The Institutes of the School of Advanced Study host John Coffin Memorial events on behalf of the University of London, in fulfilment of a gift by Mr Coffin’s son, Arthur Charles, who, before the Second World War, had close connexions with the University of London.

2025 Elaine Treharne (Stanford University) ‘Mortuary Rolls as Evidence of Scribal Practice’. Book here to attend.

2024 Eleanor Robson (University College London) ‘Schoolhouse and temple, warehouse and palace: building communities of cuneiform practice in ancient Iraq’

2023 David Ganz ‘The Salaberga Psalter and the Ethiopian Face: the first depiction of an African in Pre-Conquest England’

2022 Marc Smith (École nationale des chartes) ‘The script palaeographers forgot: Gothic (Lombardic) majuscules’

2021 David Rundle (University of Kent) ‘The Long Reach of Palaeography’

2020 David d’Avray (University College London) ‘Mass Production of Books Before Printing’

2019 Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) ‘Writing Music on Parchment in the Early Middle Ages’

2018 A. S. G. (Tony) Edwards (University of Kent) ‘What is palaeography for? The role of palaeography in scholarly research from the nineteenth century onwards’

2017 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études) ‘Crossing Palaeographical Borders: Bi-alphabetical Hebrew Scribes and Manuscripts in Egypt, Spain and Northern France (11th to 15th centuries)’

2016 Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford) ‘”Let me slip into something less comfortable”: Gothic Textualist by Accident and Design’

2015 Nicholas Vincent (University of East Anglia) ‘Who Wrote Magna Carta?’

2014 James Willoughby (University of Oxford) ‘The Hand of Ralph of Coggeshall. Chronicle-Making in the Reign of King John’

2013 Professor Mirella Ferrari (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan) ‘From Milan to Europe. The Transmission and Diffusion of the Works of St Ambrose’

2012 Jennifer O’Reilly (University College Cork) ‘Inscribed Images and Inscribed Scribes’

2011 James Carley (York University) ‘”In Private Men’s Hand”: The Library of Archbishop Whitgift (d. 1604): Sources, Catalogue and Disperal’

2010 Teresa Webber (University of Cambridge) ‘Reading in the Refectory: Monastic Practice in England, c.1000-c.1300’

2009 Vincent Gillespie (University of Oxford) ‘Fatherless Books: Authorship, Attribution, and Orthodoxy in Later Medieval England’

2008 Margaret Bent (University of Oxford) ‘The Re-Making of the 15th-century Veneto Musical Anthology MS Bologna Q15.10’

2007 Richard Gameson (University of Durham) ‘Codices Circumientes: The Circulation of Books between England and the Continent c.871-c.1100’

2006 Christopher de Hamel (University of Cambridge) ‘The Library of Abbot Simon of St. Albans’

2005 Martin Steinmann (University of Basel) ‘Abbot Frowin of Engleberg and his Books: A Swiss Scriptorium of the 12th Century’

John and Arthur Coffin

John Coffin (1817-1882) was a journeyman blacksmith residing in Dorchester. When his son Arthur Charles was born in March, 1868 his wife, Mary Ann, née Willis ‘made her mark’ on his birth certificate (i.e., she had no writing literacy). Arthur Charles became an external student of the University of London, graduating with a degree in Arts in 1889 by private study, receiving some tuition at the former St John’s College, Battersea. He retired as Inspector of Education to Dorset, and died aged 88 in July, 1956 leaving his residual estate of £27,000 to the University.