Chronica IX - September MMXXV

• Welcome from the Director
• SSHRC Success
  • The Digital Burgundio Project: Chris L. Nighman, Riccardo Macchioro
  • Economy, Society, and Culture in the German lands c.900–c.1250: Shami Ghosh
  • Avicenna’s Natural Philosophy: Translations, Editions and Studies of the physical works of the Healing: Jon McGinnis
  • Communities of Practice: Scripts, Scribes, and the Production of Literature in London, 1377-1471: Sebastian Sobecki
  • The Place of the Human in Early Medieval England: Renée Trilling
• York Plays 2025 with Matthew Sergi
• Calendar of Events
• Photo Memories
• Publications
• Congratulations
  • Faculty Accomplishments
  • Student Accomplishments
  • Alumni Accomplishments
  • Recent Graduates
• CMS Community
• In Memoriam
  • Anne Reiber DeWindt
  • Ian Lancashire
  • William Paul Lundell
  • Timothy Brian Noone
  • Jill Rosemary Webster

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Welcome from the Director

September is a time of saying both “farewell” and “welcome.” We say farewell to the five students who successfully defended their doctoral theses over the last year: Drs. Deanna Brook’s, Cameron Wachowich, Emma Gabe, Vajra Regan, and Lane Springer; and we know that everything will go well for the two students who defend this month: Brianna Daigneault and Bard Swallow. We also say goodbye to the eleven MA students of the 2024-2025 academic year, and wish them all well as they move on to their next venture.  

I must bid a quasi-farewell to Elisa Brilli, who stepped down as Director this summer, though not an actual farewell, as she will remain a vibrant member of the Centre. We are all extremely grateful for her departmental accomplishments over the last few years. Under her careful watch, we have built a strong administrative team, established new protocols that will better support our work of teaching and research, and opened new possibilities for the Centre to explore as we move forward.  

Our offers of welcome are bestowed to our incoming MA and PhD students: we welcome fifteen new students to the Centre this fall. I am thrilled to have them join us, and I know they will enhance the life of the Centre. We welcome Professor Rita Copeland as the 2025 Bennett Visiting Scholar, along with her husband, David Wallace. We welcome back Professor Audrey Walton to the Centre, excited for her return to teaching this fall semester. And, I must also welcome Renée Trilling, who graciously agreed to take up the position of Associate Director for this academic year. I know that all of our students will benefit from her work this year. 

Finally, I welcome the major influx of research money that faculty in the Centre have generated: Jon McGinnis, Sebastian Sobecki, Renee Trilling, Shami Ghosh, Riccardo Macchioro, Chris Nighman, and myself. The Centre’s faculty have generated over $900,000 of research income over the next few years. Such success points to important and creative research that is now underway!

- James Ginther,
Interim Director, CMS

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SSHRC Success

Professor Jim Ginther has received a SSHRC Insight Grant for The Digital Burgundio Project, which will create online and print editions of the unpublished Greek theological texts translated by Burgundio of Pisa. With Professors Riccardo Macchioro (CMS) and Chris Nighman (Wilfrid Laurier, CMS, PIMS), the project will significantly contribute to open-access medieval resources.

What are your current research interests, and how do they intersect with this project?

I became interested in 12th-century Greco-Latin translators when my editorial work on Latin florilegia led me to realize that many medieval Latin translations of Greek texts were never printed because they were supplanted by new Latin translations during the Renaissance that were printed. This is the case with Burgundio’s translations of Chrysostom’s Gospel commentaries on both John and Matthew, which were widely cited until the mid-15th century. 
My primary role will be to complete my online edition of Burgundio’s translation of Chrysostom’s homilies on Matthew, which were half completed a few years ago with internal funds. The later 15th- & 18th-century Latin translations will then be digitized so they can be displayed on the website side-by-side for ease of comparative analysis, following the model of my CLIO Project website (clioproject.net). 

How does the project allow for collaborative exploration?

The key factor in my partnership with Jim and Riccardo is the philological study of Burgundio’s interlinear glosses to his translations. We will examine how they impacted the manuscript traditions and how they developed over time, as Burgundio’s translation work on both patristic and classical Greek texts spanned several decades in the late 12^th century. 
The project will allow for further collaborative opportunities, including the assembly of a team of CMS graduate student RAs to assist us with this work. We have also reached out to several colleagues with related research interests in hopes of organizing a colloquium near the end of this three-year project, and perhaps publishing the proceedings. I expect that the collective research results from the Digital Burgundio Project will contribute significantly to the intellectual, theological, and philosophical history of medieval Latin literature.

Upon the transcription of the three texts, they will be mounted online as machine-readable texts. Why is accessibility a significant piece of the project for you?

