local knowledge.

The concept of ‘written artefact’ has opened up a space for integrating the study of hitherto discrete classes of handwritten objects, such as codices, scrolls, leporellos, tablets, stelae and graffiti walls. UWA II leverages this potential for further integration: CMU 5 will rethink established dichotomies between handwritten and printed artefacts, exploring how the practices of handwriting and its mechanical reproduction – ‘imprinting’ – evolved in a continuous interplay of mutual influence, shaping and transforming one another.

The aim is to highlight that most tools for mechanical reproduction of writing were created through handwriting practices, and that what has been produced through imprinting is decidedly part of exploring the world of handwritten artefacts. Our approach is not limited to carving woodblocks or preparing moulds for casting inscriptions – imprinting encompasses a wide range of materials (e.g., clay, wax, metal, stone, papyrus, paper, parchment) and media (seal matrices, coin dies, moulds, punches, types, woodblocks, lithographic stones, copperplates etc.) from all regions and periods of human history.

CMU 5 aims to develop concepts and methods that enable a systematic study of how the practices and functions of handwriting and imprinting are intertwined and embedded in one another. This comprises two axes: 1) reconceptualising imprinted artefacts as witnesses to handwriting practices; 2) understanding the interconnections in the design, production and consumption processes of handwritten and imprinted artefacts.

At a time when the practices of handwriting and production of handwritten artefacts are seemingly losing their long-unquestioned role at the heart of human practices of transmission of knowledge, scholars are turning to the study of these same practices. Paradoxically, we do this increasingly by means of digital reproductions and other digital tools. CMU 6 will reflect and conceptualise how the increasing availability of different digital reproduction techniques and their products – ‘digital twins’ of WAs – has shaped, and is continuing to shape, how we conduct research in the digital age.

We employ the term ‘digital twin’, a term first established in engineering, at the centre of a cross-disciplinary discourse about digital reproductions as epistemic tools. We will ask how they are produced, made available and used and will explore the ways they can, and cannot, substitute for research on and with the originals.

The CMU’s work centres around three axes: 1) How digitisation affects what objects are visible and available to scholars; 2) We will consider digital reproductions as part of a longer history of using ‘twins’ of WAs in research, including, for instance, engraving, photography, microfilming, xerox-copying, squeezes, rubbings; 3) CMU 6 will systematically reflect on how our encounter with digital twins has refashioned our perception of the actual material objects. While digital images pretend to be authentic impressions of the artefacts, they are themselves often carefully constructed and optimised digital files.

The Project Group Writing in Colours focuses on the significant role of colours in written artefacts (WAs) and their influence on reader engagement, examining these aspects from symbolic and pragmatic perspectives. The group plans to study the use of colours in creating visual and spatial hierarchies, emphasising concepts and conveying values within the Egyptian, Greco-Roman and Near Eastern contexts between the Bronze Age and the Early Middle Ages. They intend to compile a representative corpus of coloured WAs, exploring various spatial and social settings, time periods, and manufacturing methods, to understand the contextual choices of colours made in different environments like religious, domestic, and public spaces. The PG will utilise cross-disciplinary methods, including archaeological, epigraphic, and papyrological research, Archaeometry, Mineralogy, and Chemometrics. Experimental archaeology will play an essential role in various project activities, including replicating ancient pigment and dye recipes. Key outputs from the PG will include an exhibition and a detailed database that categorises pigments and dyes, enhancing existing databases with specific features for this purpose.

This Project Group focuses on the relation between the materiality of WAs and the human body. We examine how the scribe’s physical presence and the corporeal act of inscription impacts WAs from three angles: expressive, normative, and objective. The expressive aspect considers how a scribe’s physical condition influences the material features of WAs. The normative perspective looks at conventions – as benchmarks for specific cultural writing practices across time – that govern the scribe’s posture, scribal techniques, and writing habits. The objective element explores situations in which the body becomes an integral component of WAs.

Given the lack of a comprehensive scholarly approaches integrating body-related discourses and writing practices in WA studies, we investigate scribal and bodily practices in global contexts through emic and etic lenses, utilizing case studies and kinematic models. Our three-year program will result in a co-edited volume providing a cross-disciplinary framework for studying corporeality and WAs and will make use also of knowledge exchange formats emphasizing bodily techniques and abilities involved in the production of WAs.

In cooperation with the Kairouan Manuscript Project and the Tunisian National Heritage Institute’s National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts, this PG will explore the material life cycles of parchment manuscripts from the former library of the Grand Mosque in Kairouan, Tunisia. The PG will advance methods of material analysis, gain insight into the historical context of a specific corpus of WAs and contribute to their conservation. For this aim it will employ a combination of minimally invasive omics approaches, including DNA, protein, metabolite, elemental, and microbiological analyses. Combined with codicological, philological and historical research, this will allow conclusions on individual artefacts’ provenance and life cycles. The PG’s holistic approach of integrating humanities and innovative scientific analyses will thus shed new light on the Kairouan collection and offer a more detailed description of parchment-writing’s material ecologies. The PG’s work will also contribute to refining conservation techniques, thereby increasing the artefacts’ chances of survival, notably by endeavouring to understand the factors contributing to parchment decay, including environmental conditions, historical production and conservation practices.

