Dr Zoe Screti

Zoe Screti is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Birmingham and was previously the Astra Foundation Research Fellow in Manuscript Studies at the Voltaire Foundation where she worked on the Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to Voltaire. For CMV, Zoe established the data model for the catalogue, identified fields for inclusion, created catalogue entries, and considered ways in which CMV could link to the wider Digital Voltaire project. Whilst continuing to contribute to CMV, Zoe began her Leverhulme ECF project: ‘Burn This: The Destruction of Personal Papers During the European Enlightenment’ in 2024, a project which unites her interests in manuscript studies and digital humanities approaches to explore archival loss during the long eighteenth century.

Outside of the Voltaire Foundation, Zoe is a Research Fellow of Harris Manchester College, a member of the Oxford Centre for the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology’s Advisory Committee, and an Associated Member of the ‘Équipe Écritures et Lumières’ at the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM), Paris. Zoe is a tutor on the ‘History and Philosophy of Science’ paper and the ‘BIF5: Liberty Commerce, and Power, 1685-1830’ paper. She also regularly contributes to the Bodleian Student Editions sessions.

Selected publications

Published articles

Screti, Zoe, ‘Cucurbits and Covenants: Descriptions of Alchemical Vessels as Religious Spaces in Early Modern England’, BJHS Themes Special Issue – Imagining Alchemy: Visual and Figurative Representations in Pre-Modern Sciences, ed. Zoe Screti, 10 (2025), pp.49-69. https//doi.org/10/1017/bjt.2025.10020.

Pink, Gillian and Zoe Screti, ‘La « Liste des classiques François » : Un échange entre La Beaumelle et Voltaire (Juin 1751)’, Dix-huitième siècle, 57, 1 (2025), pp. 461-482. https://doi.org/10.3917/dhs.057.0461.

Screti, Zoe and Piero Stallo, ‘Project Report: Catalogue of Manuscripts Relating to Voltaire/Catalogue des manuscrits relatifs à Voltaire’, Digital Enlightenment Studies, 2 (December, 2024), pp.47-61. https://doi.org/10.61147/des.20.

Screti, Zoe, ‘An Unpublished Letter from Voltaire to Dr John Carr, a Hertfordshire Headmaster’. French Studies Bulletin (September 2024). https://doi.org/10.1093/frebul/ktae021.

Screti, Zoe, ‘Alchemy and Astronomy: Volvelles in Medieval and Early Modern Alchemical Libraries’, SIS Bulletin (September 2024).

Screti, Zoe, ‘Marginal Voices: The Importance of Including Marginalia in Catalogue Entries’, Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 19, 4 (January, 2024). https://doi.org/10.1177/15501906231220976.

Screti, Zoe, ‘A Motley to the View: The Clothing of Court Fools in Tudor England’, The
Midlands Historical Review, 2 (August, 2018) pp.1-16.

Forthcoming book chapters

Screti, Zoe, ‘Cataloguing the Enlightenment: Digital Approaches to the Cataloguing of Eighteenth-Century Manuscripts’ in New Directions in Digital Textual Studies: Book History, Scholarly Editing, and Curation in Conversation, eds. Christopher Oghe and Kristen Schuster (Forthcoming: Bloomsbury, January 2026). https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/new-directions-in-digital-textual-studies-9781350406780/

Screti, Zoe, ‘Between Tradition and Transformation: Galenic Simples and Paracelsian Iatrochemistry in Early Modern English Domestic Medicine’ in Galen’s Remedies in the Early Modern Period: Traditions, Theories, Transformations, and Trades (1400-1750), eds. Fabrizio Bigotti and John Wilkins (Forthcoming: Palgrave MacMillan, February 2026). https://link.springer.com/book/9783032007247.

Screti, Zoe, ‘The Place of Christian Religion in Early Modern Alchemical Recipes’, in Decoding Recipes ed. Claire Markham and Neha Vermani (Forthcoming: Brill, Autumn 2026).