I’m fully committed to Open Access scholarship, having contributed to it and greatly benefited from the work of others in many different ways. Since 2001, I’ve developed a dozen scholarly websites for medieval Latin bibliography and textual editions (chrisnighman.com/research-projects), and most of my scholarly publications are either in online journals or have been released for Open Access.
I’m convinced that this mode of scholarly dissemination is vitally important in order to continue advancing our understanding of the medieval past, especially in a time of shrinking resources in the humanities.

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How are Burgundio’s translations significant to your research, and to medieval studies?

Burgundio of Pisa (1110-1193) was one of the most versatile intellectuals of the Middle Ages: jurist, physician, philosopher, diplomat, and an exceptionally prolific translator from Greek into Latin. He was the first to make Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and several of Galen’s works accessible to Latin-speaking readership, thus exerting a profound influence on European medieval thought.
In The Digital Burgundio Project, we focus on Burgundio’s translations that, while no less significant, have been largely neglected by scholarship: Latin versions of Greek patristic texts (John Damascene, John Chrysostom, Basil of Caesarea). In addition to publishing these texts for the first time, we will highlight the extraordinary apparatuses of marginal and interlinear glosses preserved in the Latin manuscripts – annotations that can be traced back to Burgundio himself.
That later codices allow us a glimpse into the author at work centuries earlier is still one of the most fascinating aspects of philological research! Burgundio represents the culmination of a research thread on medieval Greek-Latin translations I have been undertaking since my PhD thesis (quite some time ago…), and I am thrilled to keep uncovering how crucial intercultural exchanges have proven in shaping medieval culture in all its dimensions.

How does partnership benefit The Digital Burgundio Project?

While each co-applicant will be responsible for a specific translation, the three works will be studied as a unique corpus; they raise the same scientific problems and will be approached through a shared methodology. Together, they will significantly advance the knowledge of Burgundio in medieval culture.
The combination of complementary skills and abilities will be a key to the success of the project. I was lucky enough to come across the annotations and notice their heuristic potential, and I hope to contribute my experience with Greek-Latin medieval texts. Chris will bring invaluable experience with regard to digital output, having led a number of projects that were welcomed with unconditional praise by the scholarly community. Jim is a leading expert in exploring the intellectual environments of the 12^th and 13^th centuries, where Burgundio’s translations (especially those of John Damascene) were read and studied.
Not least, contribution from graduate student Research Assistants will be pivotal. Engaging with research in a new field (with the guidance of a senior scholar) is an extremely enriching experience for a young researcher, and at the same time, we will be able to benefit from their fresh views.

What resources do you hope to ultimately provide to the medieval studies community?

The digital platform markedly enhances impact and usability of our research. The results will be freely accessible to a much broader audience; they will be easily searchable and can be updated at any time, differently than a printed edition. Above all, the platform will allow for effectively managing a fundamental aspect of the project: the study of the annotations, which can be presented and displayed in a flexible way. 
The availability of Burgundio’s translations in this digital form will be a game-changer for the medieval studies community. To give but one example: his version of John Damascene’s On Orthodox Faith provoked remarkable updates on late 12^th and 13^th-century theological views in European universities, and significantly shaped one of the most read “manuals” on the matter, Peter Lombard’s Sentences. 
With a digital, searchable edition, retrieving quotations, re-uses, and allusions, will become easy and quick, whereas so far it has been virtually impossible. The project’s digital outcomes will thus contribute to a better understanding of both medieval translation strategies and theories, and crucial developments of medieval culture more broadly.

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Professor Shami Ghosh has received SSHRC Insight funding for his project, Economy, Society, and Culture in the German lands c.900–c.1250, which will provide a comprehensive analysis of the rural economy during a largely neglected period of German economic history. Collaborating with the CMS Community, the project will demonstrate how this economic basis relates to social and cultural developments among the elites.

How has your academic research evolved into this project?

My undergraduate degree was in German literature with a focus on the Middle Ages, and I spent a year as a graduate student in the same discipline at Harvard. As a doctoral student, I focused on acquiring further skills required for medieval history, for example, advanced training in Latin and working with unpublished archival manuscripts. Much of my research career has had a regional focus on German-speaking Europe, and a temporal span ranging from the 5^th to the 15^th centuries.

