Stephanie Lahey

Manuscript-Related Experience List

• 2015–present: SSHRC-funded PhD candidate, University of Victoria. Supervisors: Dr. Iain Macleod Higgins (Victoria), Dr. Erik Kwakkel (UBC iSchool); PhD examination fields: Medieval English Literature (2016 Sep); Book Production and Parchment in Late Medieval England (2017 Dec). 

• 2015 Oct: SSHRC-funded MA, Université d’Ottawa. Supervisor: Dr. Andrew Taylor (Ottawa). Thesis: Legal Book Collecting in Late Medieval Bristol: The Case of Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Richardson 40. 

• Working since 2016–2017 on PhD dissertation: a biologically- and statistically-informed, mixed-methodology study of the use of parchment offcuts in manuscripts produced in later medieval England (working title: Offcut Parchment in Later Medieval British Manuscripts: A Mixed-Methodology, Corpus-Based Study; anticipated defence date: Winter 2020). 

• Developing taxonomy and terminology of features associated with offcut parchment, along with a codicological and generic ‘profile’ of manuscripts written on offcuts, using corpus of >100 medieval English manuscripts. 

• Funded fieldwork with, and in situ analysis of, several hundred medieval manuscripts in repositories in North America and Europe including, inter alia, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Bodleian Library, British Library, Harvard Law School Library Special Collections, Houghton Library, The National Archives (UK), Senate House Library (London, UK). 

• 2016 Sep–2017 Sep: Guest researcher at LUCAS (Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society), Universiteit Leiden, under supervision of Prof.dr. Erik Kwakkel. 

• Further professional training in medieval codicology and palaeography at American Academy in Rome’s Winter School in Latin Palaeography and Codicology (Vatican City and Rome: 2018 Jan), London International Palaeography Summer School (London, UK: 2017, 2009), and London Rare Books School (London, UK: 2009); in medieval legal records via The National Archives’ Postgraduate Archival Skills Training programme (Richmond, UK: 2017 Jun); and in digital and scientific approaches to medieval manuscripts at ManuSciences (Fréjus, France: 2019 Mar), and at DHSI: Digital Humanities Summer Institute (Victoria, BC: 2018 Jun). 

• Articles in progress on aspects of dissertation-related research including offcut and poor-quality parchment; British provincial manuscript production; Statuta Angliae manuscripts; Bodleian, MS Ashmole 1378; and Aberystwyth, NLW, MS 733B (solicited by Dr. Anthony Edwards (Kent) for The Library). Published in Florilegium (vol. 33, 2016 [forthcoming]), and Journal of Interdisciplinary Humanities (vol. 25, 2008). Cited and consulted in The Wall Street Journal (Zimmer, Ben, “Riders, from goat skin to the Oscars” (08 Mar 2018) https://www.wsj.com/articles/riders-from-goat-skin-to-the-oscars-1520531130). 

• Peer-reviewed conference papers on aspects of dissertation-related research presented at Canadian Society of Medievalists / Société canadienne des médiévistes annual meetings (Ryerson University: 2017, University of Regina: 2018, University of British Columbia: 2019 [upcoming]), Early Book Society Biennial Conference (University of Durham: 2017, University College Dublin: 2019 [upcoming]), Vancouver Island Library Staff Conference (University of Victoria: 2018), and International Medieval Congress (University of Leeds: 2018, 2019 [upcoming]). 

• Invited talks delivered to academic and non-academic audiences on a range of medieval parchment-related topics including the manufacture and use of parchment in medieval Europe (2018 Mar, 2018 Nov), applications of offcuts and poor-quality parchment (2018 Apr), parchment taxonomy and statistical description (2018 Oct), parchment’s environmental impacts and parchment ‘recycling’ (2019 Apr). 

• Instructor of record in medieval codicology and palaeography at the University of Victoria (MEDI 452: Physical and Intellectual Production of the Later Medieval European Manuscript): 2019 Jan–Apr; and at DHSI: Digital Humanities Summer Institute (Understanding the Pre-Digital Book: Technologies of Inscription): 2018 Jun, and 2019 Jun [upcoming]. 

• Guest lecturer on medieval parchment-making and implications of parchment quality at Universiteit Leiden (in Transformations in Literary Culture in Post-Conquest England, 2016–2017 MA seminar led by Prof.dr. Erik Kwakkel): 2017 Apr; and on parchment-manufacture, flaws, and repairs at University of Victoria (in ENGL 343: Medieval Books, 2018 BA seminar led by Dr. Adrienne Williams Boyarin): 2018 Oct. 

• I anticipate that the Biocodicology workshop will broaden my knowledge of scientific skills and tools relevant to the study of parchment, as well as their applicability to the study of medieval manuscripts. As such, it should improve my ability to communicate my own work, as well as scientific findings and disciplinary practices to those working in my field, thereby helping to bring science to humanists and humanists to science.

• Conversations across disciplines often reveal the usefulness of findings thought to be mere curiosities, as their full significance only becomes apparent when drawn out to larger contexts; thus, cross-disciplinary discussion of apparently trivial findings can facilitate answering existing questions and identifying novel ones. To this end, I am interested in learning more about the precise types of information that can be obtained from this material, together with recent research and findings, including those deemed merely incidental.

• I am especially interested in opportunities for collaboration. My background enables me to offer insights into the types of questions that interest literary and textual scholars, and the unconscious disciplinary assumptions and elisions within those fields. I believe that the findings from my doctoral project can be of use, as follows:

• My current research project is narrow and deep, focused on a relatively unexplored area—namely, the use of parchment offcuts (lower-quality scraps trimmed from the edges of a prepared sheet) in manuscripts produced in later medieval England. Thus far, I have identified strong correlations between use of this poor-quality parchment and (i) specific genres of text, as well as (ii) particular production contexts.

• My project shows the significance of context (socio-cultural, intellectual, economic) and content (codicological, palaeographical, textual) to the study of parchment. I expect that sharing my preliminary findings with other participants, and bringing them into dialogue with scientific approaches, will help suggest new avenues of inquiry in biocodicology.

• As a mixed-methodology, corpus-based study, my project offers a manifesto for greater application of scientific and quantitative approaches to the study of codicology, textual studies, and cultural history. I feel that my existing and future work on this topic can help make a case to major repositories for larger-scale, biocodicological studies of medieval manuscripts.

• At the immediate practical level, I hope that the workshop will help me better test the validity of inferences I have made (e.g. regarding some of my markers of what is or is not an offcut) and the soundness of the typologies of parchment features I have developed during the course of this research.

• During the course of my research, I developed a provisional taxonomy of parchment features and a set of terms for discussing them. I suggest that biocodicology as a field would benefit from a clear taxonomy of features and a consistent, materially-based terminology; I am very interested in helping to establish them. 

• I anticipate that discussion with fellow participants will help confirm or disconfirm some of my hypotheses regarding medieval parchment and factors impacting the outcome of production processes, e.g. whether a given feature is due to the source animal (age, sex, breed, etc.) or other factors such as particular manufacturing techniques. I also bring to the table several questions and ideas for potential studies related to the latter topic, as well as to questions of collagen structure and edge effects in parchment.