Dr Andrew Dunning

About

Dr Andrew Dunning is R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Bodleian Special Collections, at Bodleian Libraries and Supernumerary Fellow in Book History at Jesus College, University of Oxford.

As a curator at the Bodleian Libraries, which holds an incredible collection of 10,000 medieval manuscripts from Europe and the Byzantine Empire, he ensures that these shared treasures will last for as long as they have already survived by safeguarding their physical condition and bringing them to new audiences.

Dr Dunning's research focuses on the innovations of medieval textual communities in manuscript production, use, and circulation, especially in the 12th through 14th centuries. With Teresa Webber (University of Cambridge), he is completing a fellowship funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, ‘Networking the manuscript: Literary communities in 12th- and 13th-century England’. By tracing connections of style, production, and provenance between books, Dr Dunning is reconstructing the collections of medieval communities and making connections with previously unknown volumes. This results in both new historical findings and more discoverable collections.

In collaboration with colleagues, Dr Dunning is planning an expanded version of Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, aiming to connect surviving medieval books with the people who live in their original localities.

Dr Dunning studies and develops accessible expressions of medieval manuscripts in digital formats, especially in producing digital scholarly editions. His forthcoming book Two Priors and a Princess: St Frideswide in Twelfth-Century Oxford (Cambridge: Open Book), in collaboration with Benedicta Ward, will present unique sources for everyday life in Oxfordshire. It includes the first scholarly edition and translation of The Miracles of St Frideswide, a miracle collection written by Prior Philip of Oxford in the 1180s, which includes many sympathetic portrayals of disadvantaged people who rarely appear in medieval sources.

Teaching interests include palaeography, codicology, diplomatic, medieval Latin literature, history of the book, and digital manuscript studies.