Staff Profile
Dr Aditi Nafde
Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature
- Email: aditi.nafde@ncl.ac.uk
- Telephone: 0191 208 7769
- Address: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics
Percy Building
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU
I studied English Language and Literature at UCL as an undergraduate before studying for an MA in Medieval Literature at UCL and a DPhil at Oxford. I then held lectureships at Oxford and was a visiting lecturer at UCL before joining the School of English at Newcastle University in 2014 as a Lecturer in Medieval Literature.
From February 2019 to July 2020 (extended to Sept 2022), I held an AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship and was PI on a project entitled Manuscripts After Print c.1450-1550. More information about this project can be found under the 'Research' tab.
I am currently Chair of the Joint UG Board of Examiners.
I am a book historian and my research interests are in late medieval literature, especially literary manuscripts and early print. My DPhil examined the manuscript presentation of the poetical works of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve in a crucial period of book production in the early fifteenth century.
My new project, Manuscripts after Print c.1450-1550, was generously funded by an AHRC Early Career Leadership award. The project explores the endurance and adaptability of handwriting in response to technological change. It asks how the invention of the printing press affected scribal practice in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. More broadly, it considers the continued significance of handwriting from the age of manuscripts to the age of digital books.
You can find out more about the project and its events here and visit the project's digital exhibition here. Information on the project's app, Hands-On Reading, which explores the relationship between digital writing and reading, will follow shortly.
Undergraduate Teaching
SEL3090 Chaucer, Chivalry, and Heresy in the Middle Ages (Module Leader)
SEL2219 Monsters, Misery, Miracles: Heroic Life in Old English Literature (Module Leader)
SEL2210 Independent Research Project
SEL1004 Introduction to Literary Studies 2
SEL1023 Transformations
Postgraduate Teaching
SEL8543 Manuscript, Print, Digital
PhD Supervision: I currently supervise a number of doctoral candidates jointly with Durham University. I'd welcome enquires from students interested doctoral projects on late medieval literature, book history, and editing.
Qualifications
I am a fellow of the Higher Education Academy
- Nafde A, Coneys M, Court K, Galston F, Cummings J, Sousa-Garcia T. Hands-On Reading: An Experiment in Slow Digital Reading. Digital Humanities Quarterly 2021, 15(2).
- Nafde A. Gower from Print to Manuscript: Copying Caxton in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51. In: Driver, M; Pearsall, D; Yeager, R.F, ed. John Gower: Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Boydell and Brewer, 2020.
- Nafde A. Replicating the Mechanical Print Aesthetic in Manuscripts before circa 1500. Digital Philology 2020, 9(2), 120-144.
- Nafde A. Manuscripts Copied from Printed Books now in the Beinecke Library. Poetica 2019, 91 & 92, 105-117.
- Nafde A, Coneys M, Avery C, Hufton S, Leiper S, Ling M, Sokell T. The Art of Handwriting. 2019. https://speccollstories.ncl.ac.uk/The-Art-of-Handwriting/index.html: Robinson Library Special Collections.
- Horobin S, Nafde A, ed. Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts: Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna. Brepols Publishers, 2017.
- Nafde A. Laughter Lines: Reading the Layouts of the Tale of Sir Thopas. Pecia 2015, 16, 143-151.
- Horobin S, Nafde A. Stephan Batman and the Making of the Parker Library. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 2015, 15(Part 4), 561-582.
- Nafde A, Gorst E. The Trials of the Digital Medievalist. The Trials of the Digital Medievalist (Special issue of Digital Philology) 2015, 4(2), 147-159.
- Nafde A, Gorst E, ed. The Trials of the Digital Medievalist (Special issue of Digital Philology). John Hopkins University Press, 2015.
- Nafde A. Hoccleve’s Hands: The mise-en-page of the Autograph and Non-Autograph Manuscripts. Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History (JEBS) 2014, 16, 49-74.
- Nafde A. Stanza Markers in MSS Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 of Hoccleve's Regiment Of Princes. Notes and Queries 2014, 61(1), 15-18.