Dr Laure Miolo

I am a historian of late medieval Europe, specialising in manuscript studies and the history of early libraries, with a particular focus on the history of science, scientific books, and scholarly practices between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. From 2022 to 2025, I held the Lyell Career Development Fellowship in Latin Palaeography and the Dilts Research Fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, I was an Early Career Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and a Munby Fellow in Bibliography at the Cambridge University Library. I completed my doctorate at the University of Lyon (Lyon II), in partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France  (medieval manuscripts department), and subsequently held a number of research fellowships and positions at the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes, the Paris Observatory, and the École Pratique des Hautes Études. I was awarded a Neil Ker Memorial Fund Grant by the British Academy to support my research on the manuscripts and writings of the astronomer and physician Lewis of Caerleon (d. c. 1495).

Research Interests

• Manuscript studies, medieval scientific libraries, and autography
• History of science and medicine  (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)
• Teaching of the quadrivium in medieval universities
• Astronomical and astrological practices in the late Middle Ages (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)
• Communities of learning in astronomy and astrology in the late Middle Ages (thirteenth to fifteenth centuries)

My research explores the production, circulation, and use of manuscripts, with a focus on scribes, scripts, and the history of medieval libraries. I am especially interested in scientific books and practices, combining methods from palaeography and the history of the book with the history of science. My work investigates how manuscripts and texts were transmitted, read, and used by medieval and early modern scholars in the scientific disciplines, particularly in mathematics with a focus on astronomy and astrology. I am also interested in the reception of Arabic science and the ways in which it was assimilated into Western intellectual culture. I study specifically the formation of private libraries, autography and authorial manuscripts, polygraphism, the development of cursive scripts (more particularly personal scripts), and the production of scientific manuscripts in medieval universities.

My first monograph, soon to be published, reconstructs the scientific collection of the early library of the Sorbonne and examines its owners and users. I am currently completing a critical edition of the eclipse texts, computations, and observations of the fourteenth-century astronomer John of Genoa. This project expands into a larger study of late medieval eclipse and conjunction manuscripts, which were central to the development of astronomy and astrology.

Alongside these projects, I investigate the formation of “communities of learning” and “communities of practice” in the mathematical sciences at Paris and Oxford between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. By analysing surviving manuscripts, annotations, loan lists, and wills, I reconstruct how these groups adapted and developed scientific practices beyond the formal teaching of the quadrivium. My next book project builds on this work, focusing on networks of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century astronomers and astrologers in Oxford and Paris.