The Medieval Academy Blog

We are very pleased to announce that the first annual Medieval Academy Digital Humanities Prize has been awarded to DigiPal: Digital Resource and Database of Manuscripts, Palaeography and Diplomatics. (London, 2011-14), http://www.digipal.eu/, developed at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, and funded by the European Research Council. Primary Creators are Peter Stokes and Stewart Brookes, and Geoffroy Noël (King’s College London).

DigiPal’s pilot database consists of records for all extant scribal hands writing English Vernacular minuscule and dated to the eleventh century. This amounts to approximately 1600 full or partial manuscripts and documents, containing about 1200 scribal hands and over sixty thousand annotated images of letters. The site is easy to use and offers explanatory search training for non-specialists; it is also enticing and aesthetically pleasing.

DigiPal combines digital photographs of medieval handwriting with detailed descriptions and characterizations of the writing, as well as the text in which it is found, and the content and structure of the manuscript or document as a whole. The project makes it possible to explore and manipulate information, such as annotated images, along with more conventional text-based browse and search functions. It therefore allows scholars to apply new developments in palaeographical method.

The greater value of DigiPal is its generalized framework for the online presentation of palaeographical materials. It is freely available to scholars wishing to create similar projects, several of which are already under way. For instance, DigiPal’s framework is already being used to study Hebrew and Greek, as well as images of later European handwriting and decoration. Recently, DigiPal’s framework has been expanded to include a new feature: users can now view palaeographical forms with the corresponding text, and thus can probe the relationship between text and script.

DigiPal’s innovative framework, collaborative origins, open access, quality design, and skillfully curated pilot collection make it an excellent model for the practice of digital humanities scholarship in the field of medieval studies.

Susan Boynton (Columbia Univ.) was recently awarded a three-year grant from the Partner University Fund (FACE Foundation) for digital humanities and musical iconography, for an exchange with the Sorbonne (http://edblogs.columbia.edu/musiconis/).

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In the aftermath of the recent presidential election in the United States, the Medieval Academy of America reaffirms its commitment “to foster an environment of diversity, inclusion, and academic freedom,” as expressed in our “Statement on Diversity and Academic Freedom” published in February 2016 and available on our website. We join other scholarly associations which have recognized that in our role as teachers, scholars, and students of the humanities we can play an essential role in promoting mutual respect and understanding.