Beyond the Codex: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Manuscript Cultures

 October 8th, 2025 - January 21st, 2026, 5PM - 6:30PM, Hybride Event, Campus of the University of Vienna, Institute's Auditorium

This lecture series explores recent advances in the study of manuscript cultures across the Ottoman Empire, the Arabic-speaking world, and Central Asia. It examines manuscripts as dynamic media for transmitting knowledge, shaping identities, and preserving cultural memory. Emphasizing new methodologies and interdisciplinary perspectives, the series considers manuscripts as material, intellectual, and social artifacts, focusing on their production, circulation, and afterlives.  Through contributions by established and emerging scholars, the series offers a forum for rethinking manuscript cultures as interconnected and evolving phenomena. It engages critically with the historiography of manuscript studies and promotes scholarly collaboration across linguistic, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Sessions address a broad range of traditions—Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, Chagatai, and others—within a comparative and multilingual framework. Topics include codicology, palaeography, manuscript production, reading practices, historical libraries, and the transition to print. Special attention is given to digital humanities, cataloguing challenges, and preservation politics. By drawing on case studies from Istanbul, Cairo, Tashkent, and beyond, the series highlights the entangled histories of manuscript cultures and examines how multilingualism, scribal practices, and digital access reshape our understanding of textual heritage. 

Stay tuned, the programme will be published shortly.