Dr Isabella Magni

PhD

School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities

Lecturer in Digital Humanities

Dr Isabella Magni
Profile picture of Dr Isabella Magni
i.magni@sheffield.ac.uk
+44 114 222 1343
Profile

I am Lecturer in digital humanities in the Digital Humanities Institute (DHI). My research stands at the intersection between digital philology and digital editing, text and data analysis, cultural analytics, digital archives, mediaeval and early modern studies, mercantile and transcultural mediaeval cultures.

Before joining the DHI, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the HathiTrust Research Center where I managed that tell the story of historically under-resourced and marginalised textual communities. Previously, I worked as Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the , Newberry Research Library 鈥 Chicago IL, where I collaborated in creating the project; and as Postdoctoral Associate in Italian and Digital Humanities at , teaching and researching at the intersection between Italian studies, Medieval and Renaissance literature and cultures and digital scholarship. I completed my PhD in Italian and Medieval Studies with a focus on digital humanities at Indiana University, Bloomington (USA).

I am currently working on exploring how AI and computer vision can help examine and better understand Mediaeval and early modern book production, and in particular Petrarch鈥檚 songbook Rerum vulgarium fragmenta; and on non-canonical Italian texts (including a digital edition of the ).

My current main projects, already available online, are:

  • . Role: Principal Investigator.
  • . Role: co-Investigator.
  • . Role: Editor, Digital and Content Manager 

Additionally, I serve as one of the Editors of the Early Modern Digital Review (an online, open-access, and refereed journal publishing high-quality reviews of digital projects related to early modern society and culture), and as the first Digital Editor of (the journal of the Society for Textual Scholarship). I also serve on the advisory board of the 鈥檚 Digital and Multimedia Committee. 

Qualifications

PhD, Indiana University

Research interests
  • digital archives
  • text and data analysis 
  • AI, computer vision and manuscript studies 
  • digital editing
  • digital philology; digital palaeography
  • textual studies; history of the book
  • Mediaeval and early modern texts; translation studies; premodern mercantile cultures; women writers
Teaching interests

At 91直播, I serve as Director of the MA in Cultural Data Management and Communication, and as Director of Admissions and Recruitment. I am a module leader for Introduction to Cultural Data, and Digital Methods in Practice (upcoming). My main teaching interests are:

  • digital cultures and cultural data 
  • digital archives and digital editing
  • digital textual studies 
  • Mediaeval and early modern literature and history 

Cultural Data Management and Communication MA

Postgraduate taught
  • September 2025 start
  • 1 year 2 years Full-time Part-time

Cultural data is digital data about human culture and society. In this MA you'll learn the concepts and methods for how cultural data is created, managed, analysed and communicated. You'll get a grounding in how the digital world works in practice, how to manage digital projects and an opportunity to learn about digital culture and how digital products are created.

Publications

Books/volumes/special issues:

  • . Eds. Beatrice Arduini, Isabella Magni and Jelena Todorovic. Brill Publishers (2021).
  • Digital Paleography. Special issue of Vol.3 No.1, Iter Press (2020); also published in , Vol 43 No 2 (2020).

Selected articles:

  • 鈥淓diting the Albizi Memorial Book鈥, in Interpretation and Visual Poetics in Early Modern Texts, Brill Publishers (2021).
  • 鈥淐ultural Mediations and Material Contexts of Dante鈥檚 Commedia: the Case of Beinecke MS 428鈥, Romanic Review, vol. 112.1, Duke University Press (2021). 
  • 鈥泪ntroduction: Special Issue, Digital Paleography鈥, Early Modern Digital Review Vol.3 No.1, Iter Press, University of Toronto (Fall 2020). 
  • 鈥溾 Atti del IX Convegno Annuale AIUCD. La svolta inevitabile: sfide e prospettive per l'Informatica Umanistica. Milano: Universit脿 Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, p.287: 2020.
  • 鈥淩eading the Comedy in Manuscripts: Material Philology in Dante Studies.鈥 with H. W. Storey, in Approaches to Teaching Dante鈥檚 Divine Comedy. Second Edition, Modern Language Association of America, New York, 2020.
  • 鈥淭he Petrarchive Project: An Overview鈥 in A Dossier of Scholarly Projects at the Intersection of Italian Studies and Digital Humanities, Special Issue of Italian Culture Vol. 37, 2019.
  • 鈥溾 with C. Fletcher and K. Christianson, in print, Essays in Medieval Studies vol.34, West Virginia Univ. Press, 2018.
  • &苍产蝉辫;鈥淭丑别 Fragmenta鈥檚 Timeline: Models for Reconstructing and Interpreting the Text鈥 in Mediaevalia vol.39, State University of New York Press, 2018.
  • 鈥淰isualizing the Fragmenta鈥檚 poetic systems鈥, in Humanist Studies & the Digital Age vol.5 no.1, University of Oregon Journals, 2017.
  • 鈥溾 with John A. Walsh, in Digital Philology 5.2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
  • 鈥泪 codici paralleli dei Fragmenta鈥, in Medioevo letterario d鈥橧talia. Vol. 12, 2015.