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Toward a multidisciplinary approach to liturgical fragments
Fribourg, Switzerland, July 1-3, 2026
The colloquium Scraps of the Sacred emerges from a collaboration between the Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission project and the Center for Manuscript Research – University of Fribourg, which hosts the Fragmentarium Digital Laboratory. Its aim is to provide a forum for emerging and established researchers working on liturgical and musical manuscript fragments to form new collaborations, share new interdisciplinary tools and insights for advancing their research, and work together to develop a published methodology for research on manuscript fragments. We welcome contributions related to research on fragments of liturgical manuscripts, including their identification and localization, decoration, working with notated chant fragments, and reconstructing corpora.
Call for papers
Call for papers
The colloquium will include short research talks and extensive discussion, a library visit, and methodologically focused discussions with four invited speakers, representing different disciplinary areas, who will each give plenary presentations and hold dedicated research workshops on their approach and special areas: Erik Kwakkel on Latin script, Laura Albiero on liturgical practices, Eva Veselovská on musical writing, and Christine Jakobi-Mirwald on book decoration. The intent of the colloquium is to provide a forum for discussion across disciplines and to connect researchers who work on various aspects of chant fragments, in order to develop a truly multidisciplinary methodology. We thus welcome contributions from individuals both with established research experience as well as those at the beginning of their research careers.
Participants who are selected will be asked to pre-circulate papers (2000-3000 words) by June 1st, prior to the colloquium. At the colloquium, participants will present brief (5-minute) summaries of a particular research challenge or intriguing result they have found; these could range from particularly puzzling individual fragments, or bigger-picture issues of contextualization or categorization. These contributions will serve as a basis for the workshops and for discussion throughout the colloquium. A special issue of Fragmentology will be devoted to the results of the colloquium, to which participants will be invited to participate as either research notes or in collaborative methodologically focused articles.
We encourage participation from graduate students and postdoctoral or independent scholars as well as more established researchers. Contingent upon external grant funding, a travel stipend will be available for early-career participants.
Submission format: Please submit a short bio (60 words) and an abstract of up to 250 words by 6 March 2026 which 1) outlines the results of the fragment research you will present, 2) proposes strategies on relevant aspects of your fragment research, or 3) details the benefits to your early-stage research project(s) from attending this colloquium and participating in the expert workshops. Applicants will be notified by mid-March.
Questions?
Questions?
For information not supplied here, contact dact.chant@gmail.com
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