Head of Research, Old Books New Science Lab, University of Toronto BA (Hon) (UBC), M.Phil (Cambridge), PhD (Toronto) Email: jessica.lockhart at utoronto.ca  CV Hidden Stories - Project Areas of Activity Dunhuang Global Judaica Kairouan Kashmir and the Indus Valley Northumbria Research Interests Book Science Object Biography Transmission of ideas and technologies

Biography

As Head of Research for the Old Books New Science Lab (OBNS) at the University of Toronto directed by Alexandra Gillespie, I help shape the development of large-scale research projects and partnerships between the lab and researchers at the University of Toronto, across Canada, and internationally. Since 2019 I have facilitated collaborations among researchers across multiple disciplines and apparently disparate research methodologies, especially concerning the humanistic, archaeological, and scientific study of premodern book technologies. Projects I have facilitated have led to publications such as Grieggs et al. 2023, Sharp et al. 2022, and Sargan et al. 2022.

I am a medievalist and literary scholar by training, after an early background in biology, chemistry, and ‘math for engineers’. My own research investigates the affect of wonder within medieval fictional writing, using riddles and “everyday marvels” to study how wonder is theorized and pressed into service in medieval texts. In the Hidden Stories project, my contributions help to uncover the layers of history behind enigmatic books and pages such as the recently-discovered 6th-century illustrated fragment from the Latin romance of Apollonius of Tyre at Mount Sinai, or a Buddhist print commissioned by Cao Yuanzhong in 947 CE now at the Royal Ontario Museum.