Those words are from the ‘Slow Food Manifesto’ released as something of an artistic performance on 10 December 1989. The manifesto is, of course, a document about the preparation and experience of food, but its words are equally applicable to the preparation and experience of scholarship, perhaps especially scholarship that deals with sensual objects, with art, whether visual or literary – and by scholarship I mean both teaching and research, as well as the thinking and practices that surround them. As has been the case with food, our scholarship has become shackled to speed and profitability. Several years ago, Isabelle Stengers pointed out that the idea that we are primarily researchers rather than scholars ‘comes from the laboratory sciences, but today that has redefined everything else . the cost has been steep and has created a vulnerability that is now being brought to light’. As Stengers suggested, we now look to practices rather than universities.

This book has been a slow collaboration. It began as a series of papers on ‘Slow Scholarship in the Digital Age’, delivered at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2014. Our intention was that a book should follow quickly, that this was a timely topic, but the ever-increasing demands of academic life and/or the demands of establishing a life outside of academia took their toll. The essays were left to age and mature. They were rethought, revised, tasted and tested like slowly cooked stews; some new ingredients were added, and others omitted from the final drafts. The digital has become less of a focus in some instances and more of a focus in others.