CSMC Newsletter

To facilitate professional exchange with Chinese-speaking colleagues in manuscriptology and related fields, a group of experts at the CSMC, the Department of Chinese Literature at the National Taiwan University, and the National Palace Museum have been developing an English-Chinese glossary that translates key terms. For Chinese users, the glossary may help to better understand Western manuscriptology, while Western scholars can use it for translating their research into Chinese. It was published in the form of a database hosted at the CSMC.

The production of each written artefact is connected to a series of decisions about which materials to choose and which techniques to use to craft them. ‘Towards the Investigation of Material Choices in Written Artefacts: Methodological Reflections’, the tenth publication in the cluster’s Occasional Papers series, now provides the first programmatic overview of the work in our research field on ‘Selecting Materials’. It summarises the current state of discussions, recent insights, and new questions that have arisen in the joint examination of this topic, and looks at future research directions. Like all publications in this series, it is available open access.

Together with the National Library of Israel (NLI), the CSMC has digitised the estates of 24 important Jewish-German intellectuals, including Gershom Scholem, Martin Buber, and Albert Ehrenstein. The contents of more than 19,000 archival files, occupying some 120 metres of shelf space, have been transformed into approximately 750,000 digital images. However, only a fraction of this incredible amount of source material has been made publicly available. On the initiative of the CSMC and with funding from the DFG, remote online access to the images has now been established. Upon request via the NLI website, registered users can access the digitised archival material for self-study, teaching, and research purposes.

‘Manuscript Cultures in the Caucasus’, a major workshop at the CSMC, brought together specialists in Armenian, Georgian, and Caucasian Albanian manuscripts as well as experts from material analysis and computer science to discuss the latest advancements when it comes to dating and determining the provenance of the manuscripts. In addition to researchers from the DeLiCaTe team, experts from the CSMC Mobile Lab and the Visual Manuscript Analysis Lab as well as numerous international guests, including Ara Khzmalyan (head of the Matenadaran in Armenia) and Zura Samarghanishvili (Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Center of Manuscripts), presented their research at the workshop.

Congratulations to Diana Lange! She is moving from the University of Hamburg to the Humboldt University of Berlin this month, where she takes up the professorship for the History and Cultures of Central Asia. At the CSMC, she has been leading a research project at the CSMC on ‘Maps as Knowledge Resources and Mapmaking as Process: The Case of the Mapping of Tibet’ (RFI 07). During this time, she was also deputy professor for Central Asian Studies at the HU Berlin, where she returns at the beginning of this summer semester. Her research project at the CSMC will continue until the end of the year.

Focusing on typography as a script-based practice, ‘Shifting Scripts: Contemporary Arabic and Persian Graphic Design’, a conference organised jointly by the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (MK&G) and the CSMC, will explore the intersections of Arabic and Persian graphic design with cultural, political, and artistic narratives. From 24 to 26 April 2025, the conference will provide a unique platform for engaging with Arabic and Persian script from both academic and design perspectives and investigate how contemporary graphic design can be understood within the broader fields of design research and the humanities, with a particular focus on the SWANA region. In addition to panel discussion and talks, the event is also accompanied by two workshops to foster a transdisciplinary dialogue among researchers, students, and designers.

How did so many objects from Indonesia, including precious Batak manuscripts, end up in the collections of museums in Lower Saxony? A two-year research project coordinated by the Museumsverband für Niedersachsen und Bremen seeks to shed light on this question. Roberta Zollo, who recently submitted her PhD dissertation at the CSMC Graduate School, plays a key role in this endeavour. ‘We need to revise our understanding of German colonial history,’ she says. The full story of her work in this important project and the road ahead can be found in our blog.