King's College London

Knowledge Orders before Modernity aims to reboot the study of written heritage by equipping future generations with critically endangered skills and technical expertise essential for understanding manuscript texts and archival records. The programme focuses on the methods of the past, the present and the future, such as AI-powered handwriting recognition programmes, as well as image and language generation.

Joining the programme, students will face multiple technologies of knowledge including pre print writing, delve in to the intricacies of how knowledge has been created and remembered through history and how we can tackle engagement with the past and the challenges of forgery and misrepresentation

The challenges of the digital and AI, of decolonisation and globalisation, are destabilising and energising, transforming our sense not just of where we are but how we got here. The digital age is reshaping not just the world in which we live but also our view of the past. For the first time in history, ordinary citizens can browse the written remains of diverse world cultures. Millions of manuscript records are estimated still to exist, and digitisation, however limited and unrepresentative, is opening up countless possibilities to learn about the human past, to view the world of writing beyond any one culture, and to replenish our understanding of the diversity of human experience.

Applications for the programme’s PhD doctoral scholarships are available now, candidates must submit by 12 February 2025. 

Three scholarships covering the costs of both an MA and a doctoral position will be available for application until 13 June 2025.

Meet our students

Meet some of our current students.

Marc Lawson is a PhD student on the Knowledge Orders before Modernity Leverhulme programme. Combining palaeography and liturgical studies, his research project is on manuscripts fragments that preserve relics of the early Irish liturgy.

Ben Gray is a PhD student. He aims to use birch bark letters alongside the Rus chronicle records to provide new perspectives on the Novgrod Republic.

Churis is a Mongolian Chinese student pursuing a PhD. Her research focuses on early Islamic historiography and isnāds (chains of transmission) in early historical writings.

Chloe is a PhD student working on the ‘Saints and Scholars’ project of the Knowledge Orders Before Modernity programme. Her research explores how hagiographies (Saints’ Lives) from the Late Antique were a unique tool for cultural communication.

Click here to apply.