Professorial Fellow in English, Library Fellow, St Hilda's College
Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography, Faculty of English
Professor Daniel Wakelin is the Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Palaeography. He came to Oxford from Cambridge, where he was a student at Trinity Hall, a Junior Research Fellow at St Catharine’s College and then a Fellow and University Lecturer in English at Christ’s College. He has also held visiting positions at some universities and libraries in the USA.
In the Faculty of English, Professor Wakelin primarily teaches manuscript studies for the MSt course in English Language and Literature 650-1550. His research focuses on the material remains of English literature between the fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries: manuscripts, and some printed books, and what they reveal about writing habits and reading habits. Within this field, his special interests are scribal practices and the history of craft; marginalia and other ‘genres’ of writing by, for or about readers; humanist reading and scholarship; manuscripts of carols; fifteenth- and sixteenth-century courtly poetry and interludes. Professor Wakelin's current research includes planning Designing English, an exhibition about page design in the Middle Ages, to be displayed at the Bodleian LIbrary in late 2017 and early 2018, and editing a collection of essays on photography and the study of manuscripts.