New Publication: ‘The Digital Medieval Manuscript: Material Approaches to Digital Codicology’ by Suzette van Haaren

We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage?

This book explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, it reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, it offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world.

Find out more information about this book on Brill. 

About the author

Suzette van Haaren is a postdoc in the CRC Virtuelle Lebenswelten at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research reflects on the impact of the increasing digitisation (and virtualisation) of historical heritage. She is interested in the Middle Ages in contemporary media contexts.