PhD success for Dora Panella

Congratulations to Dora Panella on successfully completing her doctorate on Greek New Testament catena manuscripts. 

Dora's thesis, supervised by Professor Hugh Houghton and Professor David Parker, was on The Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena on Galatians. The Pseudo-Oecumenian Catena is the oldest and most important form of this commentary on the Pauline Epistles, which has not been investigated since the work of Karl Staab in 1926. As Dora explains in the abstract of her thesis:

The present study examines a wider range of manuscripts than Staab in order to reach a new understanding of the Pseudo-Oecumenian tradition. Subgroupings within the main types, and connections between exemplars and copies, are identified using palaeography and both classical and digital philology. The first-ever critical edition of a secondary type of Pseudo-Oecumenian catena on Galatians is presented, along with two previously-unknown extracts which could be part of the Scholia Photiana. Most significantly, the thesis shows that by removing two later sets of additions, the Scholia Photiana and the Corpus Extravagantium, a single original form of the catena on Galatians (the Urkatena) can be established. Supplemented with the first stage of the Corpus Extravagantium and dating from the eighth century onwards, this form also underlies the Typus Vaticanus catena, and is preserved in two surviving manuscripts (GA 075 and GA 1980).

Dora was selected as a doctoral student on the European Research Council-funded COMPAUL project in 2013, and in 2014 was awarded one of the inaugural AHRC Midlands3Cities doctoral scholarships. During her time at Birmingham, she established and chaired the programme unit on Textual Criticism of the Bible and the Qur'an for the European Association of Biblical Studies, ran a cross-university consultation on Greek Palaeography, and presented her work at a range of international conferences. She has already had three papers accepted for publication, including one in the important Texts and Studies volume on Commentaries, Catenae and Biblical Tradition.

Since September, Dora has been working as a Research Assistant at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, supported by the American Bible Society and Society of Biblical Literature. Her duties include preparing the sixth edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament, whose editorial committee met earlier this year in Washington DC. 

Dora Panella with her examiners in ITSEE after her viva voce examination.