Researchers at the University of Westminster have been awarded a grant by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to explore multilingualism and educational practices in medieval England and France. Led by Dr Heather Pagan, the project will use John of Garland’s 13th century Dictionarius to answer questions about urban medieval life.
The research project titled An English Teacher in Paris: John of Garland's Dictionarius and Medieval Language Learning will be the first to collate all manuscript versions of the Dictionarius into an online database with multilingual commentary and notations. Written in the year 1200 by an Englishman teaching Latin in Paris, the Dictionarius provides a snapshot of medieval urban life and offers a unique window into teaching practice and its evolution between the 13th and 15th centuries.
Project Leader Dr Pagan, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Westminster’s English Language and Linguistics BA Honours programme, will be joined by Dr Christine Wallis, Research and Innovation Associate at the University of Westminster, and Dr Annina Seiler, International Co-lead from the University of Zurich.
The interdisciplinary project will also enlist the help of Dr Tamas Kiss, Professor in Distributed Computing at the University of Westminster, to build the searchable online resource. This will allow the team to interrogate the text in new ways and directly compare the changes in language over time and space, leading to a deeper understanding of language teaching practices and the relationships between Latin and other medieval dialects.
The team will also undertake an analysis of the scribes, owners, readers and locations of the manuscripts, which will allow further insights into the production of multilingual texts and their reading audiences.
Results from the project and completed database will then be shared in a workshop hosted with the Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, home to a specialised collection of medieval leatherwork and shoes. The workshop will cement the project’s cross-disciplinary relationships between academic and public audiences, fostering further avenues of research and knowledge exchange based on the database.
About the project Dr Pagan said: “Long under-investigated, the project team will be editing and researching John of Garland's 13th century Dictionarius. Studying this text will provide unique insights into life and language teaching during the period, with exciting parallels to modern language education.”
This project directly contributes to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 4: Quality Education and 17: Partnerships for the Goals. Since 2019, the University of Westminster has used the SDGs holistically to frame strategic decisions to help students and colleagues fulfil their potential and contribute to a more sustainable, equitable and healthier society.
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