Bryony Coombs

(CRC Manuscript 2023-12 credit Joseph Wilson)

Dr Bryony Coombs is a Teaching Fellow specialising in late-medieval art in northern Europe. After studying Fine Art as an undergraduate, her doctorate at Edinburgh University focussed on Franco-Scottish cultural connections during the late-medieval and early modern periods. Specialising in the transfer of ideas in northern Europe, and text and image relationships in late-medieval manuscripts, her research balances an exploration of the visual and material, with focussed archival research. Her first monograph, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550, was published with Edinburgh University Press in September 2024 and she has recently signed a contract for her second monograph ‘Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland’ which will come out with Edinburgh University Press in their new Visual and Material Cultures of Scotland Series. Bryony was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) in May 2024.

Recent prize-winning publications include ‘From Dunbar to Rome: John Stuart, Duke of Albany and his Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Military Science in Scotland and Italy, 1514-1536.’ PSAS (2019), which was awarded the Murray Medal for History. In 2021 she also received the Jack Medal from the IASSL for her work ‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the Transfer of Ideas Between Scotland and the Continent 1509-1536.’

Beyond Franco-Scottish research, Bryony also works on early Netherlandish visual culture with a particular interest in manuscript material. She is co-editor of the forthcoming international, interdisciplinary volume, ‘Anselm Adornes: Travel, Trade and Cultural Exchange, Intellectual Networks in Scotland, Bruges and Jerusalem’ under contract with Brepols. She is also an active member of the research group Reviving the Trinity working on the Trinity Panels attributed to Hugo van der Goes on view at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS).

Her new book project, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, will produce a cultural history of works on parchment in late-medieval Scotland entitled Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland. She is also in the early-stages of developing a future book project on medieval manuscripts and distributed cognition, provisionally entitled Medieval Manuscripts and the Extended Mind.

Bryony has previously worked in heritage at Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and in the commercial art world at Christies. She is on the editorial board for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and is a founding member of the Research cluster Edinburgh Manuscripts: Composition and Collection (EMCC).

At Edinburgh, Bryony teaches a series of honours and postgraduate courses on manuscript studies, French and Scottish visual culture, and early-Netherlandish painting, as well as contributing a series of lectures on the northern Renaissance to the core first year course and various seminars to the team taught postgraduate courses. Trained in Fine Art, with specialisms in drawing and painting (particularly linear anatomical drawing), Bryony is currently working on practice-based methodologies focussing on parchment (animal skin) and historic grounds, pigments, and metals. She has a number of ongoing initiatives involving experiential and kinaesthetic learning.