From Thérèse de Hemptinne

Dear family and friends of Shona,

I met Shona for the first time in Namur last week and sat with her at a dinner party. We had a very nice conversation and spoke about her research, her family and a common friend Shannon. I am deeply distressed about this news.

I shall remember her as a very warm human being.

Please accept my sincerest condolences.

Thérèse de Hemptinne

From Eric Tymoigne and Yan Liang

A wonderful person

She was such a wonderful person, full of life and joy. Her passion for history was contagious and traveling with her was an enriching experience.
Yan and I will miss her a lot. Our condolences go out to Randy, Alina, Shane, and her family.

From Jean-François Nieus, University of Namur

The organisers and all participants of the international conference “Archival Scribes in the Medieval West: Training, Careers, Connections”, held in Namur (Belgium) on 2-4 May 2012, have heard with consternation that their colleague Shona Kelly Wray passed away in Florence two days after the end of their common scientific activity. Shona had given on 3 May a brilliant lecture on “Notarial families and households in 14th-century Bologna”, unanimously welcomed as one of the most interesting papers of the conference. Those who had the privilege to talk further with her during these days will remember a very charming person and an enthusiastic scholar.

The organisers’ condolences go to her family, friends and colleagues. They wholeheartedly hope that it will be possible to publish her ultimate scientific work in the proceedings of the conference, as a memorial tribute.

Paul Bertrand, Xavier Hermand, Jean-François Nieus and Étienne Renard

From Jutta Sperling

I'm incredibly sad to loose such a good friend. Shona has been a warm presence in my life from the day we met -- I still remember how she walked up to me at the American Academy of Rome one day to introduce herself to me, showing me pictures of her children. We stayed in touch over conferences, house visits, and, last not least, through a collection of essays we edited together. Our work relationship was always also a very personal one; she helped me a lot when I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, taking over most of the copy-editing on our book, and offering time to talk. I now wonder whether I ever supported her enough when she went through hard times ... I wish I could have had the chance to tell her how much our friendship meant to me.

Jutta

From Katherine Park

I never met Shona, but I greatly admire her work. I read her book on plague in Bologna with great profit, and I assigned her article, "Boccaccio and the Doctors," in a graduate proseminar on the history of medieval health and medicine that I taught this fall. It was received with great enthusiasm as engaging and original, and I plan to include it in the syllabus of my undergraduate survey the next time I teach it. As one of the members of the Villa I Tatti selection committee, I also had the pleasure of reading the proposal for her new project, on faculty wives and families in 14th-century Bologna. Writing women and families back into the history of the medieval and Renaissance university and of medieval scholarship is extremely very challenging, and only a handful of historians have attempted it, among them Alix Cooper and Gadi Algazi. Shona's work in this area would have been pathbreaking. Intellectually as well as personally, this is a great loss to the field.