24 October 2025 to 1 March 2026: Stefanie Brinkmann, collaborating on the exhibition “Manuscripts & Mind. How we read and respond to the written word” at the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

From 24 October 2025 to 1 March 2026, the Chester Beatty Library presents the exhibition “Manuscripts & Mind. How we read & respond to the written word” in collaboration with the international and interdisciplinary project Mapping the Margins (University of Glasgow and Templeton Religious Trust). Manuscript experts and cognitive scientists examine how people engage with religious texts through the complex network of paratexts—titles, design, punctuation, and annotation—found in the Chester Beatty’s collection of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Samaritan books, all of which are on display in this exhibition.

Stefanie Brinkmann examined MS CBL, Ar. 4326, a densely annotated manuscript with al-Baghawī’s hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna (dated 642/1245). The cognitive experiments took place in cooperation with the cognitive scientist  Mirza Iqbal, Glasgow University, and Asma Hilali, Lille University. S. Brinkmann has written all exhibition texts related to this manuscript, the chapter in the catalogue, and drafted a film on the manuscript which is shown on the exhibition.

Link to the exhibition 

Link to the film under “Research Project: Paratexts in Chester Beatty Manuscripts”.