In my research, I have argued for the necessary comparison of long-term economic development, and a turn away from the England-centered narrative that has come to dominate the field of economic history. This project will explore the changes in the agrarian economy of the German lands in this period, with a focus on its increasing involvement within networks of monetization and exchanges. The aim is to understand the connections between these developments and other changes examined through the lens of economic history.
The relationship between economy and culture has long been a matter of scholarly and public debate. Much intellectual work has been devoted to the ‘culture industry’ and the nexus between business interests, government, and cultural production, with economic history remaining almost entirely the domain of a narrow disciplinary focus. The multidisciplinary approach of this project offers a methodological and theoretical contribution to scholars of other periods and disciplines, as well as another perspective by which to illuminate the links between economy and culture in more recent times. 

What are the project’s anticipated collaborative opportunities?

The project’s funding provides employment for a postdoctoral fellow, who will expand their expertise in navigating libraries and archives. Their contribution to the project will include publications, conference presentations, and mentorship opportunities, allowing them to build an international profile, furthering their career development. In addition, two research assistants will receive advanced research training, resulting in an opportunity for publication, and a chance to begin building a vast scholarly network.
The University of Toronto has a large community of doctoral students in Medieval Studies – those with a foundation in reading manuscripts, Medieval Latin, and older continental Germanic languages – and a specialist in Digital Humanities in the field of Medieval Studies at CMS in Alexandra Bolintineanu. I anticipate a fruitful synergy to arise from this team.

How do you envision the project’s enduring impact?

The links between economic behaviour and culture, their co-dependence, and the potential ethical issues, remain of abiding interest in the modern world. A basic conviction of the historical humanities is that the past provides lessons that can help us understand basic questions affecting humanity in any period. While the results of this research will be of interest to scholarly associations for the study of medieval history and literature, it will also be disseminated to a lay audience, allowing for a broader public discourse on these topics.

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Professor Jon McGinnis was awarded SSHRC Insight Grant funding for his project, Avicenna’s Natural Philosophy: Translations, Editions and Studies of the physical works of the Healing, which aims to complete the first modern translation of Ibn Sīnā’s On Generation and Corruption and On Actions and Passions. The project is an opportunity for the medieval studies community to benefit from and contribute to its interdisciplinary research.

How did your research interests lead to Translations, Editions and Studies of the physical works of the Healing?

I have loved history ever since I was a kid. I fell in love with physics as an undergraduate, and even briefly toyed with the idea of getting an additional major in physics, were it not for my unrequited love of mathematics. Fortunately, my math skills are more than enough for those that crop up in ancient and medieval natural philosophy.
These two loves – history and physics – are what gave rise to my SSHRC proposal, Translations, Editions and Studies of the physical works of the Healing. The project is a first-ever translation (in a modern European language), and an improved edition of Ibn Sīnā / Avicenna’s Arabic works On Generation and Corruption and On Actions and Passions. The two works are Ibn Sīnā’s unique views on some of the most basic natural processes – how things come to be and the nature of mixtures – and elemental interactions.

How do student partnerships strengthen this multifaceted project?

The project is inherently cross-disciplinary and thus rife for collaboration. Appreciating Ibn Sīnā’s philosophical / scientific works requires that I work closely with students of ancient Greek philosophy, particularly those studying Aristotle and his ancient Greek commentators. 
I also frequently find myself working with Latinists. It turns out that the earliest extant Arabic manuscripts of Ibn Sīnā’s work are contemporaneous with the earliest Latin translations available to us, and the Latin frequently confirms, clarifies and even corrects readings of the Arabic! Given the poor state of our current editions of these works, the project also has a decided element of codicology to it, the study of manuscripts in both Arabic and Latin. 
Some of the best insights on and corrections to my previous translations, however, have come from philosophers who have not studied Greek, Arabic or Latin. (I still vividly remember one of my two doktorväter, Jim Ross, who did not know Arabic, reading a translation of mine, and saying, “This can’t be right. Avicenna is smarter than that.” He was right!) The best experience comes when folks from all these fields get together and kick around an idea in translation. Everyone gains something. In short, any students even vaguely interested in the history of medieval science or conceptions of the natural world, come see me!
Both the opportunities that this project offers for collaboration, and the anticipated outcomes (translations and editions of two historically important Avicennan texts and related articles), I hope will contribute to the University of Toronto’s thriving medieval studies community. If a student is interested in digging down into some topic, whether natural philosophy, natural magic (a respected part of medieval physics), the medieval interplay of science and religion, or the like, I am more than happy to write something with them, and perhaps get a publication (or two) out of it.

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Professor Sebastian Sobecki has received a SSHRC Insight grant for his 6-year project, Communities of Practice: Scripts, Scribes, and the Production of Literature in London, 1377-1471. Communities of Practice will examine medieval writing practices, book production, and written culture through digital palaeography and a partnership with a dynamic team of specialists.

What was the genesis of Communities of Practice, and what was involved in visualizing its entirety?

