Coding Codices

Recorded 29 December 2025. Edited by Cihan Şimşek. This episode contains an introduction to Season Two of the Coding Codices Podcast and a chat with Digital Medievalist Postgraduate Committee members Giulia D’Agostino, Sebastian Dows-Miller and Davide Pafumi, who discuss their career paths and relationship to the field of Digital Medieval Studies. Music: Intro/outro music by   Kevin MacLeod , “Ret...

After a hiatus, Coding Codices is back with a new series! In this first episode, Julia Pelosi-Thorpe and Suzette van Haaren speak to Cosette Bruhns Alonso about digital editing and publishing, and visual art and media. Since the recording of this episode in May 2024, Cosette Bruhns Alonso has been appointed Assistant Editor of Brown University Digital Publications. In this role, she guides the cre...

In this episode, Aylin and Caitlin speak with Dot Porter on book structures, manuscript studies, and transformative works in fandom. Dot Porter is Curator of Digital Research Services at the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies. Music credits: Intro/outro music by TeknoAXE, "Chiptune Nobility" (CC BY 4.0), interludes by Aaron Kenny, "Yonder Hill and Dale" (CC0) Transcrip...

In this episode, Aylin, Hannah, James, and Seb discuss a recent article by Emily C. Francomano and Heather Bamford and the questions it raises about the accessibility of digital resources for medieval studies. Music credits: Intro/outro music by TeknoAXE, "Chiptune Nobility" (CC by 4.0), interludes by Random Mind, "The Bard's Tale" (CC0) Transcript and more information at h...

Dr. Margaret Smith from the IRIS Center (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) speaks about her projects focused on bridging gaps between DH studies and the St. Louis community. Her digital medieval work, Submission Strategies, maps, the spatial and social networks captured in the Irish submissions to Richard II, using these and contemporary materials to create a rich and nuanced depiction of...

In this episode Katie Albers-Morris, Helen Davies, and Alex Zawacki talk about recovering palimpsests and erased texts with multispectral imaging. All three are, or have been, PhD candidates at the Lazarus project at the University of Rochester, an initiative that was designed with the educational purpose of training students in the field of multispectral imaging and image processing techniques fo...

Caitlin Postal and Bridget Whearty discuss labor ethics in digital medieval studies, manuscript digitization processes, and Bridget's forthcoming book, Digital Codicology. Bridget Whearty is an Assistant Professor at Binghamton University . She is the creator of the Caswell Test, named after and inspired by the work of Michelle Caswell (#CaswellTest) and co-editor for the special issue of Arch...

James and Aylin talk to Sarah Fiddyment and Timothy Stinson about their work in the emerging field of biocodicology, the study of the biomolecular information found in manuscripts. Sarah Fiddyment received her PhD from the University of Zaragoza in 2011, working in the field of proteomics in cardiovascular research. She moved to the University of York in 2012, where she developed a non-invasive sa...

Dr. Johanna Green speaks with Aylin Malcolm and Caitlin Postal about manuscript materiality, digitization projects, and increased access to physical objects. Dr. Green is a lecturer in Information Studies at the University of Glasgow and co-director of the University of Glasgow Digital Cultural Heritage lab . In addition to her work on manuscript studies via social media and in light of the COVID-...

Mateusz Fafinski discusses his work on the theory of digital humanities, in particular his notion of facsimile narratives and the nature of historical sources in the digital sphere, as well as his work on the adaptations of the post-Roman worlds in early medieval Britain and remediations of the past in computer games. He is an assistant lecturer at Freie Universität Berlin and published his book R...

In this episode, Caitlin Postal and James Harr talk to Eric Ensley and Matthew Kirschenbaum about the archive, both digital and material. Eric Ensley is a curator of rare books and maps at the University of Iowa. He received his PhD in English from Yale University in 2021 and holds an MLS from the University of North Carolina. Among his current projects is a digital edition of a Piers Plowman manu...

Dorothy Kim speaks about her work at the intersection of medieval studies and digital humanities, highlighting issues of race, globality,  and national identity and relating her research to work in other fields like bioarchaeology. She is co-director of the Archive of Early Middle English, a PI for the Global Middle Ages Project, and the medieval editor of the Orlando project. Recent and forthcomi...

Elisa Cugliana speaks about her digital scholarly edition of Marco Polo's travelogue that she is working on for her joint PhD degree at the universities of Venice and Cologne. Topics of discussion include the tradition of Italian philology and textual criticism, the transmission history of Marco Polo's travel report which originated at the end of the 13th century, and how scholarly editori...

Dr Lucy R. Hinnie discusses her forthcoming digital edition of the Bannatyne Manuscript [Advocates MS. 1.1.6], the largest extant collection of late medieval Scottish verse, with Caitlin Postal. For more resources and a transcript, visit https://codingcodices.wordpress.com/2021/03/05/episode-3-digitizing-the-bannatyne-ms/ . Music by TeknoAXE (Chiptune Nobility) and Random Mind (The Bard's Tale...

Dr. Lisa Fagin Davis speaks with Aylin about identifying the five scribes of the undeciphered Voynich Manuscript.  For more resources and a transcript, visit https://codingcodices.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/episode-2-scribes-of-the-voynich-manuscript/ . Music by TeknoAXE (Chiptune Nobility; Lowly Tavern Bard – Fall is Upon Us) and Random Mind (Minstrel Dance). Edited by Aylin Malcolm.

Giulio Menna and Marjolein de Vos, the founders of the Sexy Codicology project as well as the DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts app), speak about the history of the projects, the digitization of medieval manuscripts and their promotion on social media. Music credits: Intro music by TeknoAXE, “Chiptune Nobility” (CC BY 4.0), outro music by Random Mind, “The Bard's Tale” (CC0). Transcript a...

In this special episode, the members of the Digital Medievalist Postgraduate Subcommittee introduce themselves and discuss the field of digital medieval studies. Participants: Hannah Busch, Nathan Daniels, Tessa Gengnagel, James Harr III, Aylin Malcolm, Caitlin Postal, Daniela Schulz. Music credits: Intro music by TeknoAXE, “Chiptune Nobility” (CC BY 4.0), additional music by Random Mind, “King's...