Nicole Volmering

Research Assistant Professor

My main research interests centre on the manuscript culture and religious literature of the insular world, particularly medieval Irish martyrologies, eschatology, transmission of books and texts, and palaeography. I also occasionally work on the history of Irish education.

As Principal Investigator of the SFI-IRC Pathway Programme project "Early Irish Hands: The Development of Writing in Early Ireland" (2022–27), I investigate the development of book production and writing techniques in the earliest Irish manuscripts. I am also PI of CLÓSCAPE, which is a TLRH-funded project looking at the use of the gaelic typeface in the streetscape. And finally, I am co-PI of Wandering Books, which is an interdisciplinary project looking at the methodologies for localising manuscripts. Formerly the inaugural strand leader for the History of Writing, I currently serve as Director of the Trinity Centre for the Book.

In addition to manuscript-based research, I have a special interest in Irish/insular martyrologies and Irish biblical and eschatological literature more broadly. I have an ongoing project on the Martyrology of Óengus which includes an edition and a digital map. Forthcoming in 2026/7 is a volume Martyrologies in the Insular World: New Perspectives, co-edited with Jonathan Wooding.

Teaching and Supervision

I supervise PhD and MPhil theses in medieval history, palaeography and manuscript studies. I teach (primarily manuscript studies) on the M.Phil. in Medieval Studies and co-deliver the undergrad modules ‘Across the Sea: Ireland and its Neighbours in the Early Middle Ages’ and ‘Early Insular Learning: Fragmented Books in the Irish and Anglo-Saxon Worlds’. I have previously also taught a range of medieval literature and language modules at Trinity and elsewhere as well as Higher Education T&L practices.

Select Publications

‘Dating Félire Óengusso: A Review of the Historical Evidence’, in Gisbert Hemprich, editor, Colloquium in memoriam Rudolf Thurneysen (Bonn, 2025), 365–98.
With Claire Dunne, John Walsh, and Noel Ó Murchadha, Irish in Outlook: A Hundred Years of Irish Education (Lausanne, 2024).
‘Gaelicisation, Education and the Gaelic Script’, in Nicole Volmering, Claire Dunne, John Walsh, and Noel Ó Murchadha, editors, Irish in Outlook: A Hundred Years of Irish Education (Lausanne, 2024), 273–30.
‘The Adaptation of the Visio Sancti Pauli in the West: The Evidence of Redaction VI’, Peritia 31 (2020), 125–154.
‘The Rhetoric of Catastrophe in Eleventh Century Ireland: The Case of The Second Vision of Adomnán’, in Robert Bjork, editor, Catastrophes and the Apocalyptic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Turnhout, 2019), pp. 1–13.
The Second Vision of Adomnán’, in in John Carey, et al., editors, The End and Beyond: Medieval Irish Eschatology (Aberystwyth, 2014), 647–81.
‘The Old English Account of the Seven Heavens’, in John Carey, et al., editors, The End and Beyond: Medieval Irish Eschatology (Aberystwyth, 2014), 285–306.