St Andrews World Leading Scholarship - How to Write a Global Success Before Print
The School of Modern Languages is pleased to offer a funded doctoral scholarship - How to write a global success before print: The paradigmatic case of the Seven Sages of Rome/Sinbad narrative.
The scholarship is available for start in the 2026-27 academic year and comprises a full-fee award and stipend for 3.5 years. The scholarship is open to UK and international applicants.
The successful applicant will be supervised by Professor Bettina Bildhauer.
Project
How did knowledge and creative works spread across vast territories before the invention of print and railways?
Globalisation is often seen as a modern phenomenon, but medieval trade and cultural exchange connected all parts of the Old World, with forays into the New World. Medieval techniques for encouraging global transmission and for stemming its dangers can provide useful historical precedents for tackling today’s challenges. Literary manuscripts provide traceable evidence for how thoughts and ideas were disseminated through material objects. Using digital humanities methods, this PhD project investigates the conditions for the spread of the biggest global literary success of its time, translated into at least 32 premodern languages: the Seven Sages of Rome or Book of Sindbad.
The PhD project ‘How to write a global success before print: The paradigmatic case of the Seven Sages of Rome/ Sindbad narrative’ is innovative in that combines recent theories of translingualism and globalisation with premodern literature and digital humanities methods. It analyses on a unique resource: the largest dataset ever collated for the transmission of a single premodern narrative matter, cataloguing the c. 600 known manuscripts and c. 300 known print editions (each of which contains a slightly different version) of the multilingual The Seven Sages / Sindbad. This database is being assembled at St Andrews as part of the AHRC-funded research project ‘The Seven Sages of Rome’ in collaboration with the Free University of Berlin and the University of Würzburg (Germany). It will be completed and ready for analysis by March 2026, and offers a rare opportunity to study how cultural artefacts achieved global – or more precisely, pancontinental – success.
The PhD project will map some of the circumstances of the text’s transmission. Because German-speaking towns, monasteries and later also printers were the major hubs for publishing and translating the text into Latin as well as Scandinavian, East European and Iberian languages from 1200CE, the prospective student must be able to understand German-language sources. Beyond that, you will be able to choose your own focus on any aspect of the transmission that fits your training and interests (and local supervisory expertise), employing philological, historical, digital and/or literary methods. You might choose to study, for example, why and how the story matter entered English, Scots and Welsh, but not Irish literary traditions; the text’s 16th-century import into Mexico and the American colonies; the role of repeated Dutch translations as multiplicators (Schlusemann 2025); the question of how the text made it from 8th-century Persian, where it was probably first written down, to Eastern Anatolia, where it was translated into Greek around 1100, and by 1200 into Cistercian monasteries in Lorraine, where the Seven Sages craze that swept Europe for the next four centuries seems to have started. Such questions are still unsolved after nearly three centuries of scholarly efforts, but the AHRC database provides a new, secure basis for finding answers. The PhD project’s interdisciplinary approach will look for success factors that may include changing trading routes and market locations, availability of raw materials and print technology, the flexibility of the Seven Sages/Sindbad’s frame-tale narrative structure to accommodate Christian, Muslim and Jewish educational purposes, and the transcultural appeal of its ‘he-said/she said’ story of a sexual assault.
Further information
See the funding catalogue for further information and full terms.
Please apply for the scholarship after you have submitted your application for a place at St Andrews. You do not need to wait until you have received an offer of a place before applying for the scholarship.
Research degrees in the School of Modern Languages
The School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews is one of the largest and most diverse of its kind in the UK.
The School has an exceptionally broad variety of research interests ranging from the medieval period to the present day and engages with literatures and cultures from around the world. It was ranked first in Scotland in the most recent UK national research assessment exercise - more than 80% of the School's research and impact was judged to be world-leading or internationally excellent. The School of Modern Languages is home to three research centres and one research institute and the annual Byre World programme brings together staff, students, and guests in events that share the School's research with the wider University and the public.
As a doctoral student in the School of Modern Languages you will be part of a vibrant interdisciplinary research community. You will work with academic supervisors who will provide you with subject expertise and guidance to help you plan and manage your research while the University's researcher development programmes give you the skills you need as an independent researcher.
Learn more about research degrees with the School of Modern Languages.