We are delighted to announce that Dr. Alpo Honkapohja, a long-term visiting researcher at the AMC, has been awarded the prestigious Neil Ker Memorial Fund to continue his work on medical manuscripts of the medieval period.
Alpo Honkapohja, Recepient of the Ker Memorial Fund
The funding (£1.500) will allow Alpo to cover the costs of three library visits to study manuscripts of a plague treatise attributed to John of Burgundy. The John of Burgundy plague tract was the most popular type of treatise in medieval Britain and survives in more than one hundred manuscripts. It exists in variant versions in Middle English, Latin and French and was often added as a separate booklet to miscellanies or copied into blank leaves in a manuscript. The library visits – to take place over 2019 – are related to an ongoing project called Tracing John of Burgundy, which is a collaboration with Dr Lori Jones (University of Ottawa). Dr Jones is a historian of medicine, whereas Alpo’s expertise lies in codicology, palaeography and historical linguistics, which are required when identifying, localising and dating codicological units containting the John of Burgundy treatise.
The Neil Ker memorial fund was established by the family and friends Neil R. Ker, following his accidental death in a hiking accident in Scotland, in 1982, and promotes the study of Western medieval manuscripts in Britain. N. R. Ker, FBA, is known for his lifelong contributions to palaeography and codicology, known especially for his monumental Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957). Reflecting Ker’s interests, the Neil Ker grant has a strict focus on the production, readership and use of medieval manuscripts.
Congratulations, Alpo!
