Daniela Mairhofer

I grew up in the Tyrolean Alps (Thiersee, Austria). A classical philologist, I received a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from the University of Innsbruck, where I was also trained as a manuscript expert. I joined the Classics department at Princeton in September 2016, after having taught the Classics for two years at the University of Vienna. Prior to that, over the period of six-and-a-half years, I held four different research positions at Oxford University, where I also taught.

My research focuses primarily on Latin language and literature, with a particular interest in Late and Medieval Latin, on textual transmission and criticism, paleography and codicology (including palimpsest studies), glossography, textual materiality, intellectual history, and the reception of the classics and ancient philosophy in the Latin West. I am currently working on a monograph and a critical edition with commentary and translation (under contract with Oxford University Press) of a Medieval Latin text with the charming title Totum Nihil, which I discovered a number of years ago, and which has preoccupied me ever since.

Most recent major publications include Medieval Manuscripts from Würzburg in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford, 2014); (ed., with R. Sharpe & J. Willoughby), Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (‘MLGB3’) (Oxford, ³2015) [database]; (ed.), Handschriften und Papyri. Wege des Wissens, Nilus. Studien zur Kultur Ägyptens und des Vorderen Orients 24 (Vienna, 2017); Medieval Manuscripts from the Mainz Charterhouse in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Oxford, 2018), 2 vols.; (with A. Mazurek), Der ‚Oxforder Boethius‛. Studie und lateinisch-deutsche Edition, Texte des späten Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit (TMA) 58 (Berlin, 2020). 

I have taught courses on Greek language, Latin language and literature (Classical, Late, Medieval and Neo-Latin, at all levels), Platonism, Latin paleography, the history of the book, and classical reception in the Latin West and Greek East, and have supervised undergraduate and graduate work on various topics. At Princeton, I offer courses mainly in Classics and in Medieval Studies. I am the founder of the Princeton Paleography Lab (PPLab) and host its Latin version.