Congratulations to Dr Aya Van Renterghem

The CSVA is pleased to congratulate Aya Van Renterghem who will, on Tuesday the 17th of July, receive her PhD degree. Her thesis was on ‘The Written Rune: Alphabets and Rune-rows in Medieval Manuscripts from the British Isles and the Continent’.

In February, Aya will take up a two-year Leverhulme Study Abroad Studentship at the University of Leiden. She writes the following about her project 'Approaching Alphabets in the Middle Ages':

My project will examine the origin of the study of the vernacular in medieval western manuscripts through analysing the alphabet collections which became popular in the Carolingian Era. It aims to determine whether this tradition of alphabet collecting was originally Carolingian or if it was based on an earlier insular interest in non-biblical languages.