Scott Redford studies the medieval material culture of Anatolia, the South Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and the eastern Mediterranean. His epigraphic work has evolved away from decipherment towards examining ways in which writing in the Arabic alphabet conveys meaning through intersections with built form, colour, and pattern, a focus that challenges traditional calligraphic pieties about the role of writing in the medieval Islamic world. Recent epigraphic publications include “Inscription and De-scription/Cipher and De-cipher: Pious Phrases in Medieval Islamic Anatolia and Byzantium,” in S. Houston and J. Bodel, eds., The Hidden Language of Graphic Signs: Cryptic Writing and Meaningful Marks (Cambridge, 2021) and “The Here and the Hereafter: Rounded and Angular Scripts in Medieval Syria, Anatolia, and the Jazira,” in B. O’Kane, M. Muehlhaeusler, and A. Peacock, eds., Inscriptions from the Islamic World(Edinburgh, 2023).