Anna Dlabacova is Associate professor in Book History and PI (Principal Investigator) of the ERC-Starting Grant project ‘Pages of Prayer. The Ecosystem of Vernacular Prayer Books in the Late Medieval Low Countries, c. 1380-1550 [PRAYER]’. She is also Vice Chair of the COST Action PRAYTICIPATE - Participation through Prayer in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World.

More information about Anna Dlabacova

Research

Dlabacova is currently the PI (Principal Investigator) of the research project ‘Pages of Prayer. The Ecosystem of Vernacular Prayer Books in the Late Medieval Low Countries, c. 1380-1550’ (supported by ERC Starting grant (PRAYER, Grant agreement ID: 101041517, Project DOI 10.3030/101041517). This project focuses on handwritten and printed books that contain one of the Hours in the translation of c. 1383-1384 attributed to Geert Grote, the initiator of the Modern Devotion, and aims to study all aspects of vernacular prayer books in their mutual interdependence by introducing the new approach of network philology.

She is one of the initiators and Vice-Chair of the COST Action PRAYTICIPATE - Participation through Prayer in the Late Medieval and Early Modern World and a board member of the board of the Dutch Research School for Medieval Studies and of FIDEM (Fédération Internationale des Instituts d'Études Mediévales). Since 2024, she is one of the curators of the Bibliotheca Thysiana.

Fields of interest

Anna Dlabacova’s research focuses on the role of the book – handwritten and printed – in religious practice and culture of the late medieval Low Countries. She is fascinated by all facets of the printed book, particularly in the Dutch vernacular, in the decades immediately after the introduction of the printing press and its many interactions with manuscripts. Research interests include the role of the book in prayer practices, lay and religious book ownership, the book and religious reform before the Reformation, text, image, book design and the materiality of the book.

Curriculum vitae

Dlabacova holds a PhD (2014, cum laude) from Leiden University. In her PhD research, published as a monograph and awarded with the Research Prize (2016) of the Praemium Erasmianum, she explored the relationship between the Franciscan Observance and the production and dissemination of spiritual literature, focusing on the Mirror of Perfection (Spieghel der volcomenheit) written by the friar Hendrik Herp (d. 1477). After conducting a post-doc project with the GEMCA (Louvain-la-Neuve) on text and image in early printed religious books, she returned to Leiden University to work on a VENI project funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO; 2018-2021) that examined the religious books in Middle Dutch printed by the prolific incunabula printer Gerard Leeu. The monograph resulting from the project is still under development.

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Activities