From Filippo De Vivo

We all loved spending time with Shona at I Tatti. She was happy, witty, and sensible; she was generous, friendly, and funny. In Italian you sum up the combination of these traits with one word: "solare", sunny - and that's exactly how you felt about her. She was clearly very happy about life in Florence, enthusiastic about her research and always eager to hear about colleagues' work, ready to discuss theoretical takes and archival findings. I felt very profoundly that she was the ideal colleague: as enthusiastic about the history of Bologna as about family matters, she had always a kind word for people around her, and you sensed distinctly that she was genuinely generous. We had a strong common interest for notaries and notarial records and, together with Christina Neilson, also a fellow of VIT, we were planning a conference together - it makes us extremely sad that she's not with us to take matters forward anymore, and we sincerely hope to go ahead in her memory.

On a personal level, Shona visited me and my family at home only once. She brought dessert, a sweet schiacciata that she said she loved but rarely ate. Ever since, she was always incredibly warm about family matters and children. Sometime in April, I was telling her how we'd discovered lice in the hair of our children (5 and 3). She was full of recommendations for us and for the school, and she seriously offered to come and help unpick the "lousy lice" herself. I felt that kind of matter-of-fact generosity was typical of her. She had that kind of strong sense of material life connected with a loud laugh that would cheer the spirit. I would like her family to know that I and everyone else at I Tatti are extremely proud to have met her and that the time we all spent together here was a very happy one.

From Montserrat Cabré

For Shona from I Tatti

Shona was my first experience of the I Tatti community, much earlier than I could join it personally, and I now have to face that, as myriad creative possibilities grow through I Tatti, I will not be able to develop Shona’s friendship further. Our very first contact was because of I Tatti but it took place before either of us had arrived here.

We had close intellectual concerns: I admired her work and she was interested in mine.  So it was out of the blue, last summer, when she wrote to me to share her happiness when she learnt that we would be ‘fellow fellows’. It was her passion and determination that created the space for our exchange. I sent her my current project, and she wrote back with enthusiasm and suggestions.

I treasure all the memories I have of her but there is one I feel most compelled to celebrate. During our April field trip, I remember her insistence upon showing us Bettina d’Andrea’s grave at San Antonio di Padova, and how Shona looked at me as she proposed the visit, asking with her eyes for my complicity and reassurance. Of course, we went there. How to resist her?

I was so touched to see in this memorial two pictures of Shona proudly standing at Bettina’s grave. Because I think she was then doing something it was very much her. After seeing all those magnificent works of art, I believe what Shona was passionately doing at an obscure woman’s grave was pointing us to the importance of embracing supposedly marginal, inexplicable traces that sculpt history and human life. And I think this is at the heart of my sorrow, for the way her death has affected me has not to do with the amount of time I spent with her nor with the obvious affinities we had but with something she gave me that is more precious, and frightening, because it lacks explanation and measure.

From Maria Jose Del Rio-Barredo

From the start at I Tatti Shona was affectionate and welcoming. In the library, noticing I was a little disoriented, Shona came over to show me how the photocopier worked. From then on we had many opportunities to talk about archives, about having coincided unwittingly in Bologna in 1994-95, and about her family, especially the rewarding year her daughter was having in Florence. In all of our conversations I admired the energy and warmth that she radiated. As my stay at the center came to an end, again it was Shona, as if by chance, who marked my departure with her great capacity for affection. We coincided in the garden, where she was walking with friends from New York when I was trying to sneak some last minute pictures. There could be no better gift than the photos we had taken of us together. When she wrote at Christmas from the United States, I wondered whether we’d ever see each other again. I know that the generous warmth she offered from our first to our last encounter will always remain with me.

Maria Jose Del Rio-Barredo
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

From Chris Carlsmith

Shona and I shared a common interest in the history of the University of Bologna, and particularly in the lives of the faculty and students resident at the Alma Mater Studiorum. Her work focused on the medieval period, while my interests ran to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but we were often using similar sources and archives. We saw each other at conferences, including the RSA, the New College conference in Sarasota, and (most recently) a wonderful event in Bologna in June 2011 where we were on the same panel. We also saw each other at Villa I Tatti, where Shona had been enjoying this year just as I had enjoyed a Fellowship year in 2009-10. Shona assisted me on several occasions when I was trying to locate a specific source in Bologna, and we regularly shared tips about whom to contact in the scholarly world.  Her recent work on “faculty families” was rigorous and important, but also entertaining—a perfect reflection of her own personality.

Beyond academia, Shona’s kindness and her humanity were evident to all. I looked forward to seeing Shona in the archives, and at conferences, because I knew that we would share stories both about our academic pursuits and about our personal lives. Her children were older than mine, of course, and so she was facing different issues, but it was always a comfort to hear how she balanced her work and her personal life. Last year she and I had talked about the challenges of bringing a family to I Tatti, and that sometimes it doesn't work out. I was impressed by her wisdom in that discussion, and her obvious affection for her immediate family.

I will miss her cheerfulness, her laughter, and her scholarly insights.

-Chris Carlsmith

From Marta Cacho Casal

It was pretty clear to me from the start that Shona and I were going to be friends. She had this way of making instantly clear that she wanted to spend more time with you. I was very lucky to spend lots of time with her here in Florence, where we met thanks to the Villa I Tatti. I asked her, 'Did Bologna medieval professors have pictures in their houses?' Shona kept on answering that question over the past few months, every time she found some evidence, she would hurry back to me to tell me and pointed at completely unreadable (to most eyes) documents that proved or not her point. Shona was also my good neighbour and she would often come and pick me up on her crumbling baby-blue bike in order to go to I Tatti together. I relish every second of those twenty-minute walks before getting on Gennaro's mini-bus where we would talk about our lives in Florence, catch up with research progress (or lack of: 'working hard, or hardly working?'-she would ask me), talk about our families, and look forward to lunch. Although Florence is packed with tourists it was not a problem to catch sight of Shona in the crowds- the answer was often purple, which would come in the shape of a hat, a jumper, or a scarf. Shona also loved a bargain, one of the great triumphs was a shearling (which she use to pronounce 'scirling') bottle-green jacket, which she had bought for ten euros in the Cascine market. The jacket was by all standards unsightly, and most certainly a man's model. Shona would often brag about it 'got it for 10 euros, you know'. the jacket joined us on our winter outings, often layered with other trophies from the Cascine: 'this one two euros!' Alina was good at humouring her in her hunt for vintage clothes, and in one of our last visits we got lost in the market of Piazza dei Ciompi where she had acquired an enormous pair of brown plastic clip-on earrings. The last time I saw Shona, she came to my flat to pick up a trolley bag she needed to travel to Namur. Before she rushed down the four-floor staircase, she retraced her steps, in order to give me a big hug. I remember thinking as she left, how lucky I was to have her as a friend.

Marta Cacho Casal