Professor Dr Agnieszka Helman-Ważny

Projects

Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ (UWA) (2019–2025)

• 2019–2025: Project Lead RFA06:
  History of Paper of Ethnic Groups in Southwest China and Mainland Southeast Asia (in Zomia)
• 2023–2025: Project Lead RFA20:
  Measurements of Paper Components

Associated Projects

• Principal Investigator of the associated Project (2015–2019):
  The Mustang Archives: Analysis of Handwritten Documents via the Ethnographic Study of Papermaking Traditions in Nepal

• Research Associate in the associated project (2010–2014):
  History and Typology of Paper in Central Asia during the First Millennium AD: Analysis of Chinese Paper Manuscripts

Research Interests and Activities

Agnieszka Helman-Ważny, who is also Professor of Book Studies at the University of Warsaw, joined the CSMC in 2010 to conduct codicological and material research on the oldest preserved manuscripts from Central Asia dating back to the 1st millennium CE, which included the Dunhuang and Turfan manuscripts. Since 2015, she has been conducting systematic documentation and research on Tibetan books and archival documents in the Mustang and Dolpo regions of northwest Nepal, in cooperation with Charles Ramble from the École pratique des hautes études in Paris and Markus Viehbeck from the Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- und Buddhismuskunde in Vienna.

Her recent work, since 2019, explores the complex history of handmade paper in Asia. While there is substantial information about paper-production techniques from mainland China, Japan, and Korea, very little is known about papermaking in borderland areas of southwestern China and upper mainland Southeast Asia (Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Vietnam) where minority ethnic groups preserve their traditions of papermaking. Helman-Ważny’s research contributes to our understanding of how these traditions developed and evolved, particularly in light of specific local circumstances.

Using interdisciplinary methods in collaboration with private collectors, museum curators, Tibetan artisans, as well as personal experience in “experimental manuscriptology,” Helman-Ważny’s aim to establish paper typologies and to apply modern technologies in the identification and dating of premodern non-western manuscripts, including the Dunhuang manuscripts.

Her publications include monographs and articles on the history of books and paper in Central Asia and the Himalayas, the material culture of Tibet, heritage studies, codicology of Silk Road manuscripts and the history of Asian book collections, including The Archaeology of Tibetan Books (Brill, 2014), and The Mustang Archives: Analysis of Handwritten Documents via the Study of Papermaking Traditions in Nepal (Brepols, 2021, co-authored with Charles Ramble).