I have long wanted to develop a digital tool that could help me with my work on literary and institutional scribes. In 2020, I decided to survey the field of digital palaeography but was disappointed to learn that the projects end up reproducing traditional palaeography by concentrating on the shapes of letters. My idea was to reproduce the human ability to identify hands and scripts in the same way which we recognize the handwriting of our parents or friends without needing to break down individual letterforms. This is how the idea for this project was born.
While I knew what was involved in traditional palaeography, I had to consult with computer vision specialists and colleagues at the UK’s National Archives to understand their timelines and requirements. Conceptually, the most important stage was developing this project together with a team from Alex Gillespie’s Old Books New Science Lab.

Why was that interdisciplinary partnership essential?

I designed this project with CMS and the Old Books New Science Lab in mind, to employ postdoctoral fellows and several research assistants each year, particularly those with training in English palaeography and Latin and / or French. Students will have the chance to work with manuscripts and different types of medieval records, learning about medieval writing practices, document formats, types of scripts, and the production of books and records.
The work requires not only my own expertise but also that of colleagues in different disciplines. Therefore, it will involve several collaborators here at U of T (including CMS’s Alex Gillespie), Euan Roger at the UK’s National Archives, and computer vision specialists from the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University of Pennsylvania. 

How do you envision the enduring impact of the project?

I am currently writing a book on cursive scripts and late medieval English palaeography that forms part of this project. The machine learning work we are doing will lead to a free online tool for everybody to use. I also hope that the postdocs and RAs working on this project will produce their own related research.
My main hope is that we will all benefit from a better understanding of how books and records were produced in late medieval London and by whom. This, in turn, will sharpen our understanding of medieval European book production and written culture, since the surviving body of medieval English records has no parallel in scope or depth anywhere in Europe.

What research stages are you most looking forward to?

I’m happiest when I’m up to my elbows in medieval records and manuscripts! Other than that, I can’t wait for our free palaeography tool to give life at the end of the project.

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Renée Trilling’s project, The Place of the Human in Early Medieval England, has received SSHRC funding for 4 years, which will allow for exploration into the ideals of early English culture. The project will identify models of human / more-than-human coexistence in the non-literary textual production of the period between c. 800-1100 CE.

Can you please tell us about The Place of the Human in Early Medieval England, and how it materialized?

I’ve been interested for some time in what non-literary texts from early medieval England can tell us about the shifting beliefs and values of early English societies. In addition to a large and rightly well-known corpus of vernacular poetry, early English writers produced hundreds of manuscripts across a six-hundred-year period that include less literary, more quotidian texts: legal codes, medicinal recipes, prayers, penitentials, charms, prognostics, liturgies, diagrams, and more. These texts outline the rhythms and structures of everyday life. They describe daily routines of prayer and penance that governed religious life, law codes that structured crime and reparations for all levels of society, and interactions between human bodies and the more-than-human world of plants, animals, and invisible forces that make up early medieval medicine. They augment the perspective of canonical Old English poetry to offer a broader, more comprehensive view of early medieval English ways of knowing and being. The Place of the Human in Early Medieval England gives me a fantastic opportunity to explore questions about embodiment, materiality, and subjectivity in texts that literary scholars don’t always appreciate.

What were some of your considerations during the SSHRC Insight Grant application process?

One of the most unexpected things about writing the SSHRC grant was how it made me completely reconceive the project. In the past, I’ve tended to think of project descriptions as just that: a summary of what the proposed monograph will achieve, chapter by chapter. For SSHRC, I had to instead discern the broader research questions that underpinned the project as a whole. The application also forced me to think creatively about what “knowledge mobilization” could mean beyond just writing a book, and how I might share the results of my work at different stages. 
It also gave me the chance to consider how graduate students could be more actively involved in my work. I’m thrilled that the grant includes funding for two PhD Research Assistants, who will not only perform some of the fundamental groundwork for various stages of the project, such as transcription, translation, and scholarly surveys, but they will also have opportunities to collaborate on things like conference papers and a potential online database. 

How do you envision the enduring impact of the project?

My hope is that the project will benefit scholars of early medieval English literature by offering an integrated analysis of infrequently-studied and, in some cases, unedited texts. This textual record offers unique insight into the concerns that governed everyday life in pre-Conquest England, and supplements the elite, learned perspectives of Old English poetry that dominate the scholarship. I hope it will also benefit scholars of posthumanism and new materialism by adding a historical dimension to our collective understanding of the place of the human in relation to the more-than-human world. The question of human impacts on the global environment has never been more pressing, but it also has a long philosophical history that the presentism of contemporary theory generally overlooks. By looking to other historical periods for inspiration, we can generate creative ways of thinking about both the present and the future.

