Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2024: Signs and Scripts

The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference is back on April 8-9, 2024 with the theme of ‘Signs and Scripts’!

MONDAY, APRIL 8

9:30-10:00 Registration (in-person)

10:00-11:30 Session 1: Divine Affectivity

• Marlene Schilling, ‘Connected through Script – Personifications of time as a distinct form of devotion across Northern German Convents’
• Lucy Dallas, ‘Together in Love: Carthusian Marginalia in the Book of Margery Kempe’
• Wilhelm Lungar, ‘Communicating Identity on Scandinavian Monastic Seals in the Middle Ages’

11:30-12:00 Break with refreshments

12:00-13:30 Session 2: Scribes & Song

• Peter Fraundorfer, ‘Did somebody write a Latin-Greek Sammelband for the monastic school of Reichenau Abbey?’
• Thomas Phillips, ‘1000 Years Later: Reconstructing Fragments of the Anglo-Saxon Office of St. Alban’
• Ellen Hausner, ‘A Threefold Bursting Sun: the symbolic vocabulary of the Ripley Scroll’

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:00 Session 3: Visual Signs

• Elena Lichmanova, ‘Mirror Writing and the Art of Self-Reflection’
• Furqon Muhammad Faiz, Tori Nuariza Sutanto, ‘Early Islamic Seals on Sumatra’s West Coast: Inscriptions and Cultural Significance’
• Ilari Aalto, ‘Tracing Brickmakers’ Marks in Late Medieval Finland’

16:00-16:30 Break with refreshments

16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 1: Professor Sophie Page

17:30 Drinks Reception

18:30/19:00 Conference Dinner (optional)

TUESDAY, APRIL 9

10:00-11:30 Session 4: Objects & Collections

• Megan Gorlitz, ‘Old English Riddles and Anglo-Saxon Reading Practices’
• Marc Lawson, ‘Wielding the Word: The Symbolism of Book Satchels in Early Irish Christianity’
• Charlotte Wood, ‘Signals of Death: Comb placement in cremations’

11:30-12:00 Break with refreshments

12:00-13:30 Session 5: Palaeography

• Sebastian Dows-Miller, ‘Signs in (Manu)scripts: Towards a New Study of Scribal Abbreviation’
• Max Hello, ‘Ornamenting and Writing: An aesthetic approach to Merovingian book writing (7th-8th centuries)’
• Corinne Clark, ‘A Wild Dragon Appears: Difficult Significations in the Life of St. Margaret’

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:00 Session 6: Codicology

• Elliot Vale, ‘Missing the Point: Punctuating Prose/Poetry in CCCC 201’
• Jemima Bennet, ‘Fragments in Fifteenth-Century Oxford Bookbinding’
• Rhiannon Warren, ”Þad er nu eydilagt’? AM 241 b I fol as a Case Study of Árni Magnússon’s Collection and Manipulation of Icelandic Latin Liturgical Manuscripts

16:00-16:30 Break with refreshments

16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 2: Dr Hannah Ryley

17:30 OMGC 2025 Theme Selection + Closing Remarks

Call for Papers

We are delighted to announce this call for papers and invite proposals relating to all aspects of the broad topic ‘signs and scripts’ in the medieval world. Submissions are welcome from all disciplinary perspectives, whether historical, literary, archaeological, linguistic, interdisciplinary, or anything else. There are no limitations on geographical focus or time period, so long as the topic pertains to the medieval period.

Areas of interest may include but are not limited to:

• Semiotics and semantics
• Ways of (mis)reading
• Palaeography and codicology
• Spiritual / cosmological signs
• Codes and conduct
• Behavioural script
• Dramatic script; theatre
• Monuments; inscriptions
• Heraldry; signboards
• Graffiti and marginalia
• Scripts of the body; tattoos
• Textiles

We ask that all presenters attend in person with hybrid participation available for attendees who cannot travel to the event.

Submission Guidelines

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. A limited number of bursaries are available to help with travel costs, and we welcome applications from graduate students at any university.

Please send abstracts of 250 words to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 17th December, 2023.