Prof. Orietta Da Rold
Biography
I am Professor of Medieval Literature and Manuscript Studies, Fellow of St John’s College, and the Academic Director of The Cambridge University Library Research Institute (CULRI). Before coming to Cambridge, I was at Leicester and before that I covered research positions at Oxford, Birmingham and Leeds. I am a member of the Center for Material Texts, an affiliate member of Stanford Text Technologies and Cambridge Digital Humanities.
Research Interests
As a pan‑European scholar with expertise in multiple Western languages and a strong grounding in both British and Continental scholarly traditions, my research focuses on the intersection of medieval literatures and textual cultures. I work and publish on medieval manuscripts, editorial practices, codicology, palaeography, scribal production techniques, Chaucer studies, and the digital humanities. I am equally interested in medieval literary interpretation, particularly how texts respond to and are shaped by their material and multilingual environments. My work also engages with continental literature and with translation as a mode of cultural transmission. More broadly, I examine how social and cultural ideas of change shape medieval literary expression within a holistic framework. I publish across a range of media, from digital editions and ebooks to traditional academic formats, including Paper in Medieval England, a co‑edited Companion to British Manuscript Studies, and a special issue on 'Paper and Poetry' that brings together new creative, theoretical and material approaches. My current research includes two major projects: Paper in Time and Space, developed from my 2020–21 Sandars Lectures and aligned with the 'Thinking Paper' Project, and a developing project on pan‑European knowledge networks in medieval book production and Chaucer’s libraries.
I advocate for collections‑led research as a powerful driver of innovation, collaboration, and public engagement. I embed collections at the centre of my research and teaching practice, championing their role as foundation for new forms of knowledge. My work is committed to fostering an academic environment in which scholars, curators, students, and practitioners can thrive through engagement with collections. I have worked on how digital technologies and models can be integrated with the study of medieval manuscript culture and collections. The Manuscripts Lab builds on this experience and brings together students and colleagues to explore the powerful connection between teaching and research in Manuscript Studies. I was a recipient of the Technology-Enabled Learning Programme pilot projects (2019-20) in collaboration with Huw Jones and James Freeman (CUL).
In my research, I acknowledge the generous support of the British Academy (Neil Ker Fund, Mid-Career Fellowship); The Bibliographical Society; the Cambridge Humanities Research Grant; The Research and Collection Programme (Cambridge); The Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (Conference Fund); The European Science Foundation (Exploratory Workshops Programme); and JISC (e-Content Capital Programme).
I am the Series Editor, with Holly James-Maddocks, ‘York Manuscript and Early Print Studies’, York Medieval Press, Boydell & Brewer.
Areas of Graduate Supervision
I welcome research proposals on manuscript studies, medieval literature, including comparative work, and multilingual textual cultures. I am also interested in supervising projects that draw on digital approaches to medieval studies.
Completed doctoral projects under my supervision have considered the audiences and transmission of Chaucerian manuscripts, regional linguistic variation in medieval English texts, and the production and circulation of legal manuscripts in the twelfth century. Other theses have investigated the cultural and material uses of animals in the Middle Ages and the dynamics of multilingualism (English, Latin and French) and knowledge exchange in English manuscript culture between the early thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Current projects include the Beryn scribe and late‑medieval book production, the transition from parchment to paper in English record‑keeping, and the manuscript tradition of Dante’s Vita Nuova.
I teach on the MPhil in English Studies. If you are interested in the MPhil and medieval research in the Faculty more generally, see https://www.english.cam.ac.uk/research/medieval/mphil/
Recent MPhil theses span a wide range of topics in medieval textual cultures, book history, and reception studies. These projects have examined memory and form in individual codices, the afterlives of medieval women’s contemplative writing, theological and scientific frameworks in Dante, vernacular translation practices, the material and performative qualities of holy books, the tools and habits of medieval scribes, the role of materiality in Chaucer’s works, the editing of medical texts in manuscript, and environmental approaches to Old English manuscripts.
Connect with Orietta
Publications
Books, E-books and Editions:
Orietta Da Rold and Logan Rivers, with Carlotta Barranu and Suzanne Paul, Paper Stocks in Western Medieval Manuscripts, https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/paperstocks/1
Special Issue: Paper and Poetry: Interventions in Theory and Practice, with guest ed. G. Wilson, Critical Quarterly, 67 (2025), 1-173, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12789
Paper in Medieval England: From Pulp to Fictions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), ISBN: 978-1-108-84057-6, i-xx, 270 pp.
