Katherine Gill Named Executive Director of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - Katherine Gill has been appointed executive director of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) at Saint John's University. SJU President Dietrich Reinhart, OSB and Nicky Carpenter, chair of the HMML Board of Overseers, announced the appointment, effective July 1, 2002. Gill is currently an associate professor of theology at Boston College. Dr. Gill will succeed Fr. Eric Hollas, OSB, who earlier announced his retirement, effective June 30, 2002.

For seven years, Gill was project historian for the Vatican Archives Project, which introduced a new Guide to the Archives of the Holy See. Since 1994, Dr. Gill has been director of Matrix, an online resource and prototype of virtual libraries. In addition to her research on women's religious communities in medieval Italy, she maintains an ongoing interest in enabling access to research materials using new technologies and the Internet.

"The leadership of an institution of the historical stature of the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library is a tremendously exciting opportunity," remarked Dr. Gill. "The Library's mission to preserve the manuscript sources of diverse cultural traditions unites past with present. I look forward to joining with those who have, now for half a century, engaged in the Library's mission of cultural preservation and access to valuable research documents."

"Katherine Gill is internationally recognized as a scholar, historian and someone immensely interested in using electronic resources to advance scholarship and ease of access to historical documents," Reinhart and Carpenter said in a joint statement. "Her many honors and awards, publications and work in progress, articles, reviews, lectures and participation in scholarly meetings are assets that will aid in fulfilling a strategic plan developed by Fr. Eric and the board."

Dr. Gill received her Ph.D. in history from Princeton University, Arch.Pal.Vat. from the Vatican Archive School, Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School and her A.B. from Mount Holyoke College. She is currently on sabbatical from Villa I Tatti: Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy, creating an E-History book on women's religious communities in late medieval Italy. She has held her current position at Boston College since 1998. Prior to that, she taught at Yale University. In addition, she was an exchange scholar at Harvard University and received a diploma from Gregorian University, Rome.

The Hill Monastic Manuscript Library has been a sponsored program of Saint John's University since its founding in 1965 and has filmed nearly 30 million pages from more than 90,000 manuscripts in libraries and archives throughout Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. Today, it represents one of the largest and most comprehensive archives of Medieval and Renaissance sources in the world.