CSMC Newsletter

What untold stories lie within the very fabric of one of the world’s most famous maps? In early 2025, researchers from the Mobile Lab travelled to the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice to study the renowned Fra Mauro Map up close. They were accompanied by a film crew from aha! film, who produced a 12-minute documentary about this journey. The film shows our researchers during their delicate work in the library, in-depth interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses of the data analysis, and the unusual transport of lab equipment — by boat through Venice’s canals. It is now available on our website.

Under the project title ‘Reframing Old Contents for New Readers in Late-Medieval German One-Volume Libraries,’ CSMC researchers Hanna Wimmer and Malena Ratzke explored large multi-text manuscripts, examining how these collections both shaped and were shaped by the advent of early print technologies. Working in partnership with the ‘Data Linking’ group, they developed TAMAR (Transcriptions & Annotations for Manuscript Research) — a versatile web application designed to facilitate research and teaching focused on the Biblia Pauperum. Beyond its initial scope, TAMAR can also be adapted to a range of other scholarly pursuits, such as visualising measurement data from materials science analyses of written artefacts.

Who read the texts of the written artefacts we are studying today? Were they even read at all? If so, where and when? How can we trace the moments when these written artefacts were in use? Much of what we know today about everyday reading practices in Arabic writing cultures comes from so-called audition certificates. The CSMC has made these valuable documents accessible to researchers for the first time on the Audition Certificate Platform (ACP), an online source that now offers open access to over 5,000 documents. The data is fully versioned, and, in line with CSMC’s commitment to the FAIR principles, has been uploaded to the University of Hamburg’s Research Data Repository with version-specific DOIs.

This semester, Britta Frede from the University of Bayreuth is Visiting Professor for ‘Gender in Manuscript Cultures’ at the CSMC. In an interview in our blog, she talks about her academic background in Islam Studies and African History and her recent focus on women’s traces in Islamic scholarly culture, especially in Mauritania. This topic will also be central to the Gender in Manuscript Cultures award lecture, which she will deliver on 1 July, 6:15 pm at the CSMC.

The Hanse University Alliance (HAU) has its roots in the Association of North German Universities (Verbund Norddeutscher Universitäten), which has been promoting cooperation between regional universities in research and teaching for around 30 years. In early June, representatives of the organisation gathered in Hamburg for one of their regular meetings. The event kicked off with an introduction to research on written artefacts in Hamburg: On the premises of the CSMC, researchers from the centre provided an overview of our research approach and gave an introduction to selected projects.

The Museum of Asian Art (AKu) in Berlin houses what may be the most spectacular surviving ‘Traiphum’ — a Thai leporello scroll adorned with intricate Buddhist cosmological illustrations and texts. Earlier this year, Peera Panarut, a graduate of the CSMC Graduate School, joined the museum team to delve into the manuscript’s fascinating narratives alongside fellow experts at AKu. A new article on our blog explores the history of this remarkable artefact and offers insight into the collaborative efforts by Peera and his colleagues as they work to unravel its many remaining secrets.

What drives young researchers to work with manuscripts? What draws them to these topics, and what new insights do they hope to uncover? How do they perceive the social relevance of their research? In a new series of articles, several doctoral students from our Graduate School share the focus of their dissertation projects and the questions that inspire them. The first two episodes are published this month, with additional contributions to follow over the summer.

In West African manuscript cultures, written artefacts were produced to address all kinds of life problems, offering their owners relief if used correctly. Jannis Kostelnik investigates what these manuscripts can tell us today about the lives of their owners and colonial history.