Congratulations to Dr Elizabeth Mullins who was among the winners shortlisted for the UCD 2025 Images of Research prize.
A photograph by Dr Elizabeth Mullins has recently been shortlisted as one of the 2025 UCD Images of Research. Dr Mullins took this photograph during research that identified fragments from a 9th century Old Testament manuscript in book in UCD Special Collections. These previously unnoticed fragments are now the oldest material held in the UCD Cultural Heritage Division. Dr Mullins’ research traced the fragments back to their origins in the monastery of Beneditkbeuern in southeast Germany and highlighted how other related fragments are to be found in books as far away as New Zealand.
The text accompanying Dr Mullins’ winning image is included below.
Upcycling the past: discovering the oldest manuscripts in UCD Library.
Researching medieval manuscript fragments can feel like trying to solve a jigsaw whose pieces are uncertain, but also like holding the key to uncovering the frequently amazing biographies of books. This reality came home to me some years ago when I spied a series of fragments in the spines of two of the oldest printed books in UCD Library. Analysis of the fragments’ script and clues within the volumes, whose binding they had been upcycled to support, revealed how this vellum sellotape was from a manuscript of the Old Testament that was produced in a monastery in Germany in the early 9th century. Even more exciting was the discovery that other fragments from this manuscript are preserved in the spine of an early printed book now in a library in New Zealand, thus allowing the Library’s smallest, and now oldest identified, material to tell a story of global significance.
Further information about this research is available on the UCD Cultural Heritage Division blog post written by Dr Mullins ‘(opens in a new window)Something old in something new’ and in Elizabeth Mullins, ‘Carolingian Bible Fragments in Dublin’, Fragmentology VI (2023), 67-87 doi: (opens in a new window)https://doi.org/10.24446/oedi
See all the 2025 UCD Images of Research here.