Aglae Pizzone and Christian Høgel Awarded Carlsberg Infrastucture Grant

CML co-director Christian Høgel and CML senior researcher/DIAS fellow Aglae Pizzone have been awarded a Carlsberg infrastructure grant (788,574 DKK) with the project “Infrastructure for multi- and hyperspectral image acquisition”. 

Project description

Ancient manuscripts were far from static: composed of several significant layers, they moved and evolved over time, being subject to additions and subtractions. With a focus on medieval and early modern culture, this project will contribute to uncovering the ways books and ideas traveled, evolved and were incremented. When print came to be, moreover, manuscripts, now obsolete, were recycled to create bindings for the new medium. One out of five books from the 16th and 17th c. hides fragments of medieval manuscripts according to estimate. Being home to a large number of early modern books, SDU Library’s Special Collections conceal a treasure waiting to be unearthed. This project will dig out such a treasure, without destroying the manufacts preserving it. This project results from a cutting-edge interdisciplinary synergy between the Department of History, the Centre for Medieval Literature, the Danish Insitute for Advanced Study, SDU Library, and the SDU Centre for Photonics Engineering. Research Librarians Jakob Povl Holck and Mogens Kragsig Jensen (SDU University Library) will implement the technology on SDU special collections, while Christian Høgel (SDU History Department, CML) and Aglae Pizzone (SDU History Department/DIAS, CML) will examine Medieval Greek manuscripts, working with material from Denmark, The Netherlands, Italy and the Vatican. René Lynge Eriksen (SDU Centre for Photonic Engineering) will supervise the optical and technical aspects, custom-tailoring and optimizing the technology across the work-packages.