Nigel Palmer is engaged in a collaborative research project with a group of colleagues in Germany, Switzerland and the US on the Literary topography of South West Germany in the later Middle Ages, an attempt to establish a literary history of this region on the basis of the manuscript sources and library history. The project focuses on Baden-Württemberg, Switzerland and the Alsace, of particular interest is the manuscripts from the Cistercian abbeys and nunneries in the region. His main research project is an edition and commentary on an illustrated prayer book, the Begerin-Gebetbuch from Strasbourg. Other areas of special interest are blockbooks and their place in early printing history, the interface between Latin literature and German literature in the Middle Ages, and palaeography and codicology of the period 1100-1550. He is editor of Oxford German Studies and of Medium Aevum. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen. In 2007 he was awarded the Research Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