 

"I am pleased to provide guidance throughout the grant submission process. Reach out at any time for consultation on project  ideas, or for a review of a grant application."

- Dr. Gabrielle Sugar, CMS Funded Research Officer, A&S Research Services

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York Plays 2025

Imagine fifty short play scripts, each one based on a different Bible story, each one produced and performed by a different craft guild, all on one day. These are the medieval York Corpus Christi Plays, which took place this summer for the first time in over 25 years, organized by Professor Matthew Sergi and Poculi Ludique Societas.

Few people in the wider world think very often of medieval plays, but when they do, they usually think of Toronto. One reason is the Records of Early English Drama, founded in 1976, and headquartered in the Department of English. The other, Poculi Ludique Societas, was founded in 1965, and is headquartered in the basement of CMS, where you can find our trove of sixty years’ worth of costumes and props. Especially well-known for its many large-scale remounts of medieval plays on replica pageant wagons, PLS is a non-profit production company specializing in early drama. In 2013, when I left my position at Wellesley College to come to Toronto, I was drawn largely by the presence and promise of those resources.

What I did not expect, but perhaps should have, was to find myself helming one of those gigantic pageant-wagon productions. It was at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium in April 2022 that a group of drama scholars, just chatting, observed in passing that a proper staging of the full cycle of York Corpus Christi Plays was overdue. Those plays had only been performed in their entirety twice in the modern era, both PLS productions at Toronto in 1977 and 1998. Since the necessity of performance-as-research is axiomatic for medieval drama scholars, we all nodded in agreement that they really should do it again.

It took me a moment to realize that the “they” who would be responsible for such a production was me. It did not help that in late summer 2022, a fire in campus storage completely destroyed the wagon stages that PLS had been using for decades. The sheer mass of organizational and planning duties for the event, including a full rebuild of the wagons, and involving over 200 performers across 17 different production teams, has itself generated research. I published an article in ROMARD (May 2025) that re-interprets relevant REED records from an event producer’s point of view, and CMS student Aria Kowal built her MA thesis around the wagons, which she designed anew.

York Plays 2025 ran over 18.5 hours, from 6 am to 12:30 am, on June 7, 2025. It was a triumph, featuring excellent performances throughout the day. A common refrain overheard was, “I expected to stay for a couple of hours, but I found myself staying for much longer,” or “for the whole thing.” Aria’s four gorgeous new wagon stages circulated among three performance stations on the Burwash Quad at U of T’s Victoria University. All fifty York plays (arranged into 34 “clusters,” each participating team taking on two) repeated three times in a row (in medieval York, there were twelve repetitions!) except at the very end, where hundreds of people gathered at midnight around the lone lamppost that lit the single run of the Last Judgment. 

Riding this momentum, we’re staging a portable production of CMS PhD Candidate, Morgan Moore’s new translation of the early Welsh plays, The Strong Man and Soul and Body. Sponsored by PLS and the Jackman Humanities Institute, they will debut at the Oxford Renaissance Faire, then will run in Toronto for five performances. To attend the production, to donate or volunteer with PLS, or to join our monthly cold-read working group (no preparation needed!), visit plsplayers.com.

- Matthew Sergi, Associate Professor, Department of English / CMS

The Strong Man / Soul and Body
September 26-28 - Oxford Renaissance Faire
September 30-October 8 - Social Capital Theatre
October 2-4 - Jackman Humanities Building

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Calendar of Events

September 12 - Convivium: Sébastien Rossignol (Memorial University), ‘Tenere suam aquam equo modo’: Understanding the Urbanized Energy Landscape of Medieval Silesia
September 25 - CRRS Erasmus Lecture: Yannis Hadjinicolaou (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), The Art of Falconry: Global Cultural Technique and Political Iconology
September 26 - Convivium: Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America), The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript

October 9 - PIMS Leonard Boyle Memorial Lecture: David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania), Chaucer and the Blessed Virgin Mary
October 2-4 - Poculi Ludique Societas: The Strong Man / Soul and Body
October 9-11 - Classics Conference: Theory After Practice
October 24 - Convivium: Thomas J. Finan (Saint Louis University), Gaelic Ireland: Revising the Narrative with Archaeology

November 7 - Convivium: David Townsend (Professor Emeritus, CMS / English), Historical Fiction and Its Discontents (Book Launch: The Ram in the Thicket)
November 21 - Convivium: Jamie St. Clair Collings (CMS PhD Student) / Wynn A. Walk Martin (CMS PhD Student), ‘What’s the matter?’, or, how (northern) romance worlds are made

