Apply to the Medieval Studies Research Lab (AY2026–27)
The Interdisciplinary Program in Medieval Studies is seeking undergraduate students in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) to serve as research assistants for 2026–27 Academic Year. Eligible applicants must be majoring and/or minoring in LAS disciplines, with preference given to students specializing in Medieval Studies and related Humanities fields. Students must be actively enrolled in coursework in LAS and preferably in their first four years of study. In addition, applicants must have taken and passed an undergraduate course that requires the composition of a (short) research paper, such as MDVL 201. Regarding the specific need for language and software skills relevant to the projects, please see the project descriptions.
Hired research assistants (RAs) will be assigned to one of three projects led by faculty affiliates of the Medieval Studies Program. These projects are collectively called the Medieval Studies Research Lab. RAs will be expected to work 5 hours per week at a rate of $15 per hour. Detailed descriptions of the projects and their respective expectations are outlined in the attachment.
Project 1. Professor Carson Koepke (English, ckoepke@illinois.edu) will oversee “Geographic Networks of Medieval Saints’ Legends,” a Digital Humanities project the goal of which will be to produce an online database of medieval Christian hagiography coded by manuscript and location.
Project 2. Professor Walker Horsfall (Germanic Studies, horsfall@illinois.edu) is seeking an undergraduate student researcher for help on the data collection project “The Middle High German leich: A Bibliography.”
Project 3. Professor Gian Piero Persiani (EALC, gp2029@illinois.edu) will direct the project “Literary Geographies of Medieval East Asia.”
Application deadline: The online application form is due by Tuesday, Sept. 8 th . Please apply at the following link: https://go.illinois.edu/msrl2026.
This initiative has generously been funded by LAS’s Program for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Exploration (PURSUE LAS).