Research that needs to be done / research ideas.

[Mark Knowles]

First, of all from my point of view, knowing where they live would be of interest. If they live in Northern or Central Italy that would be of interest.

I can think of lots of things in the area of early 15th century cryptographic research that someone could do whether they be in Italy or not.

For example, if someone could go through the cipher ledgers for the time and by reading the handwriting identify all the correspondents and research who they were then one could reconstruct the diplomatic networks of the time which could help in suggesting where to look for more ciphers. I haven't found the time myself to do that yet. I would happily share the photoreproductions of those cipher ledgers to someone wishing to do this. Lydia Cerioni did this for the Tranchedino Cipher ledger in her two books, which I can share scans of. If someone does this I could certainly recommend them to Jessika Nowak's cipher research group to do a presentation on the subject. You could even turn this research into a thesis for a Masters or Doctorate if you did this thorougly for all the surviving early 15th century cipher ledgers.

In terms of archival research in Italy I can also provide more suggestions.