---
title: "Erik Kwakkel"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Erik Kwakkel"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-08-16T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["colophon","medieval manuscripts","codicology","diplomatics","J.P. Gumbert"]
seek_code_commit: "21947c9"
---


Medieval-book historian (Leiden PhD; professor at the University of British
Columbia's iSchool; held Leiden's Scaliger Chair in 2016) known for public
writing on manuscript culture, first on the collaborative Leiden blog
*medievalfragments* and later on his own site, medievalbooks.nl.

Matters to this vault as the traceable primary source for the "one in seven"
colophon-frequency figure that first entered the vault, uncited, via a
2026-08-16 capture — this entity page did not exist while that figure sat
unresolved as a caveat on [[entity-colophon]].

## References

- [[claim-kwakkel-2014-blog-states-one-in-seven-colophon-figure]]
- [[claim-kwakkel-one-in-seven-colophon-figure-uncited-in-source-text]]

## Updates

- 2026-09-20: First hub page for Kwakkel, created on the second capture to
  cite him. A direct read of his own 2014 blog post (both venues) confirms
  he did state the "one in seven" colophon figure in his own words, closing
  the sourcing gap the 2026-08-16 capture had left open — but the figure
  itself carries no cited study or dataset in his text, which stays a
  separate, unresolved question
  ([[question-verify-kwakkel-one-in-seven-colophon-figure-against-a-corpus]]).
  ([[claim-kwakkel-2014-blog-states-one-in-seven-colophon-figure]])
- 2026-09-21: A systematic search for a corpus study substantiating the
  "one in seven" figure found none. Two genuine corpus-based colophon
  counts exist in the literature — a 2025 Bergen bibliometric study
  (measures the share of colophons naming female scribes, not colophon
  frequency) and an ongoing Kiel University project counting
  German-language manuscripts (~1-in-5, a different manuscript
  population) — and neither confirms nor contradicts Kwakkel's figure. A
  widely-repeated "15%" figure that reads like independent corroboration
  turns out, on direct read of its own footnote, to be Kwakkel's figure
  relayed a second time, not a second measurement.
  ([[claim-ommundsen-2025-colophon-bibliometric-study-measures-female-scribe-attribution-not-frequency]],
  [[claim-kiel-dahm-project-finds-one-in-five-colophon-frequency-in-german-manuscripts]],
  [[claim-purple-motes-15-percent-colophon-figure-restates-kwakkels-one-in-seven]])