Dr Cosima Gillhammer

MA English Linguistics and Medieval Literature (LMU Munich, 2014); Staatsexamen German and English Language and Literature (LMU Munich, 2015); DPhil English (Oxford, 2020)

Before taking up my Fellowship at Christ Church in October 2020, I was the Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the project ‘Editing the Wycliffite Old Testament Lectionary’ at Oxford’s English Faculty. I have spent four years as a Stipendiary Lecturer at Trinity College, Oxford, where I also studied for my DPhil in English (awarded 2020, funded by a Clarendon Scholarship). I hold a double degree in English Linguistics and Medieval Literature, and Medieval German Language and Literature from LMU University of Munich, where I taught undergraduate and graduate seminars on Medieval English as a faculty member before coming to Oxford. I have also held the Erika and Kenneth Riley Fellowship at the Huntington Library, California.

I am currently the Postdoctoral Mentor for the medieval strand of the MSt at the English Faculty.

I teach Prelims Paper 2: Early Medieval Literature, c. 650–1350 and FHS Paper 2: Literature in English, c. 1350–1550, and a range of other papers related to Old and Middle English language and literature. I supervise dissertations on various aspects of medieval literature. I regularly teach manuscript classes at the Bodleian Library for my undergraduate students. 

My primary research interests focus on textual criticism, medieval English Bible translation, biblical scholarship, and the liturgy in the context of the Wycliffite Bible (the first complete translation of the Vulgate into English). For my previous Postdoctoral project, I produced the first complete edition of the Wycliffite Old Testament Lectionary, a collection of liturgical texts translated from Latin into Middle English.

The core of my current research project is a study and edition of the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels, a group of erudite fourteenth-century vernacular commentaries on the gospels. The Glossed Gospels are of particular importance for the early history of Bible translation into English, and a close analysis of these texts will help us refine our understanding of the intellectual and scholarly context which gave rise to the Wycliffite translation project. I am particularly interested in philological and linguistics aspects of the Wycliffite translations, including the texts’ translation strategies in rendering the Latin source in the vernacular, and their significance within a wider linguistic network.

Connected to my editorial work is my interest in medieval commentary culture more broadly. I am the founder of the Oxford Medieval Commentary Network, for which I organise regular conferences and public engagement events.

Book-length studies and critical editions:

The Wycliffite Old Testament Lectionary, Early English Text Society (OUP, 2021)

A Late-Medieval History of the Ancient and Biblical World, edited from Oxford, Trinity College, MS 29, two vols (Middle English Texts series, Winter, 2022)

Recent articles include:

'Fifteenth-Century Compilation Methods: The Case of Oxford, Trinity College, MS 29' (The Review of English Studies 2022, 73, pp. 20–41)

‘The Wycliffite translators and the liturgy’, in Lutz Edzard, (ed.) Bibelübersetzung(en) in sprachvergleichender Perspektive (Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, Harrassowitz Publishers, 2021)

‘Non-Wycliffite Bible Translation in Oxford, Trinity College, 29 and Universal History Writing in Late Medieval England’ (Anglia 2020, 138:4, pp. 649–72)

‘The Holy Cross Legend: A Unique Version in Oxford, Trinity College, MS 29’ (Medium Aevum 2019, 88:1, pp. 52–79)

I am a spare-time photographer, painter, and choral singer.