29 November 2019: The DocuMult team organised the workshop Documenting Multiculturalism in Norman Sicily and the Islamicate East at Wolfson College, Oxford. The workshop was attended by approximately 40 participants, mainly project members, including the postdoctoral researchers from the Palermo teams, other researchers from Oxford and elsewhere, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and a few interested members of the general public.

Following an introduction and overview of DocuMult’s progress from Principal Investigator Professor Jeremy Johns, attendees heard from members of the Oxford-based team, including Dr Nadia Jamil (Senior Researcher), Dr Umberto Bongianino (Arabic Postdoctoral Researcher), and Daniel Burt (Technical Lead). The speakers presented on a range of topics relating to the Arabic legal and administrative documents of Norman Sicily, as well as the creation and development of the DocuMult database, which will be used to prepare new critical editions of the texts under study.

Two postdoctoral researchers based at the Università degli Studi di Palermo presented research from the Greek and Latin corpora, and sketched out potential directions for future research. Dr Marta Cerrito spoke on The anathema as penalty clause. A good example of plurality of iura in Sicily during the Norman period, and Dr Francesca Vuturo discussed The documents of Norman Sicily as a source for the study of Medieval Greek.

The workshop also hosted talks from members of the Invisible East programme, which is based in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford. Principal Investigator Arezou Azad spoke on her two research projects, PersDoc and Go.Local, which examine the literary and material culture of medieval Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The workshop was followed by a networking event, which allowed for further discussion on the various projects.