Researchers on the project
Our core team, led by PI Prof. Laura Saetveit Miles, is based at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen.
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PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
LAURA SAETVEIT MILES (PI) is professor of English literature. Her research role in the project is to consider the impact of Birgitta on England in its entirety, synthesizing the textual and cultural data the project gathers, with network graphs and the new print and digital editions. Her first monograph, The Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation: Reading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England came out with D.S. Brewer in 2020, and won two prizes. She has published on Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, devotional compilations, queer approaches to medieval literature, and the Carthusians and Birgittines in England, among other topics.
CURRENT RESEARCHERS ON THE PROJECT
SAMIRA LINDSTEDT (researcher Nov 2022-Dec 2024) is collaborating with Katherine Zieman on the edition of the Julius translation for the project. Her 2021 DPhil thesis from the University of Oxford examined manuscripts of non-liturgical prayer texts produced in England between 1050-1250, considering how such devotional literature functioned, signified, and was performed by contemporary audiences. Samira also has extensive experience editing Anglo-Norman religious texts.
YAROSLAV PERSHYN (guest researcher Oct 2022-Oct 2023) is working on the relationship between the Latin manuscripts of the Revelationsthat either originated in England or are related to that branch of the Latin stemma. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on Birgitta of Sweden's role in medieval Europe in a sociocultural way, regarding especially the usage of manuscripts and exceptional passages by different social classes in order to explain, articulate or approve their actions. He is a doctoral student at Novosibirsk State University in History, and his last academic position before the University of Bergen was as a lecturer at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg, Russia, his course being History and History of Political, Social and Economic Ideas in the undergraduate program in the Department of History.
PREVIOUS RESEARCHERS ON THE PROJECT
KATHERINE ZIEMAN (post-doc 2019-2021) researches late medieval literature, with an emphasis on devotional culture, literary voice, and liturgy. For the ‘Birgitta in England’ project, she is creating a critical edition of Birgitta’s Revelations in British Library MS Cotton Julius F.ii as well as digital editions of the many excerpts and compilations of the Revelations that appear in English manuscripts. She is author of Singing the New Song: Liturgy and Literacy in Late Medieval England (UPenn 2008) and numerous articles on women’s liturgy, Richard Rolle, Chaucer, Langland, and premodern attention. Katherine is currently a permanent faculty member at the University of Poitiers, France.
JULIA KING (PhD 2018-2023) is completing a dissertation on Syon Abbey and manuscript circulation in the late-medieval period. As part of the ‘Birgitta in England’ project, she works on data curation and network analysis for Digital Birgitta as well as the project website and social media management. In addition to her scholarly work, she has worked as a special collections librarian and digital project manager on Digital Tools for Manuscript Study (University of Toronto, 2018). She is interested in digital manuscript studies, special collections criticism and praxis, and fifteenth-century political history. Julia is currently Rare Books Librarian at Lambeth Palace Library, London.
