Profiles Stories
HMML Stories — Profiles
Meet some of the people who have a hand in preserving and sharing written history.
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Meet Mariam Magdy-Clark
“I’ve always been drawn to the stories behind art and artifacts, which led me to study...”
- Mariam Magdy-Clark

Meet Dr. Ali Diakite
“Dr. Ali Diakite, cataloger of West African manuscripts, began...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite

The J.F. Hinnebusch Collection and the Writings of Jacques de Vitry
“John Frederick Hinnebusch, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1923, was the youngest...”
- Dr. Jan Vandeburie

Arthur Vööbus: Preserving a Legacy
“Dr. Arthur Voobus was many things—a scholar, pastor, teacher, and refugee in exile...”
- Dr. James Walters

Instructions for Burial: The Last Will and Testament of Ephrem the Syrian
“Ephrem is perhaps the most widely known of all Syriac authors...”
- Dr. James Walters

Tracing Scribal Genealogies in Syriac Manuscripts: The Naṣro Family
“The act of hand-copying a manuscript requires specialized skills that...”
- Dr. James Walters

Muḥammad Ṣādiq: A Scribe Between Manuscript and Print Cultures at the Beginning of the 20th Century
“A great opportunity to look at the interaction between manuscript and print cultures can be found in the Middle East...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

The Calligrapher Clément Perret
“In the mid-15th century, the invention of the printing press made books relatively easier to produce and...”
- Katherine Goertz

Jacques Hnizdovsky in Minnesota
“Jacques Hnizdovsky had arrived in the city the year before as a...”
- Katherine Goertz

A Tribute to Getatchew Haile (1931–2021)
“In Wayne Gretzky’s final NHL game in Minnesota, he added four assists to the...”
- Ted Erho

The Emperor’s Manuscript
“Towards the end of Getatchew Haile’s first published catalog of Ethiopic manuscripts...”
- Ted Erho

Migration, Digitization, and Preservation - A Case Study of a Somali Manuscript
“On the eve of the Somali Civil War, tensions ran high in my ancestral home of Galdogob as...”
- Mohamud Awil Mohamed

Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi, a Fulani Scholar and Poet
“Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi was a scholar who belonged to the Fulani, a traditionally nomadic people who...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

National Endowment for the Humanities names Fr. Columba Stewart, OSB, the 2019 Jeffereson Lecturer
“Established by the NEH in 1972, the lectureship is the highest honor bestowed by the federal government for...”
- Joe Rogers

Artistic Director and Scribe of The Saint John's Bible Receives Apostolic Knighthood
“Donald Jackson received one of the highest honors bestowed upon laypeople by the Vatican.”

Council of the British Academy Bestows Edward Ullendorff Medal Upon Getatchew Haile
“The Council of the British Academy has bestowed the Edward Ullendorff Medal upon Dr. Getatchew Haile.”