Research

Walwood Commons

The Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University fosters research on various aspects of medieval studies and hosts the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies.

Research activities and resources include:

• The Rawlinson Center, which promotes the study of early medieval England and manuscripts.
• The annual Otto Gründler Book Prize.
• A distinguished lecture series, the Loew Lectures in medieval studies.
• The Wallace Johnson Program for First Book Authors.

Find bibliographies, indices, articles, and a collection of essays of the Early, Drama, Art, and Music project on ScholarWorks at WMU, the University's digital commons.

Search the Medieval Institute libraries' holdings of books, offprints, microforms, and video and audio.

Digital Projects

WMU Special Collections is currently developing two digital projects related to Cistercians in the Middle Ages using legacy collections at WMU acquired from 1973 to 2022, when the Medieval Institute administered various programs in Cistercian Studies:

• The Monastic Gazetteer Project is creating a Linked Open Data set describing religious foundations in the West from the Middle Ages to the present. The project is exploring ways to use this technology to accurately represent monasteries and changes to their identities, networks, and locations over time.
• The Janauschek Portal is a collaboration with the Transkribus Project at the University of Innsbruck, the Verein zur Gründung und Förderung der "Europäischen Akademie für Cistercienserforschung" im ehemaligen Kloster Lehnin and the compilers of Cistopedia: Encyclopedia Cisterciensis. The portal will provide access to unpublished manuscripts by Leopold Janauschek (1827–1898).