Companion to British Manuscript Studies, ed. with Elaine Treharne (Cambridge University Press, 2020), ISBN: 9781316182659
Writing Europe 500-1450: Texts and Contexts, ed. with Philip Shaw and Aidan Conti, special issue for Essays and Studies (2015), ISBN: 978-1-84384-415-0.
The Multitext Edition: Eight Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, The Norman Blake Editions of The Canterbury Tales, ed. with Simon Horobin, Michael Pidd, Estelle Stubbs and Claire Thomson with Linda Cross (HRI online), http://www.chaucermss.org/multitext, ISBN: 978-0-9571022-1-7.
The Dd Manuscript: A Digital Edition of Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.4.24 of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, ed., The Norman Blake Editions of The Canterbury Tales (HRI online, 2013), ISBN: 978-0-9571022-0-0, http://www.chaucermss.org/dd
New Medieval Literature, guest ed. with Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne, 13 (2012 for 2011). ISBN 978-2-503-53653-8.
E-medieval: Teaching, Research, and the Net, ed. with Elaine Treharne, Special issue, Literature Compass (2012), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lico.2012.9.issue-12/issuetoc.
English Manuscripts before 1400, ed. with A.G.S. Edwards, English Manuscripts Studies: 1100-1700 (British Library Publishing, 2012), ISBN 9780712358835.
The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, ed. with Takako Kato, Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne (eds.) First published 2010; updated 2013, School of English, University of Leicester SBN 095323195x, version 1.0 (http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220/); updated 2018, Stanford University (https://em1060.stanford.edu/)
Textual Culture, Cultural Texts, 1000-2010, ed. with Elaine Treharne, special issue of Essays and Studies (Boydell & Brewer, 2010) ISBN: 9781843842392.
Electronic Resources
Manuscripts Online, http://www.manuscriptsonline.org/
Dante’s Commedia, edited by P. James, https://www.dantecommedia.it/index.html
Articles and Essays
G. Wilson and O. Da Rold, 'Introduction: Paper and Poetry - Interventions in Theory and Practice', Critical Quarterly, 67 (2025), 3-9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/criq.12789
N. Posegay and O. Da Rold, 'A Preliminary Study of European Paper in Late Medieval Cairo (ca. 1350-1600)', The Library, 25, 4 (2024), 430-452.
‘Medieval Clerical Culture: The Sociology of Script and the Significance of Scribal Quirks', Speculum, 99 (2024), 713-743.
T.G. Grossmann, Schönlieb, CB. & Da Rold, O. 'Extracting chain lines and laid lines from digital images of medieval paper using spectral total variation decomposition', Heritage Science, 11, 180 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-023-01013-3
'Hengwrt', The Chaucer Encyclopedia, eds. Richard Newhouser, Vincent Gillespie, Jessica Rosenfeld, and Katie Walter, Wiley-Blackwell, 2023.
'Pratt, Robert', The Chaucer Encyclopedia, eds. Richard Newhouser, Vincent Gillespie, Jessica Rosenfeld, and Katie Walter, Wiley-Blackwell, 2023.
‘The Endurance of Early English Literary Traditions’, Routledge Companion to Medieval English Literature, edited by Raluca Radulescu and Sif Rikhardsdottir (Routledge, 2022), pp. 237-247.
'Early Italian Paper-Stocks in British Archives', in La rivoluzione della carta nel Mediterraneo: produzione e commercio, ed. by Livia Faggioni e Mauro Mussolin (2022), pp. 99-114.
'Networks of paper in late medieval England’, in The Paper Trade in Early Modern Europe. Practices, Materials, Networks, eds Anna Reynolds and Daniel Bellingradt (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2021), pp. 148-166.
'Tradition and Innovation in Cataloguing Medieval Manuscripts', Anglia, 139 (2021), 32-58.
‘Introduction: the matter of manuscripts and methodologies’ with E. Treharne, in Companion to British Manuscript Studies (CUP, 2020), pp. 15-23.
‘Networks of writers and readers’ with E. Treharne, in Companion to British Manuscript Studies (CUP, 2020), pp. 143-162.
‘A note on Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 210’, in Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, ed. Benjamin Albritton, Georgia Henley, and Elaine Treharne, Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 57-63.
