Matti Peikola
matpei@utu.fi +358 29 450 3361 +358 50 564 1825 Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9004-8926 |
Middle and Early Modern English; textual scholarship and book history (manuscript/print); historical pragmatics and material philology; Wycliffite studies: vernacular books, texts and discourses associated with the Lollard movement (especially the Wycliffite Bible, Wyclif's Wycket); early New England textual and scribal practices, especially Salem witchtrial documents
I was appointed Professor of English at Turku in 2016 after acting in that position for 2014–2016. In 2013–2014, I worked as Professor of English at the University of Helsinki, and in 2010 as Substitute Professor (Lehrstuhlvertreter) in English and Book Studies at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. In 2010, I received funding from the Academy of Finland for an Academy Research Fellowship. During that period, I was also a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, and at the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. I received my PhD at the University of Turku in 2000 and held various research and administrative positions there in the 2000s, including two periods as postdoctoral researcher funded by the Academy of Finland. As part of my PhD project, I spent a year as a visiting graduate student at Oxford University (Wolfson College) in the mid-1990s.
My research focuses on textual communication and linguistic variation in the past. I am interested in how written texts are transmitted, transformed and contextualised linguistically, materially and visually by their producers and consumers for different communicative purposes. My work is situated in philology and historical (discourse) linguistics, textual scholarship (codicology, bibliography, textual criticism) and book studies. The materials I have been working on include especially late medieval and early modern English religious texts and legal documents. My recent research deals with the ’framing’ and ’packaging’ of early handwritten and printed texts by means of paratext and metadiscourse. I collaborate with Dr. Peter J. Grund (Yale University) on research into early colonial writing literacies, with a focus on the writers of the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt. I am the PI of the Early Modern Graphic Literacies (EModGraL) research project, funded by the Adacemy of Finland for 2021-2025 (site of research: School of Languages and Translation Studies, University of Turku, decision number 340005).
- Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English (2025) Peikola, Matti; Tyrkkö, Jukka; Varila, Mari-Liisa
(C2 Editorial work for a scientific journal’s special issue) - Graphic Practices in Early English Texts (2025) Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English Peikola, Matti; Tyrkkö, Jukka; Varila, Mari-Liisa
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Presenting manuscript tables and diagrams to the Middle English reader (2025)
- Journal of Historical Pragmatics
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Text Editions and the Philological Tradition (2025) The New Cambridge History of the English Language, vol. 2. Documentation, Sources of Data and Modelling Peikola, Matti
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Visual Chronologies in Early Modern English Historiography (2025) Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English Liira, Aino; Peikola, Matti; Kaartinen, Marjo
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Book review: Transforming Early English: The Reinvention of Early English and Older Scots (2023)
- Journal of English Linguistics
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Developing a classification model for graphic devices in early printed books (2023)
- Studia Neophilologica
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - Multimodal and Multilingual Practices in Late Medieval English Calendars (2023) Multilingualism from Manuscript to 3D: Intersections of Modalities from Medieval to Modern Times Peikola Matti, Varila Mari-Liisa
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Book review: Eyal Poleg: A Material History of the Bible, England 1200–1553. 2020. ISBN 978-0-19-72.6671-7 (2021)
- Manuscript studies
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Paratextual Frames for the Middle English Reader: The Additional Pauline Prologues in Cambridge, Emmanuel College MS 108, a Wycliffite New Testament (2021) Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts Peikola Matti
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book)