December 4 - CMS Holiday Party
December 5 - Bennett Lecture: Rita Copeland (CMS / PIMS W. John Bennett Distinguished Visiting Scholar)

January 9 - Convivium: David Ungvary (Bard College), Ashes to Ashes, Cover to Cover: Perusing Christian Poetry Books in the Post-Roman West
January 23 - Convivium: Claire Davis (CMS PhD Student) / Adam Lalonde (CMS PhD Student)

February 6 - Convivium: Dorothea Kullmann (CMS / French), A pacifist heroic epic? The 12th-century ‘Girart de Roussillon’ in its political and ideological context(s)
February 13 - CMS / Classics Lecture (TBA)
February 21 - Mongolian New Year Celebration: Tsagaan Sar

March 6 - Convivium: Siobhain Bly Calkin (Carleton University), Rethinking Passion Relic Agency through Late Medieval Tales of Christian-Muslim Conflict and Contact
March 13 - CMS / Classics Lecture (TBA)
March 21 - CMS / Classics Lecture (TBA)

April 9 - Annual Alumni Lecture: Faith Wallis (McGill University) / CMS End-of-Year Party
April 10 - Annual O'Donnell Lecture: Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge)
April 17 - Toronto Old English Colloquium: Lindy Brady (Edge Hill University), Multilingualism in the Global Viking Age

• Visit https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events for a complete list of upcoming lectures, conferences, and events. Visit https://www.medieval.utoronto.ca/news-events/cms-convivium for more information about the CMS Convivium, including schedules and links.

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Memories / Photos

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Publications

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Congratulations

 

Faculty Accomplishments

Adam S. Cohen was appointed Graduate Chair in the Department of Art History.

Shami Ghosh received SSHRC Insight funding for his project, Economy, Society, and Culture in the German lands c.900 - c.1250.

Alexandra Gillespie’s appointment as Vice-President, University of Toronto/Principal, UTM, was renewed for an additional two years.

James Ginther was appointed Interim Director of CMS. Professor Ginther was also awarded a SSHRC Insight grant for The Digital Burgundio Project with Ricchardo Macchioro and Chris Nighman.

Reza Hadisi was promoted to tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy.

Laura Ingallinella joined the board of the Toronto Renaissance and Reformation Colloquium.

Ruba Kana’an was awarded the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Scholar Award.

Alison Keith was awarded the Sharon L. James Mentorship Award from the Women’s Classical Caucus.

Jon McGinnis’s project, Avicenna’s Natural Philosophy: Translations, Editions and Studies of the physical works of the Healing, was awarded a SSHRC Insight grant. Professor McGinnis was also appointed Director of the Collaborative Specialization in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (CSAMP).

Cillian O’Hogan was promoted to Associate Professor at the Centre for Medieval Studies.

Sebastian Sobecki was granted SSHRC Insight funding for his project, Communities of Practice: Scripts, Scribes, and the Production of Literature in London, 1377-1471. Professor Sobecki also received Université Paris Cité - University of Toronto Joint Research funding for Re-Orienting Female Mobility in the Early Global World, a project which will include Laura Ingallinella as a Researcher.

The Artemisia Project: Rape in Early Modern Europe, a project on which Nicholas Terpstra will collaborate, received a SSHRC Insight grant.

Renée Trilling received a SSHRC Insight grant for her project, The Place of the Human in Early Medieval England. Professor Trilling was also appointed as Associate Director of CMS.

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Student Accomplishments

Tristan Cullum was awarded both an Ontario Graduate Scholarship and a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship for Master’s Studies at CMS.

Micah Heinricks was awarded a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship for Master’s Studies at CMS.

Graham Johnson received the CMS Publication Prize for his article, “‘Per dynamin – per energian’: Hrotsvit of Gandersheim’s knowledge of Greek” in Early Medieval Europe, Volume 33, Issue 2. He was also awarded the CMS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, awarded for the near completion of his dissertation.

Adam Lalonde was awarded an Ontario Graduate Scholarship to continue doctoral research at CMS.

Jack McCart was awarded U of T’s 2025-26 Dean’s Doctoral Excellence Scholarship.

Samuel MacPhee received SSHRC funding to continue graduate research at CMS.

James Nowak was awarded a Canada Graduate Research Scholarship for Master’s Studies at CMS.

Rebby Onken received a Connaught International Scholarship for doctoral studies at CSM.

John Schechtman-Marko received SSHRC funding to continue graduate research at CMS.

Kristen Simpson received an Ontario Graduate Scholarship for doctoral studies at CMS.

Bard Swallow was awarded the CMS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, awarded for the early completion of their dissertation.

