People

Anthropology

Biography

Dr. Emerson Richards is a current MA student specializing in Historical Archaeology and ArcGIS applications at the University of Central Florida, working with Dr. John Walker. She received her PhD in Comparative Literature, focusing on medieval manuscripts, from Indiana University (2020), and MA (2013) and BAs from the University of Florida in English, Medieval Studies, and Geography (2011, 2022).

Her most recent post in Special Collections librarianship has been as Rare Books Cataloguer at Pembroke College, Cambridge. She is also a Certified Environmental Inspector and has worked in the rare book trade for several years. These three disparate career paths converge at the center of conservation of resources and presenting information to diverse audiences through objective data analysis.

Her MA thesis will use historical archaeology as a methodology, applying it to the 1575 Spanish edition of Peter Apian’s Cosmographia, a textbook presenting quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the European encounter with the New World. She is particularly interested in working with the historical coordinates, out of 360 degrees and set to a meridian in the Canary Islands, that accompany a list of toponyms some of which do not have readily apparent modern analogs using GIS.

While at UCF, she has been the recipient of the Dean’s Fellowship (2024) and the Indiana University- Lilly Library Mendel Fellowship (2025) to support her current research. She has also participated in Season 9 of the Cape Canaveral Archaeological Mitigation Project (CCAMP) as a Crew Chief.

Three people at an archaeological site; two standing under a canopy, one crouching in a square excavation area with tools and equipment.

 

Research Interests/Specializations:
  • Historical Archaeology
  • ArcGIS
  • Cultural Heritage Management/ Cultural Resource Management
Check out Dr. Emerson Richards’ current projects and interests!

 

Publications

 

(forthcoming in Fall 2025). “Looking for Na Ah Ch’ul Hun(She of the Holy Books): Potential of Crossdisciplinary Methodological Approaches from Medieval European Manuscript Studies to Better Understand the Maya Codices as Objects”, Manuscript Studies: A Schoenburg Journal for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Press.
2022. “Christus homo factus Wm Cleue prosperet actus”: Examining a Provenance Mark with Suggestions about the Later Ownership of the Paris Apocalypse,” Manuscript Studies: A Schoenburg Journal for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Press, 7(2), 360-369.
2020. “An Investigation of a Printer’s Block (Manchester, John Rylands Library, 17252): The Earliest Extant Woodblock Printing Apparatus or an Eighteenth-Century Creation”, Perspectives Médiévales: revue d’épistémologie des langues et littératures du Moyen Âge, 41, 1-25.
2017. “It is mainly just that they are Irish: Anglo/Irish tensions in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King”, Arthuriana. 27(4), 40-60.
2014. “Seeking That Which Cannot Be Found”: T.H. White’s Use of Precursor Texts to Comment on Pre- and Post- WWII England. Can These Bones Come to Life, Vol. 2. Freelance Press.
2012. “I sort of get carried away, being so normal and everything”: The Oscillating Sexuality of Clare Quilty and Humbert Humbert in the works of Nabokov, Kubrick and Lyne. Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media, 4. Web.
2010. “An Unhappy Knight: The Bastardization and Diffusion of Mordred in Medieval Texts.” Alpata Journal of History.  7, 22-32.