Wandering Books - 4 Fully Funded PhDs on Early Medieval Manuscripts at Trinity College Dublin
Wandering Books seeks to address the challenge of better localising manuscripts. It brings together a geneticist (Prof. Dan Bradley), a manuscript specialist (Dr Nicole Volmering), an intellectual historian (Dr Immo Warntjes) and a historical linguist (Dr Mark Faulkner) to supervise between them four PhDs taking distinct methodological approaches to the same corpus of manuscripts deriving from early medieval Britain and Ireland: one hunting the animals whose skins made the manuscripts, one tracing the techniques used to assemble the skins into a book and write it, another tracking the texts it contains as they diffused across Europe, and a fourth listening for the languages the manuscript contains. With funding from the Trinity Research Doctorate Awards: Group-based Research Projects 2024-5, Wandering Books will recruit four PhD students, starting September 2024. Students will receive a stipend of €25,000pa for the four years of the PhD, and have their fees waived.
This advertisement is specifically for:
PhD4: Listening to Language: Philology, supervised by Mark Faulkner, and designed to investigate how far it may be possible to localise Latin manuscripts on the basis of their language. Possible approaches include (but are by no means limited to):
- Comparative analyses of the spelling, punctuation and abbreviation of Latin texts
- Corpus-linguistic analyses of Latin texts, based either on existing corpora or the construction of new ones, perhaps using new techniques (e. g. HTR)
- Comparative analyses of bilingual manuscripts, where the vernacular allows for localisation
- Studies of scribal copying practices
- Editing of unlocalised early medieval Latin texts
Students interested in the PhD are invited to send a motivation letter, a CV, academic transcripts, a sample of written work, and two academic references to Dr Mark Faulkner (faulknem@tcd.ie) by Tuesday 9 July. It is envisaged shortlisted applicants will be interviewed towards the end of that week or in the week beginning 15 July. The final stage of the application process will involve the submission of a formal PhD proposal to Trinity.
The following may be considered the essential and desirable qualifications for the award:
Essential
- A first-class / high 2.i (or equivalent) undergraduate degree in History, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Celtic Studies, Classics or another relevant subject
- High reading ability in Latin
- Demonstrable communicative competence in English
- Willingness to work in an interdisciplinary team
- Willingness to participate in training and development activities
Desirable
- Good working knowledge of Medieval Latin philology and palaeography
- Experience in editing early medieval Latin texts
- Experience of historical corpus linguistics
- Experience working with manuscripts and manuscript libraries