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Alumni Accomplishments

Christopher Berard (PhD 2015) was the recipient of the 2025 Recognition for Teaching Excellence by Adjunct Faculty Award from Providence College’s Center for Teaching Excellence.

Winston Black (PhD 2007) received a SSHRC Insight grant for Languages of Authority: Editing Medieval Medicine, working with a team of collaborators that includes Faith Wallis (PhD 1985).

Thomas Burman (PhD 1991) was awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Medieval & Early Modern Studies, joining the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for the 2025-2026 academic year, and was elected MAA president for the 2027-28 academic year, now a permanent fellow of the academy.

Mairi Cowan (PhD 2003) was promoted to Professor, Teaching Stream at Historical Studies, UTM.

Andrew Dunning (PhD 2016) received a Neil Ker Memorial Fund Special Award from the British Academy for his project, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: Securing a future for a key resource in manuscript studies. 

Samuel J. Klumpenhouwer received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to translate the Glossa Ordinaria at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

Christopher Liebtag-Miller (PhD 2019) was promoted to Associate Teaching Professor at University of Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute.

Laura Moncion (PhD 2024) was the recipient of this year’s Leonard Boyle Dissertation Prize for Medieval Studies from the Canadian Society of Medievalists for her dissertation, “‘Closen leben das ist nut ein cleines ding’: Women Recluses in Alsace, c.1200–1500”.

Kathryn Salzer (PhD 2009) was named Rick and Sue Barry Director of The Pennsylvania State University’s Paterno Fellows Program.

Hilary Wynne (MA 2005) received a British Academy / Leverhulme Small Research Grant, and a grant from Oxford University Press’ John Fell Fund for her project, Eliciting language-specific signatures for expertise in the human brain.

Gur Zak (PhD 2007)’s new research project, Florentines in the Language of Grace: Dante, Petrarca and Bukacchu in New Hebrew Literature, has been funded for three years by the National Science Foundation.

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Recent Graduates

Welcome three new graduates to our roster of Alumni, all of whom successfully defended their dissertations in June 2025.

Emma Gabe, “Sorores in coquina: Laysisters in German Monasteries, c.1300–1550”

Vajra Regan, “The Liber thesaurizatus of Bartholomeus de Ripa Romea: A Critical Edition, Translation, and Study”

Lane Springer,  “As Many Saints as Stars: Irish Peregrini in Carolingian Hagiography (8^th-10^th centuries)”

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In Memoriam

Anne Reiber DeWindt

August 8, 1943 — March 31, 2025

Anne Reiber DeWindt earned her PhD at CMS in 1972 with a dissertation entitled “Society and Change in a Fourteenth-Century English Village: King’s Ripton 1275–1400”. Anne went on to teach history at Wayne County Community College. She authored many articles and books, including Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200–1600 (Catholic University of America Press, 2006), a project to which she dedicated many years of research with her late husband, Edwin Brezette DeWindt.

"Anne and her husband Edwin were of an earlier student cohort than my own, so I first met them not in Toronto but at Kalamazoo, beginning a friendship of thirty years or more that was nurtured by regular meetings on both sides of the Atlantic.
An especially fond memory is the exuberant 4th of July gatherings that they used to organize every summer in London at a variety of local restaurants. Anne’s quiet sweetness and warmth, her intellectual curiosity and integrity, and her fundamental kindness and courage never wavered, despite the shattering loss of Edwin and the onset of dementia. She is deeply missed by those of us lucky enough to have known her."

- Martha Carlin,
CMS Alum / Distinguished Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Ian Lancashire

November 27, 1942  -  April 3, 2025

Ian Lancashire, Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and Centre for Medieval Studies, researched Early Modern English lexicography and poetry, mental illness in the Middle Ages, Tudor drama and theatre history, and digital humanities. He was one of the three founders of Records of Early English Drama (REED) and the project’s bibliographer from 1975–81. His legacy lives on through his poetry and extensive scholarly publications.

"Ian Lancashire was one of the founders of REED, the humanities research project that continues to flourish in its 50th year. One of my earliest memories of Ian was watching him lay out what looked like hundreds of pages of a Canada Council grant application on a ledge of the 14^th floor of the Robarts Library, at our first tiny offices. The result was the 10-year grant that launched REED, with Ian as master bibliographer. 
Those were heady days. He laid the foundations for our bibliographic research methodology and began with much enthusiasm to order English local histories and essential bibliographies from English booksellers. The exciting arrival of these book boxes is a fond memory, and they will be a lasting legacy in REED’s library. Even more, as an early adopter of computer technology, Ian initiated our first concordance program, pointing the way to our digital future as well as his own. Many of us remember Ian as the 'father of Canadian humanities computing." 

