Previous Fellows of ZKS Post-Doctoral Fellowships 

Anna Dorofeeva

1 November 2019 – 31 October 2020

Zeno Karl Schindler / Barker Priory Library Junior Research Fellow

Anna Dorofeeva completed her PhD on early medieval Physiologus manuscripts at the University of Cambridge in 2015, and has since held research fellowships at the University of Frankfurt and University College Dublin. Her research interests span the cultural and intellectual history of the early and high Middle Ages, with a particular focus on manuscripts and book history. At Durham, she worked on secret writing and cryptography in Priory Library manuscripts from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries. Her project aimed to shed light on often invisible aspects of Western monasticism: community identity, the social experience of secrecy, and the boundary between graphic symbol and written word.

View Anna Dorofeeva’s end-of-fellowship report.

We are enourmously grateful to the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation and Joanna Barker for supporting this important research.

Graziana Ciola

1 January - 31 December 2019

ZKS Lendrum Priory Library Junior Research Fellow

Graziana Ciola is a historian of medieval logic and philosophy. She completed a PhD in Philosophy at the Scuola Normale Superiore, defending a doctoral thesis on Marsilius of Inghen’s Treatise on Consequences. She specialises in 14th-century logic and rational philosophy and is particularly interested in the articulations of the notions of logical following and rationality throughout history. Her research focuses on the impact of Richard De Bury’s Circle on the development of logic and natural philosophy in the 14th century and beyond.

View Dr Ciola's end-of-fellowship report.

We are enourmously grateful to the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation and Chris and Margaret Lendrum for supporting this important research.

Matthew Hoskin

1 October 2017 - 31 August 2018

Barker Priory Library Fellow

Matthew Hoskin came to Durham after several years in Edinburgh where he did an M.Th. in Ecclesiastical History and a joint Ph.D. in Classics and Ecclesiastical History and spent time as a Teaching Fellow. The focus of his previous research was the manuscript tradition of Pope Leo the Great’s letters (pope, 440-61) and other early papal letters (particularly of Siricius, Innocent I, Zosimus, and Celestine I). "Papal letters being one of the main sources and foundations of canon law, and our manuscripts for these Late Antique bishops of Rome being mediaeval, when I saw the quantity of canon law manuscripts associated with this project, I knew this was somewhere I wanted to be."

Matthew spent 11 months researching Durham Priory’s canon law manuscripts. These run from a copy of the Collectio Lanfranci brought here by the priory’s (re)founder, William of St-Calais (Bishop of Durham, 1080-96) to a printing of papal decretals from 1527.

View Dr Hoskins' end-of-fellowship report.

We are enourmously grateful to Joanna Barker for supporting this important research.

Elizabeth Biggs

1 March 2017 - 28 February 2018

Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow 

Elizabeth Biggs worked on Durham Priory Library during the middle years of the Reformation (c. 1539-79). She did her doctorate at York, on St Stephen's College in the old palace of Westminster, which was a favoured royal foundation right up to the reign of Edward VI. The people of St Stephen's owned and wrote books, but frustratingly very little information survives about their personal libraries let alone the college's communal library. Thus coming to Durham's rich library and archives to work on the people of the priory as they went from monks to canons and changed their library accordingly was a real pleasure.

Dr Biggs' work formed part of the research strands being investigated as part of the Durham Priory Library Recreated project.

View Dr Biggs' End-of-Fellowship Report.

We are enourmously grateful to the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation for supporting this important research.