‘Paper in Medieval English Books’ in Pádraig Ó Macháin, ed, Paper and the Paper Manuscript: A Context for the Transmission of Gaelic Literature (Cork, University College Cork, 2019), pp. 1-7.
'Prefazione/Afterwords’ in Emauela di Stefano, Fra le Marche, Il Mediterraneo, L’Europa. Pioraco: radici ed Espansione di un Centro Cartario (Napoli; Edizioni scientifiche Italiane, 2019), pp. 17-23.
‘Codicology’, The Encyclopaedia of Medieval British Literature, ed. Sian Echard and Robert Rouse (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), pp. 531-38.
‘Preface’ with Aidan Conti and Philip Shaw, Essays and Studies (2015), pp. xiii-xv.
‘Medieval Manuscript Studies: an European Perspective’ with Marilena Maniaci, Essays and Studies (2015), pp. 1-24.
‘Codicology, Localization and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud. Misc. 108’ in The Makers and Users of Medieval Books, edited by Derek Pearsall and Carol Meale (Boydell & Brewer, 2014), pp. 48-59.
‘Digital Humanities, Libraries and Federated Searching: The Manuscripts Online Project’, Digitale Rekonstruktionen mittelalterlicher Bibliotheken (Reichert, 2014), pp. 71-79.
'New Challenges to the Editing of Chaucer’, in Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Anne Hudson and Vincent Gillespie (Brepols, 2013), pp. 481-92.
‘Making the Book: Cambridge, University Library Ii.1.33’, New Medieval Literature 13 (2012 for 2011), pp. 273-88.
‘Linguistic Contiguities: English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220’, with Mary Swan, in Conceptualizing Multilingualism, edited by Elizabeth Tyler (Brepols, 2012), pp. 255-70.
‘Materials’ in The Production of Books in England c.1350–c.1530, edited by Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin (CUP, 2011), pp. 12-33.
'Editing Chaucer after Manly and Rickert', Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 32 (2010), 375-82.
Authored several manuscript descriptions, in The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, Orietta Da Rold, Takako Kato, Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne (eds.) (Leicester, School of English University of Leicester, 2010), ISBN 095323195x, version 1.0 (http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220/)
'Manuscript Production before Chaucer: Some Preliminary Observations' in Textual Culture, Cultural Texts, 1000-2010, edited by Orietta Da Rold and Elaine Treharne,special issue of Essays and Studies (Boydell & Brewer, 2010), pp. 43-58.
'Textual Copying and Transmission' in Oxford Handbook of Medieval English Literature, edited by Greg Walker and Elaine Treharne (OUP, 2010), pp. 33-56.
‘The Linguistic Stratification in the Cambridge University Library Dd Copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales’, with Jacob Thaisen, Neuphilologische Mitteillungen, 110 (2009), 283-297.
‘Fingerprinting Paper in West Midlands Medieval Manuscripts’ in Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. W. Scase (Brepols, 2007), pp. 257-71.
‘The Significance of Scribal Corrections in Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.4.24’, The Chaucer Review, 41.4 (2007), 393-436.
Authored and contributed to several manuscript descriptions, Manuscripts of the West Midlands: A Catalogue of Vernacular Manuscript Books of the English West Midlands, c. 1300 - c. 1475, with Rebecca Farnham and Wendy Scase (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2006), <http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/mwm/>
‘Re-sourcing the Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220’, Literature Compass, 3.4 (2006), 750-66.
‘The Quiring System in Cambridge, University Library MS. Dd.4.24.’, The Library, 7th series, 4 (2003), 10-24.
Blogs and media
The Sandars lecures: watch Part One, Part Two and Part Three online.
Paper in the Middle Ages, medievalist.net
‘Paper As Commodity In Medieval Magical And Medical Practices’, Recipes Project, 6 August 2016 https://recipes.hypotheses.org/8358
‘Cambridge University maps paper use in medieval England’, BBC, 19 March 2016 < http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35834249>
‘From Pulp to Fiction: our love affair with paper’, University of Cambridge Press released from the Horizon article, 17 March 2016 < http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/from-pulp-to-fiction-our-love-affair-with-paper>
‘History of Technology’, Cambridge TV, http://www.cambridge-tv.co.uk/dr-orietta-da-rold-history-of-technology/
‘WEST NORFOLK: Red Register is exceptional says archives expert’, Lynn News, 25 March 2013, http://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/local/latest-local-news/west-norfolk-red-register-is-exceptional-says-archives-expert-1-4929778#ixzz46M06wm2H