- Sally-Beth MacLean
Professor Emerita, English / CMS; Director of Research / General Editor, REED

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William Paul Lundell

April 6, 1956  -  April 28, 2025

William Paul Lundell completed his PhD at CMS in 1996 with his dissertation, “Carthusian Policy and the Council of Basel”, and was Associate Professor in the Department of History at Mount Allison University until his passing. Professor Lundell studied the response of the Carthusian order in the face of schism, and contributed his research to such publications as Religion, Text, and Society in Medieval Spain and Northern Europe; Essays in Honor of J.N. Hillgarth (PIMS 2002), edited by Thomas E Burman, Mark D. Meyerson, and Leah Shopkow, all fellow members of the Centre’s Community of Faculty and Alumni.

"My first class at Mount Allison University was Dr. Lundell’s intro to medieval history. Four years and eight courses later, he supervised my undergraduate thesis. He was – and remains – my guiding light for good scholarship, professionalism, and care. I joined CMS in 2021 because I wanted to grow into the same sort of scholar and person. He loved the material he taught, and he transmitted his passion to a generation of Mount Allison students. We are all much better for having known him. 
Despite the centuries’ gap between them, Erasmus was Dr. Lundell’s dear friend. Every student who visited his office noticed the portrait of Erasmus hanging over the mantle. Erasmus writes: '[Charity] is to correct the erring gently, teach the ignorant, lift up the fallen, console the downhearted, aid the struggler, support the needy, [and] in a word, devote all your resources, all your zeal, all your care to this one end, to benefit as many as you can in Christ.' Dr. Lundell lived by Erasmus’ words. I will miss him.”

- Samuel MacPhee
CMS PhD Student

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Timothy Brian Noone

September 21, 1957 — May 11, 2025

studied at CMS, receiving his MA in 1980, and his PhD in 1987 with his dissertation, “An Edition and Study of the Scriptum super Metaphysicam, bk. 12, dist. 2: A Work Attributed to Richard Rufus of Cornwall”. Professor Emeritus Noone also earned an MSL from PIMS, and was most recently the Father Kurt Pritzl Chair in Philosophy at the Catholic University of America, where he was a much-loved mentor.

"Tim was the very first person I met when I arrived at the Pontifical Institute in 1980. He welcomed me like an old friend and immediately marched me over to obtain my library card, his tacit assumption being that my first and greatest priority as a newcomer had to be getting to the library. And Tim was like a big brother to me ever since, through good times and bad. I remember him once making a beeline for me at Kalamazoo after I’d hit a significant bump in life’s road, and when I lost my composure and thanked him, he said simply, “That’s what Toronto folk do. We’re family.” He was an example of the very best that the Institute produced in those years, developing some staggeringly impressive skills as a philosopher, an editor of texts, and a codicologist.
Tim spoke Latin fluently. He played his beloved harmonica even more fluently. He loved bourbon. And anyone who ever heard his irrepressible laugh will never forget it. May he rest in peace."

- M. Michèle Mulchahey
Leonard E. Boyle Professor of Manuscript Studies, PIMS

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Jill Rosemary Webster

September 29, 1931  -  April 24, 2025

"Jill Rosemary Webster was born in 1931 in London, England. She completed BA and MA degrees in Liverpool and Nottingham, then emigrated to Toronto, where she earned a PhD (1969) with a thesis on the Catalan author Francesc Eiximenis. After rising in the ranks to Professor of Spanish Language, Literature, and History, she served a term as Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and was later the Director at CMS (1989-1994). In 2021, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Jill spent summers and sabbaticals in her Barcelona apartment from where she travelled to regional archives, primarily to the Diocese of Vic. In addition to 50 or more articles, she published her research in two books: Carmel in Medieval Catalonia (Brill 1999) and Els Menorets: The Franciscans in the Realms of Aragon (PIMS 1993), the latter of which was published in Catalan translation. As a young scholar, Jill interviewed Catalan anarchists who had taken refuge in France from Francisco Franco. After Franco’s death, she donated her notes to public archives and was presented with a gold medal and the title 'Encomienda de la Orden del Merito Civil' from King Juan Carlos.
In retirement, she began transcribing and annotating archives of the Spanish Poor Clare nuns in anticipation of a book. Sadly, the social isolation imposed during the recent pandemic was particularly difficult for her, though she had daily telephone conversations with Richard Alway, who delivered the eulogy at Jill’s funeral."

- James K. Farge, CMS Professor Emeritus / Curator, Rare Books and Special Collections, PIMS Library
Richard Alway, Praeses Emeritus, St. Mike’s / PIMS