Alex Laar

My project is a Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) centred on the Old Library at Queens’ College, Cambridge. I am studying the international networks of Tudor humanism present in Queens’ Old Library, represented most significantly by the college’s ties with Erasmus and its collection of books belonging to Sir Thomas Smith (1513-1577). My principal supervisors are Tim Eggington (Queens’ College, Cambridge) and William Poole (New College, Oxford).

I am interested in libraries, reading practices and the history of the book trade, having spent four years working at Bernard Quaritch Ltd, the antiquarian booksellers in London. Prior to that I completed my MA on medieval manuscripts at the Courtauld Institute, University of London and studied English literature for my BA at the University of Cambridge. I am very grateful to be funded by the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC DTP and the University of Oxford’s Clarendon Fund.