Research output per year
Research output per year
Professor, Prof
KY16 9AJ
United Kingdom
Accepting Postgraduate Research Students
PhD projects
Prof Rudy occasionally takes on new PhD students.
Medieval manuscripts and objects; pilgrimage, real and imagined; forensic approaches to objects and materials; early printing; craft, embodied knowledge, and intangible cultural heritage in Europe and Asia.
In 2024-25, she is teaching on AH1001, AH1003, AH1901, AH5164, AH6165, and the SAIMS MLitt module.
Kathryn Rudy (Kate) earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Art History, and a Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the University of Toronto. Before coming to St. Andrews, she held research, teaching, and curatorial positions in the US, the UK, Canada, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Her research concentrates on the reception and original function of manuscripts, especially those manufactured in the Low Countries, and she has pioneered the use of the densitometer to measure the grime that original readers deposited in their books. She is currently developing ways to track and measure user response of late medieval manuscripts.
Professor Rudy is the author of six books, including Touching Parchment: How Medieval Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts.
Vol. 1: Officials and Their Books (Open Book Publishers, 2023 - with three further volumes to follow); Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print (Open Book Publishers, 2019); Rubrics, Images and Indulgences in Late Medieval Netherlandish Manuscripts (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Piety in Pieces: How medieval readers customized their manuscripts (Open Book Publishers, 2016); and Postcards on Parchment: The Social Lives of Medieval Books(Yale University Press, 2015). In 2017-18 she held a Paul Mellon Senior Fellowship to write a book about physical interactions with the manuscript in late Medieval England. In 2018-19 she was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam to complete a book about manuscript production in Delft. Until December 2022, with the support of a Leverhulme Major Research Grant, she conducted a study titled ‘Measuring medieval users’ responses to manuscripts: New technological approaches’. In 2023 she is studying creativity and inventiveness in humans and animals, together with Prof Sue Healy and Dr Emily Doolittle, with the support of an APEX award. She has won grants from, among others, the British Academy, the Bodleian Library (Oxford), the Getty Research Institute, and the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie (IKKM) at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy. In 2019 she was awarded the Sir Walter Scott Medal, the senior prize in arts, humanities and social sciences in Scotland. In April 2021 she was elected Curator of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2022.
Medieval manuscripts and objects; pilgrimage, real and imagined; forensic approaches to objects and materials; early printing; craft, embodied knowledge, and intangible cultural heritage in Europe and Asia.
Curator, The Royal Society of Edinburgh
1 Apr 2021 → 1 Nov 2022
Research output: Non-textual form › Digital or Visual Products
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
Research output: Non-textual form › Digital or Visual Products
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Entry for encyclopedia/dictionary
Research output: Contribution to journal › Book/Film/Article review
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (PI)
12/09/22 → 11/09/23
Project: Standard
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (PI)
1/04/19 → 30/12/22
Project: Fellowship
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (PI)
1/09/18 → 31/03/19
Project: Fellowship
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (PI)
1/10/17 → 30/06/18
Project: Fellowship
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (PI)
1/10/17 → 31/03/18
Project: Standard
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Participant)
Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in or organising a public festival/exhibition/event
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Presentation
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Speaker)
Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Member of editorial board)
Activity: Publication peer-review and editorial work types › Editor of research journal
Rudy FRSE, K. M. (Recipient), 2019
Prize: Prize (including medals and awards)
Rudy FRSE, K. M. (Recipient), 2018
Prize: Election to learned society
Rudy, K. M. (Recipient), 1 Jan 2018
Prize: National/international honour
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Recipient), 2022
Prize: Election to learned society
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. (Recipient), Feb 2023
Prize: National/international honour
6/11/22
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Relating to Research
Rudy FBA FRSE, K. M. & Howes, D.
22/10/22
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Relating to Research
13/10/22
1 Media contribution
Press/Media: Relating to Research
20/06/22
1 item of Media coverage
Press/Media: Relating to Research