The Project Group Gleaming Words investigates the cultural and historical significance of writing on golden plates across Eurasia, tracing their diffusion from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt through the Mediterranean and eastwards to Persia, South, East and Southeast Asia. Easily repurposed and thus rarely preserved within individual cultures, these plates nevertheless testify to transregional encounters and entanglements in elite material choices and conspicuous consumption. The Project Group delves into how evolving cultural perceptions of golden plates, such as numinosity and sumptuousness, shaped material choices across regions and determined their use in ritual and administrative contexts, oscillating between magico-religious and diplomatic practices. The Project Group aims at fostering cross-disciplinary dialogue across Humanities and Natural Sciences, spanning all relevant fields from Archaeometry to Vietnamese Studies, combining historical, philological and scientific analyses while promoting minimally invasive approaches to the study of production, provenance and dating. Planned outcomes include an online lecture series and a collaborative publication mapping the touchstones, modalities and symbolic values in the transmission of these WAs.

The Project Group examines how WAs have historically been employed to facilitate and document performative events like ceremonies, musical and theatrical performances. The group explores the production, revision, and reproduction of these artefacts in relation to visual, auditory, and other sensory elements. Key areas of study include the WA’s role in visualising performance spaces and recording sensory manifestations, focusing on initial notes of ephemeral activities, the evolution of artefacts over time with secondary layers, and the dynamic feedback loop between WAs and staged events. For deeper analysis of how historical WAs influenced and were influenced by performances, the PG will work with digital modelling and experimental staging. The PG will feature collaborative classes and two workshops, culminating in published proceedings with a comprehensive introduction.

This Project Group advances UWA’s commitment to digital innovation by utilizing AI and computer vision to enhance the study of multigraphic WAs, which include multiple sign systems like scripts and pictorial elements. Focusing on visual organization, the group aims to improve accessibility and analysis of large digitized cultural collections. Three case studies will demonstrate AI’s potential: analyzing French medieval Bible moralisée manuscripts, classifying subject-based Islamic manuscripts from West African digital archives, and navigating a vast archive of German-Jewish images at the National Library of Israel. These studies will explore how visual elements are organized, map large corpora, and facilitate access to uncatalogued collections. Researchers will identify unique patterns for each study and analyze their visual, spatial and semantic relationships across each collection. Outcomes include novel AI approaches evaluated on vision-language datasets derived from the aforementioned studies, an interactive visual interface for engaging with the developed approaches, and several articles on the developed methods, created datasets, and explored case studies. This collaboration between humanities and computer science aims to establish a new model for exploring intricate manuscript collections.

The Project Group investigates the impact of material features on the history of transmission of texts, merging text-focused approaches with material analysis to enhance philological studies. The group focuses on ‘catalysts,’ material features that trigger changes in derivative texts, aiming to redefine and broaden the Europe-centric, codex-focused approach by incorporating global script traditions, including Armenian, Arabic, and Chinese, among others. The PG’s broader objective is to establish a global framework for identifying material catalysts in textual criticism, enriching philological discourse with non-textual criteria such as material attributes of WAs. Collaborating across disciplines, the group leverages AI, particularly large language models, alongside ink analysis and computational palaeography, to explore manuscript relationships beyond traditional methods. The PG will develop a working definition and taxonomy of catalysts, supported by case studies and a workshop on catalyst typology. A handbook featuring a theoretical introduction and comparative chapters on catalyst categories will be produced, offering a new methodological paradigm for philology and textual criticism.

The Project Group Writing the Family seeks to advance the cross-cultural study of genealogy as a scholarly field. The group emphasizes the role of handwriting in shaping social realities, particularly highlighting how genealogical writing impacts the imagination of family and kinship structures. The PG aims to provide a comparative analysis of the diverse types and materials of genealogical WAs across cultures, addressing a gap in existing scholarship which often studies such artefacts in isolation. While the family tree is well-documented, particularly in Europe and Islamic contexts, other genealogical forms remain less explored. This PG highlights how culturally sanctioned genealogical inscriptions influence perceptions of social groups and the representation of gender. The PG plans to integrate diverse genealogical practices, including epigraphic, manuscript, text-based, and diagrammatic forms, into a unified scholarly perspective. Through an international workshop and subsequent publications, the group will examine the materiality and socio-cultural functions of genealogical writing, ultimately focusing on narrative and non-diagrammatic genealogies in a subsequent research phase.

The Project Group aims to advance understanding of the origins and historical transmission of plant-based writing materials like paper, palm leaves, and papyrus. By employing advanced material-science methods, the group addresses the challenges of determining the provenance of these materials. With a focus on Asian Highland and Southeast Asian manuscripts, the PG plans to develop minimally invasive scientific techniques for profiling such materials. This involves the integration of various cutting-edge methods in microscopy, spectroscopy, microbiology, and data analysis, alongside traditional disciplines like botany and palaeoecology, along with collaboration with DESY for Small and Wide-Angle X-ray Scattering. Results will be cross-referenced with codicological, palaeographical and philological data, contributing to the creation of a comprehensive Atlas mapping the historical and geographic distribution of these writing supports. The outcomes will be shared through publications in international journals and at two dedicated workshops, highlighting advances in material provenancing and the reconstruction of the complex biographies of these materials-based WAs.