Many CERL Grantees continue to research and be employed in heritage collections. In this section we aim to keep track of their career and continuous involvement with CERL, its projects, and digital resources. CERL Grantees share an awareness of the importance of been able to work with both primary sources and digital resources. Their stories can be inspirational to other early career scholars and librarians, who may look for support and mentoring.
The CERL Blog section features many of their experiences.
Beatrice Alai (Yale 2018): in 2019 she published Le miniature italiane del Kupferstichkabinett di Berlino (Firenze: Edizioni Polistampa, 2019). Between 2021–2024 she held a postdoctoral grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg; she curated the volume Incunabula at the Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg in Context: Interdisciplinary Case Studies and International Research Perspectives, ed. Beatrice Alai, Kleine Schriften zu Kultur und Geschichte der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU), 11 (Erlangen: FAU University Press, 2025).
In 2025 she received a postdoctoral grant from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung at FAU to work on ‘Illuminated Legacy: transcultural dynamics, aesthetic practices and material cultures of the collection of fragments at the Historisches Museum, Frankfurt a. M.’.
Laura Carnelos (Marie Curie Fellow at CERL and the British Library 2016-2018): after a period at Reading University Department of Typography & Graphic Communication as Collections Research Assistant, and another as Project Librarian: Science and Conservation at the British Museum.
In Autumn 2020 Laura was appointed Library Curator (Rare Books and Manuscripts) at Eton College.
Ruben Celani (The Hague KB 2017): after gaining his PhD in the Department of Literary Studies at the University of Gent (2018-2022), on ‘Revealing secrets. Rhetoric and medicine in the Italian renaissance literature (ca. 1550-1600)’, he is a postdoctoral research associate and curatorial fellow at Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame, Indiana.
He serves in the department of Rare Books and Special Collections as curator of the Zahm-Devers Dante collection, and as subject librarian for Italian Studies.
Sara D’Amico (Dublin Marsh’s Library 2022): her work at Marsh’s Library eventually resulted in the publication of an Incunable catalogue titled Gutenberg’s Cradle: Incunables at Marsh’s Library, Dublin (Dublin, 2024). Afterwards, she catalogued a collection of 19th– and 20th-century printed music for the Library of the Fondazione Camillo Caetani, Rome, and attended the Vatican School of Library Science.
Since 2023, she has enrolled as a PhD researcher at the University of Alicante, Spain, where she is writing a thesis on the history of the antiquarian book trade and on the 19th-century commodification of rare books.
Anna de Bruyn (Groningen UL 2019): In 2024 she obtained her PhD at the University of Groningen for the research ‘The Image between Manuscript and Print: re-reading the ‘printing revolution’’.
Since 2024 she is a curator at the State Archives of Rotterdam.
Antonia Delle Fratte (Florence Laurenziana, remote 2022): In 2022 won Antonia a fully-funded doctoral position in Book Heritage at the University of Venice/Padua, for the project ‘Gustav Friedrich Waagen’s contribution to the origin and development of studies on the history of illumination, through the analysis of his works Works of Art and Artists in Great Britain (1837) and Treasures of Art in Great Britain (1854)’; supervisors Prof. Paola Molino and Prof. C. Dondi. Between 2025/26 she has catalogued in Manus Online (ICCU) 130 manuscripts of the Benedictine Library of San Giorgio Maggiore of Venice, now at the Biblioteca Universitaria of Padua, towards the virtual reconstruction of this historical library; this is a collaborative project of CERL, Fondazione Giorgio Cini of Venice, and Factum Foundation, supported by funds from the Lady Helen Hamlyn Foundation. A blog was published on 20 Apr. 2026.
Elena Fogolin (Huntington 2019): In 2024 Elena successfully obtained her PhD (Univ. of Udine and Mainz) and from 2026 she is part of the ERC-funded COLIBRI Project (PI M. Malaspina).
Angeline Rais (Lambeth Palace Library, London, 2014): In 2019 completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford, published in 2026 as The Antiquarian Book Trade in Switzerland. Sir Thomas Phillipps’s Acquisitions in the 1820s and their Later Dispersal (Turnhout: Brepols, 2026). Between 2019/20 she held a research position at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris related to the cataloguing and digitisation of their special collections. Between 2020 and 2024 Angeline started a postdoctoral position at the School of Advanced Study, University of London as part of the ERC-funded CULTIVATE MSS Project: Cultural Values and the International Trade in Medieval European Manuscripts, c. 1900-1945 (PI Dr Laura Clever).
