Hundreds of literary works and illustrations depicting disability aids can be found in medieval mansucripts. These representations can provide powerful insight into medieval views of, and approaches toward, disability, including ones that hold relevance today. Yet many of these representations have gone ignored. DISMANTLE aims to transform a key area of medieval disability studies by gathering and analysing the first large-scale collection of medieval representations of disability aids from Northwestern Europe (with a focus on The Netherlands, Belgium, France, and the UK).

Once complete, the DISMANTLE corpus will be made available to other researchers so they can use it for exploring their own research questions. For this project, the corpus will be analysed using a mixed quantitative/qualitative approach across three subprojects, each focused on one aspect of the corpus:

• Subproject 1: Cross-temporal and regional comparisons (PI)
• Subproject 2: Intersections of gender, class, and disability (PhD)
• Subproject 3: Medieval attitudes towards disability (Postdoctoral researcher)

The findings of this project, which will be explored in publications and a museum collaboration, will shed light on medieval approaches toward, and histories of, disability aids while revealing new insights into medieval literature, art, and culture.

Project mentioned in interview with the PI in Leidraad (May 2026), p. 37.

‘From walking sticks to guide dogs: Krista Milne charts the lives of medieval people with disabilities’

‘Fourteen Leiden University researchers receive Vidi grant’

Krista A. Milne, Textual and Artistic Representations of Guide Dogs in Northwestern Europe, 1100-1500 (London: Palgrave, forthcoming 2026).

• europe
• medieval literature

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