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.

From Nicos Makris

It is with great sadness that we learned that Shona passed away. While I never met her, it is extremely hard to absorb what happened. From what I read she was a remarkable mother, wife and scholar.

Our thoughts and prays are with her father, Jim (my mentor at Berkeley), Celia and Maggie.

Please accept our deep condolences.

Nicos and Marilou

From Maria Constantoudaki and Paschalis Kitromilides

We had known Shona for a rather short time, since we only arrived in Florence in late March. We remember her as a very kind presence in the I Tatti community, with discretion and intelligence. Sometimes we would see her riding her bicycle through the centre of Florence, and she would stop to talk to us if we had not happened to see her first. We would also occasionally wait with her outside the National Central Library of Florence, for the little bus (the “pulmino”), driven by Gennaro, to take us, along with other fellow-researchers, to the Villa I Tatti. Then we also had the opportunity to chat with her about her work, the Renaissance notaries and the archives, her current writing, but also about her daughter’s interest in art, especially modern art, and her son who was with his father back in the US. One of the last times we saw her I liked the combination of colours in her clothes; she was wearing a dark mauve skirt with a saffron-yellow jacket, and I thought this is a person with a special taste. We are sure she was so special for all her family and many friends. It is very sad that fate took her so soon from this life, but her contribution to scholarship and her other activities will keep her memory alive. Our warm thoughts are with her beloved ones.

Maria Constantoudaki and Paschalis Kitromilides (from Athens, Greece)

From Joëlle Rollo Koster

I met Shona at the American Academy in 2003. Since then we met a few times, the last time in Venice at the RAA. We shared emails on our work and I wrote a piece for her. All of us know the thoroughness of her scholarship and how we will all sorely miss her contribution. But I want to add something about her personality. I have always found academia tiresome and full of ego and pomp. Shona was fun to be around. I had kids when I wrote my dissertation and always felt like an alien. Shona was so refreshing, her children were with her in Rome and that's the way it was! One night she cooked a dish for her family...and me....of pasta with smoked salmon and cream. That dish became my spaghetti à la Shona....I have done it many times since 2003 always thinking about her. It now takes a totally different connotation. To Shona. Tu etais one bonne collégue, tu nous manqueras beaucoup.

Joëlle