Dr Bryony Coombs is a Teaching Fellow specialising in late-medieval art in northern Europe. After studying Fine Art as an undergraduate, her doctorate at Edinburgh University focussed on Franco-Scottish cultural connections during the late-medieval and early modern periods. Specialising in the transfer of ideas in northern Europe, and text and image relationships in late-medieval manuscripts, her research balances an exploration of the visual and material, with focussed archival research. Her first monograph, Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550, will be out with Edinburgh University Press in August 2024 and she has recently signed a contract for her second monograph 'Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland' which will come out with Edinburgh University Press in their new Visual and Material Cultures of Scotland Series. Bryony was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS) in May 2024.

Recent prize-winning publications include ‘From Dunbar to Rome: John Stuart, Duke of Albany and his Con-tribution to the Theory and Practice of Military Science in Scotland and Italy, 1514-1536.’ PSAS (2019), which was awarded the Murray Medal for History. In 2021 she also received the Jack Medal from the IASSL for her work ‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the Transfer of Ideas Between Scotland and the Continent 1509-1536.’

Beyond Franco-Scottish research, Bryony also works on early Netherlandish visual culture with a particular interest in manuscript material. She is co-editor of the forthcoming international, interdisciplinary volume, 'Anselm Adornes: Travel, Trade and Cultural Exchange, Intellectual Networks in Scotland, Bruges and Jerusalem' under contract with Brepols. She is also an active member of the research group Reviving the Trinity working on the Trinity Panels attributed to Hugo van der Goes on view at the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS).

She is currently embarking on a new research project, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, a cultural history of works on parchment in late-medieval 'Scotland entitled: Scotland on Parchment: Scraped, Limned and Bound'. For work on this project, she undertook a research fellowship at Aberdeen University in 2022 and has been funded to undertake research trips to multiple manuscript collections across Britain and Europe in 2024.

Bryony has previously worked in heritage at Historic Environment Scotland (HES) and in the commercial art world at Christies. She is on the editorial board for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and is a founding member of the Research cluster Edinburgh Manuscripts: Composition and Collection (EMCC).

Select Publications

Books and Monographs

Coombs, B. 'Scotland on Parchment: Illuminated Manuscripts in Late-Medieval Scotland', Visual and Material Cultures of Scotland Series (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).

'Anselm Adornes: Art, Commerce and Piety in Fifteenth Century Scotland, Bruges and the Mediterranean', eds. Bryony Coombs, Jill Harrison and Giovanna Guidicini (Brepols, forthcoming 2025).

Coombs, B. 'Visual Arts and the Auld Alliance: Scotland, France and National Identity c.1420-1550' (Edinburgh University Press, 2024).

Refereed Journal Articles

‘Icon to Image: René of Anjou, Cultural Hybridity, and Aesthetics of the East’, Viator (forthcoming).

‘An Optical Revolution in the Digital Age.’ Review of the online exhibition and of the catalogue ‘Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution’ (Ghent, Museum voor Schone Kunsten), Renaissance Studies (2021).

‘Les Abus du Monde: A French Manuscript Produced for James IV, c. 1509, The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M. 42.’ The Scottish Historical Review (April 2021).

‘Drawing Blood: The Visual Patronage of Robert Stuart d’Aubigny, Maréchal of France, in relation to James V’s French Sojourn in 1536.’ Études Épistémè, 37 (2020).

‘From Dunbar to Rome: John Stuart, Duke of Albany and his Contribution to the Theory and Practice of Military Science in Scotland and Italy, 1514-1536.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 148 (2019), 231-266. This paper was awarded the Murray Medal for History.

‘Material Diplomacy: French Manuscripts and the Stuart Kings of Scotland, Edinburgh University Library, MS 195’ The Scottish Historical Review, 98: 2 (2019), 183-213.

‘The Tapestries of St Anatoile (1502-1506): Burgundian Perceptions of a ‘Scottish Saint’ and the Royal House of Scotland at the turn of the Sixteenth Century.’ The Innes Review, 70.1 (2019), 1-35.

‘The Artistic Patronage of John Stuart, Duke of Albany 1520-1530: Vic-le-Comte, the Last Sainte-Chapelle.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 147 (2017), 175-217.

‘Identity and Agency in the Patronage of Bérault Stuart d’Aubigny: the Political Self-Fashioning of a Franco-Scottish Soldier and Diplomat.’ The Medieval Journal, 7:1 (2017), 89-143. 

‘Are the Petites Heures d'Anne de Bretagne really the Petites Heures de Jeanne de France?’ Reinardus, 27 (2015), 58-87. 

‘The Artistic Patronage of John Stuart, Duke of Albany 1518-19: The “Discovery” of the Artist and Author, Bremond Domat.’ The Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 144 (2014), 277-309. 

Chapters and Edited Collections

‘Lost Books: Early Humanism in Scotland and the Manuscript Interests of James III and Anselm Adornes’ in Anselm Adornes: Travel, Trade and Cultural Exchange, Intellectual Networks in Scotland, Bruges and Jerusalem (Brepols, forthcoming 2025).

‘Repetition and Innovation: Scottish Patrons and Netherlandish Artist’s: Visual and Archival Evidence,’ in Reviving the Trinity: Networks and Materialities in Scotland and Europe, 1400-1600 (Brepols, forthcoming 2024).

'Illuminations and Miniatures' in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, volume 1 (to 1707) eds. Daryl Green, Alastair Mann, Joseph Marshall, Emily Wingfield (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2024).

'Imported Manuscripts' in The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, volume 1 (to 1707) eds. Daryl Green, Alastair Mann, Joseph Marshall, Emily Wingfield (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2024).

'Translating Identities: Tracing the Transfer of a Scottish Origin Myth from Scotland to France c. 1519.' in Writing Scottishness: literature and the shaping of Scottish national identities eds. Ian Brown and Clarisse Godard Desmarest (Association for Scottish Literature, forthcoming).

‘Albany and the Poets: John Stuart, Duke of Albany, and the transfer of ideas between Scotland and the Continent, 1509-1536.’ this paper is forthcoming in Britain and its Neighbours: Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2021). This paper was awarded the Jack Medal.

Dirk H. Steinforth, Bryony Coombs, and Charles C. Rozier, ‘Introduction,’ Britain and its Neighbours: Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2021).

Public Engagement

‘Grand Designs: Properties and Inventories in the context of the Auld Alliance,’ History Scotland Magazine (Forthcoming, 2025).

‘Historical Fiction and the Historian: Researching the Characters of the Auld Alliance,’ The Whispering Gallery (March 2024).

Edinburgh University Press Blog: ‘Blood and Vellum: Manuscripts and Materiality in a Pandemic.’ (2 July 2021) This is a blog post dealing with researching and teaching using medieval manuscripts. It is linked to, and used to promote, my two recent articles published in the Scottish Historical Review.

Scotichronicast podcast episodes. Part 1: Medieval Scottish Patronage in France. Part 2: Inventories and the Auld Alliance. This is a discussion with Dr Kate Buchanan examining my research into Scottish history and the Auld Alliance (June/July 2021).