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My work stands
at the meeting point of religious history and book history,
exemplified through the medieval Bible. I am facinated
by biblical mediations and ask a simple question: how
did people, lay and religious, men and women, gained
access to the Bible in the Middle Ages. The answer,
inevitably a bit more complicated, leads me to examine
court records, liturgical manuals, sermons and chuch
murals. And biblical manuscripts - lots and lots
of manuscript and early printed Bibles.
Currently
I research the
medieval Bible in Scotland, a project funded by
the Carnegie Trust. Apart from surveying evidence
for biblical manuscripts in Scotland and writing a project
blog,
I initiated and maintain a collaboration between Research
Libraries and Centres across Scotland, run workshops,
create a database of Late Medieval Bibles in Scottish
libraries and prepare select materials for publication.
My other facination
is with computers and the new ways they offer to look
at the past. I am currently taking part in an
innovative project that seeks to create new user interfaces
for the study of medieval manuscripts online.
The genrous support of the Mellon Foundation enables
the project - Manuscript
Studies in an Interoperable Digital Environment
- to develope new ways of looking at manuscripts through
specific test cases, in my case a digital edition of
the Interpretations of Hebrew Names, a medieval glossary
of dubious Hebrew that survives in hundreds of manuscripts.
I formerly
held a British Academy postdoctoral fellowship at the
Centre, examining the material
culture of the Bible, 1230-1611. This has led to
several articles, an edited book on 'Form and Function
in the Late Medieval Bible' (following a conference
I organised in Edinburgh, summer 2010) and a book on
'The Skins of Beast' I'm working on at the moment.
My interest
in religion, culture and manuscripts follows my previous
studies. Following a BA in history and documentary
photography (the Hebrew University and Bezal'el), I
received an MA in comparative religion for work on a
critical edition of a (very) lengthy poem, written by
the abbot of the monastery that inhabited the Dome of
the Rock during the time of the Crusades (revised and
published as "On the Books of the Maccabees: an
unpublished poem by Geoffrey, prior of the Templum Domini",
Crusades
9). A PhD at the University of London under
the supervision of Miri Rubin led me to examine the
various manifestations of the Bible in England 1230-1409,
and to appreciate images, rituals and biblical manuscripts
as a unique form of mediation. A surprising outcome
was to break from the Reformation paradignm of biblical
access and control, showing rather a complex understanding
of the Bible presented to the laity and the the dependency
of the clerical elite on biblical mediation, be it in
the divine office or in the layout of biblical manuscripts.
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