In 2024 she received a ‘Bourse de soutien à la recherche Vallesiana 2024 pour chercheuses et chercheurs senior’ (20,000 CHF), from the ‘Service de la culture du Canton du Valais’ for her project ‘L’histoire des incunables des bibliothèques du Valais à travers leurs marques de provenance’ ; the project included the cataloguing in MEI. From June 2025 she is part of the FIS-funded PrintRevUS project (PI C. Dondi).
Camilla Marangoni (Florence Laurenziana remote 2019): In 2021 she was part of the Dante 1481 project, funded by the Polonsky Foundation. In March 2026 she obtained her PhD in Heritage Science from the University of Turin with a thesis on the illumination and illustration in 15th-century editions, with a focus on Turin editions.
In 2025/26 she catalogued the incunabula of Genoa, Biblioteca Civica Berio, as part of a digitisation project funded by the Italian government.
Marianna Morreale (Cambridge UL 2018): now works at ICCU, Rome, and has joined CERL’s Executive Committee in 2025.
Martyna Osuch (Warsaw Metropolitan Seminary 2019): the research continued with a Preludium Grant and the results were published in Martyna Osuch, ‘The migration of incunabula in 18th-century Europe: six volumes from the collection of Józef Andrzej Załuski (1702–1774), preserved in the Metropolitan Seminary Library in Warsaw’, Quaerendo, 2024, no. 54, 249–269. In 2025 she obtained her PhD from the University of Warsaw, on ‘Guidebook to Rome „Le Cose Meravigliose dell’alma città di Roma” printed in 1575 – authors, editors, readers’, a monograph was published in 2025; in the same year she also joined the ERC-funded project “Scholars, Animals, Images, Geographies, and the Arts: De-exoticizing Eastern Europe in the Early Modern Period (SAIGA)” (PI: Prof. Grażyna Jurkowlaniec).
Since 2023 she has been responsible for the creation and curation of the Polish Provenance Database, together with Wojciech Kordyzon and Helena Nebel, created in cooperation with CERL.
Ester Camilla Peric (Cambridge UL 2018): In 2019 started a four-year Doctoral programme ‘Testi, Tradizioni e Culture del Libro. Studi italiani e romanzi’ at the University of Naples (coord. Prof. Andrea Mazzucchi). In 2024 she was awarded a one-year research grant from the University of Udine to work on their incunabula.
From June 2025 she is part of the FIS-funded PrintRevUS project (PI C. Dondi).
Krisztina Rabai (Edinburgh NL 2018): On 26th Febr. 2020 she delivered the talk “Liber iste pertinet…”: craftsmen, owners, readers: a glimpse into the secret history of the incunables preserved in the collection of Somogyi Library” at the Somogyi Library in Szeged [Hungary], which was also covered by the local news
Martyna Grzesiak (Huntington 2019): In 2025 Martyna successfully obtained her DPhil (Univ. of Oxford) and from June 2025 she is part of the FIS-funded PrintRevUS project (PI C. Dondi).
Vanessa Rossi (MLGB remote 2023): is since 2024 librarian at the Biblioteca comunale of Trento.
Lucrezia Signorello (The Hague KB 2019): In October 2020 Lucrezia won a PhD position at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, completed and now published as Lucrezia Signorello, Non molto copiosa di libri ma di estimazione. Storia, luoghi e persone della biblioteca di Santa Maria del Popolo nella Roma rinascimentale, Roma 2026 (Roma nel Rinascimento inedita 118, saggi).
Since 2024 she is a curator at the Biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena, sezione Antica.
Agne Zemkajute (Groningen UL 2023): her blog was translated into Dutch and is now online at the Dutch Academic Heritage Foundation on its homepage and its blogpage, while also featuring prominently in the Foundation’s newsletter of January 2024. “All this is splendid attention for our Special Collections, thank you both once more for these fruits of our joint collaboration” (Arie can der Lan, Jan. 2024).