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Åslaug Ommundsen

Position

Professor, Medieval Latin philology

Affiliation

E-mail: aslaug.ommundsen@uib.no
Phone number: +47 55588089
Visitor address: HF-bygget Sydnesplassen 7
Postal address: P.O. Box 7805

NO-5020 Bergen

Norway

Åslaug Ommundsen

Position

Professor, Medieval Latin philology

Affiliation

Research groups

Research

Åslaug Ommundsen has since 2003 studied fragments from medieval manuscripts in Latin, focusing on the development of book production in Norway in light of impulses from European centres and international collaboration in the Middle Ages. In addition to medieval book and scribal culture her academic interests include liturgy and liturgical practice, saints’ cults and hagiography, and monastic and ecclesiastical history. For more about Ommundsen's research, see Manuscripts that link Europe together.

Ommundsen is currently part of the management group of the Medieval Research Cluster at the University of Bergen and served as the cluster's Academic director from its foundation in 2018 to January 2023. She is the leader of the Research Group for Medieval Philology which is a broadly organized research group, open to academics with an interest in medieval texts and manuscripts primarily in Latin and Old Norse but also other medieval languages.

In 2012 she was awarded the Starting Grant for Young Researchers from Bergen Research Foundation (now Trond Mohn Foundation). In the project From manuscript fragments to book history (2012-2017) she and her team explored the first centuries of book and scribal culture in Norway in a European context. The approach very much depended on the analysis of script (palaeography) and other features of the once-existing book (codicology), as well as their content.

Ommundsen is an active member of the Nordic fragment network, a loosely organized network which continues a long-lived tradition of collaboration among Nordic fragment scholars, also involving international experts from other parts of Europe. The network has twice received funding for two series of exploratory workshops from the Joint Committee for Nordic research councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS), first in 2009 and secondly in 2018.

Outreach

Åslaug Ommundsen regularly participate in conferences and seminars, as well as holding more informal lectures and talks. She also communicates her research through online channels with a broader audience such as the University of Bergen’s knowledge base grind.no or the Norwegian encyclopedia snl.no (Store norske leksikon).

She has been instrumental in the organisation of Bergen Medieval week since 2018, a broad and diverse arena for research communication.

Teaching

Courses include Latin prose and grammar (LAT102) in the spring and Medieval Latin (LAT107) in the autumn.

The course in Medieval Latin provides a basic knowledge of Latin grammar and literature in medieval Western Europe. It also includes an introduction to European book and scribal culture 500-1500.

Publications

Åslaug Ommundsen has published extensively on manuscript (and fragment) studies, saints’ cults, and monastic history in peer reviewed books and academic journals. She has co-edited four volumes, among them Nordic Latin Manuscript Fragments (2017) and St. Sunniva - Irish Queen and Norwegian Patron Saint (2021). Most of her publications are openly available and can be accessed from her Google scholar or Academia.edu profiles.

Programme participation

Programme management

Heide, Eldar; Ommundsen, Åslaug; Myking, Synnøve Midtbø (2023). 38. Med skriftkultur på Europa-reise i mellomalderen. Samtale med Åslaug Ommundsen og Synnøve Midtbø Myking. (external link)

Academic chapter/article/Conference paper

Academic anthology/Conference proceedings

Popular scientific lecture

Lecture

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Academic lecture

Book review