Dott. in Ling. and Lett. Straniere (IULM, Milan), MA (Sheffield), PhD (De Montfort, Leicester)

Lecturer

Contact Details:

• E: odr1@le.ac.uk

• T: +44 (0)116 252 2778

Research Interests

Dr Da Rold’s research interests are in Medieval Literature c. 1100-1500, Chaucer and the digital humanities. She researches how literature is influenced by questions of authorship, reading-habits and book production. She works on the social and cultural context of the circulation and transmission of medieval texts and books, and researches the codicology and palaeography of medieval manuscripts. She has published articles and books on the examination of Old and Middle English literary traditions from a material perspective, and on the use of electronic media in the humanities. She co-edited several books, including Textual Culture, Cultural Texts, 1000-2010 (Boydell & Brewer, 2010) and The Production and Use of English Manuscript: 1060 to 1220 (Leicester, 2010, e-book). She is also the editor of a forthcoming edition of the Canterbury Tales entitled A Digital Facsimile of Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.4.24 of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (forthcoming hriOnline).

Her current project is a monograph length study of the revolutionary impact of paper in medieval manuscript production, whose initial stages were funded by 'The Bibliographical Society' with a Falconer Madan Award, which led to a visiting scholarship at Wolfson College, Oxford. 

Her interest in the History of the Book translates in the Fellows’ Special Interest Group of the English Association on ‘The History of Books and Texts', which she co-convenes with Elaine Treharne. Her interest in medieval manuscripts and technology lead to an ESF Exploratory Workshop (co-applicant with Wendy Scase Birmingham) 'Applying Semantic Web Technologies To Medieval Manuscript Research', which took place in Birmingham in late March 2009. The ESF workshop inspired a new digital humanities project: Manuscripts Online (JISC, e-content Capital Programme), co-directed by Dr Da Rold and Michael Pidd (HRI, SHeffield). This is a major collaborative project which will enable users to search a very large body of online primary resources relating to written and early printed culture in Britain during the period 1000 to 1500.

She organises sessions at the major international medieval conferences at Leeds and Kalamazoo. Dr Da Rold is currently co-organising an international conference with Dr Philip Shaw (University of Leicester) and Aidan Conti ( University of Bergen) entitled: Writing Europe before 1450: A Colloquium (University of Bergen, 3rd-5th June 2012). She organised the 2007 and 2010 run of the Writing England Conference (University of Leicester) and in 2009 Quadrivium V (University of Leicester, 4-5 November), a postgraduate event funded by the Innovation Fund, Graduate School, University of Leicester and University of Birmingham. She sat on the New Chaucer Society Programming Committee.

She is the editor of the late medieval section of Literature Compass , a member of the European Science Foundation (ESF) Pool of Reviewers, and a member of the advisory board of the Manuscripts of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, lead by Kathryn Lowe (University of Glasgow) for the Mellon Foundation, ‘Making Medieval English Manuscripts: New Knowledge, New Technologies’.

Projects

• The Production and use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220
• Bibliographical Analysis of Medieval Paper Manuscripts of the West Midlands
• Manuscripts Online 

Postgraduate Supervision

Dr Da Rold has supervised a number of MA dissertations on Chaucer and medieval textual culture and literature. She is currently supervising one PhD on the identification of dialectal features specific to areas of Northern English, and is co-supervising one PhD student based at the University of Leeds on the AHRC-funded project, The Production and Use of English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220. 

She would welcome research proposals on:

• Chaucer;
• Medieval literature in context;
• Authorship, reading-habits and book production (1000-1500);
• Manuscript studies (1000-1500);
• Medieval material textual cultures, including focused codicological, palaeographical and linguistic studies;
• Medieval studies and digital humanities;
• Editing and Textual Studies.

Recently completed PhD theses

Thomas Gobbitt, ‘Law in English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220’.

Teaching and Administration

Teaching

• EN1010 Reading English
• EN2010 Chaucer (Convenor and tutor)
• EN2040 Medieval Literature
• EN3010 Compulsory Dissertation (Supervisor)
• EN3152 Contextualising Literature: from Genesis to Generation x 

• EN7223  Editing and textual Cultures (Convenor and tutor)
• EN7220 Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Convenor and tutor)

Current Administrative Roles

• Director MA in English Studies  
• Syllabus Review Committee
• Medieval Research Centre Committee
• Graduate Committee
• Postgraduate Student and Staff Committee

Recent Publications

Books, E-books and Editions

(ed.), English Manuscripts before 1400, with Tony Edwards, English Manuscripts Studies: 1100-1700 (British Library Publishing, forthcoming 2012).

(ed.), A Digital Edition of Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.4.24 of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (HRI online forthcoming, http://www.shef.ac.uk/hri/projects/projectpages/blakeeditions.html).

(guest ed.), Producing and Using English Manuscripts in the Post-Conquest Period,  with Elaine Treharne and Mary Swan, New Medieval Literature 13 (Brepols, forthcoming 2011).

(ed.), The Production and Use of English Manuscripts, with Takako Kato, Mary Swan and Elaine Treharne (Leicester, School of English University of Leicester, 2010), ISBN095323195x, version 1.0 (http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/em1060to1220/)

(ed.), Textual Culture, Cultural Texts, 1000-2010, with Elaine Treharne, special issue of Essays and Studies (Boydell&Brewer, 2010).

Journal Articles and Essays

'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, forthcoming 2013).

‘Making the Book: Cambridge, University Library Ii.1.33’, New Medieval Literature, 13 (Brepols, forthcoming 2011).

‘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.

'Manuscript Production before Chaucer: Some Preliminary Observations', Essays and Studies (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. 

Full list of publications