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Medieval Commentary and Exegesis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Cosima Gillhammer and Audrey Southgate, includes chapters by Alastair J Minnis, Alexandra Barnes, Anna Wilmore, Audrey Southgate, Cosima Clara Gillhammer, David J Elliott, Edit Anna Lukács, Eduardo de Oliveira Correia, Elizabeth Solopova, Jiani Sun, Joshua Caminiti, Lesley Smith, Michael P Kuczynski, Rachel Cresswell, Simon Whedbee, William Marx, Zachary Guiliano.… Read more: Book Launch: Medieval Commentary and Exegesis – Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Welcome to Week 1. Thanks to all those who submitted their events for the upcoming term. An updated version of the OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. For your diary: The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining… Read more: Medieval Matters HT26, Week 1

12 February, 6:15–8pm, The Chapel at King’s College London/River Room, Strand Campuswith Sarah Bowden, Hannah Conway, Johanna Dale and Hazel Gould An evening exploring creative responses to medieval saints. The focal point is the world premiere of the new work “My Name is Oswald” by award-winning composer Hannah Conway and writer Hazel Gould. This work draws on… Read more: A Medieval Saint in the Modern World: Oswald of Northumbria in Words and Music

20 February, 5–10pm, St Edmund Hall (tbc)with Louise Tjoline Keitsch This workshop invites everyone – students, researchers, and anyone curious – to take part in a Wikipedia Editathon for Medievalists. Whether you have always wanted to write or improve a Wikipedia article, are looking for a low-pressure way to start writing about your topic, or… Read more: Wikipedia Editathon for Medievalists

Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow): Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm, followed by drinks All welcome! The fringes of the institutional church in the later Middle Ages were difficult to control. Pardoners, summoners, and priests of dubious status caused headaches for bishops and… Read more: OMS Lecture HT 2026: Ian Forrest

The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by researchers at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) or early-career level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford. The scheme has a rolling deadline. Closing date for applications: Friday of Week 4 each term for activities taking… Read more: OMS Small Grants Now Open!

We are pleased to announce the seminars for Hilary Term 2026. The seminars are all held via Zoom on Thursdays at 5 p.m. GMT. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further… Read more: Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music

Welcome back to Oxford – I hope you all had a restful vac. Please find below the first draft of the upcoming medieval Hilary Term Booklet, which includes a range of seminars, reading groups and opportunities. PLEASE: Finally, a few upcoming events and deadlines for week 0:

A report by Tamara Klarić, research intern during Michaelmas 2025 with Henrike Lähnemann The Isar and Thames rivers have more in common than might appear at first glance: both shape the image of the cities through which they flow, and both influence the life that takes place in these cities. Munich residents enjoy walking along… Read more: A Munich medievalist in Oxford

Organisers: Matthew Holford, Andrew Honey, Laure Miolo Hilary Term 2026, Wednesdays 2-3.30pm (see sessions details below). Venue: Weston Library, Horton room. Anyone interested in manuscript studies is welcome. No registration required. For questions, please e-mail laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk The series of seminars has been designed to introduce participants to the various material aspects of the book, thereby… Read more: History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series

All seminars will take place in the Weston Library, Horton Room, 2.15 – 3.45 on Monday afternoons in 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th week. All are welcome; a University or Bodleian reader card is usually required to access the seminar room. Manuscripts will be shown. For further information contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk Hilary Term 2026… Read more: Seminar in Manuscript Studies and Palaeography

7 February, 11:00-12:30, St John’s College, North Seminar Room, Writer’s Workshop7 February, 14:00-15:00, Exeter Cohen Quad, Fitzhugh Auditorium, Talk and Book-Signing To begin Hilary term 2026, the Oxford Writers’ House is hosting the House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms writer, Ti Mikkel, for a writer’s workshop and book talk. This… Read more: Ti Mikkel Workshop and Book Launch

The University of St Andrews in Scotland is currently advertising a PhD scholarship (with 3.5 years’ full funding) for the following project “How to write a global success before print: The paradigmatic case of the Seven Sages of Rome/Sindbad narrative.” Deadline for applications is Sunday 15 February 2026. More information can be found on the… Read more: Funded Doctoral Position: The Seven Sages of Rome

Wishing all readers a Happy New Year! Post first published on the blog about the Medingen Manuscripts Sending Christ in the Heart from the Convent of Lüne On a New Year’s Eve in the first half of the 1480s, two young nuns in the convent of Lüne sat down to write to a woman they… Read more: The Nuns’ New Year’s Greetings

Spring School: An Introduction to the “Science of the Stars” Through Manuscripts and Instruments Weston Library, 16–20 March 2026 Registration is now open for Exploring the Medieval Sky, a spring school designed for undergraduate and graduate students who wish to explore how medieval people understood the sky —encompassing the visible heavens (stars, planets, eclipses, comets),… Read more: Exploring the Medieval Sky

Report on an In-Depth Crash-Course on the History of ‘the Book’ with Péter Tóth by Alice Lanyue Zhang (MSt. Modern Languages, 2025) This session of the History of the Book seminar at the Weston Library, led by Péter Tóth, focused on understanding the development of the Bible in its layout, languages, and content from the very… Read more: Bible Layout Through the Ages

Welcome, finally, to week 8. Today is the last day to enter your paper for the Medium Ævum Essay Prize and to register for Ars Inquirendi – Querying the Pre-Modern in the Age of Large Multimodal Models (including a free conference dinner at St Edmund Hall on Saturday!). As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval… Read more: Medieval Matter MT25, Week 8

Essays presented to Rosamond Faith Thursday 4 December – 5.30pm. Main Lecture Theatre, Rewley House. 1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JAThe launch of this festschrift for Dr Rosamond Faith will feature an introduction by the editors, an appreciation of the honorand by Professor John Blair (University of Oxford), and commentary by Professor Mark Gardiner (University… Read more: Book Launch: Landscapes and Producers in Medieval England

Session 174: Representations of Indigenous Peoples in Medieval Literature This panel is proposed with acknowledgement of and sensitivity to the historic and ongoing mistreatment of indigenous peoples and their lands. We hope to foster meaningful discussion about representations of indigenous peoples in medieval literature, which has previously and erroneously been presented from a solely white,… Read more: UArctic Congress 2026

Register at https://form.jotform.com/252734707575364 to attend the conference and workshops (online or in person ) and to view the videos NB: All times on the programme are GMT / UK Time Join leading pre-modernists and technologists from around the world at Ars Inquirendi, 4th-7th December 2025 (online / St Edmund Hall, Oxford ), to explore how… Read more: Ars Inquirendi – Querying the Pre-Modern in the Age of Large Multimodal Models

Merton College, 5 December 2025, 5pm Join the Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group for the final event in their Michaelmas Term ’25 programme in the Mure Room at Merton College at 5pm on Friday 5 December (Week 8) where Sergei Zotov (Warburg Institute, London) will speak on ‘Between Science and Allegory: Alchemical Images as Vessels of… Read more: Sergei Zotov: Alchemical Images as Vessels of Knowledge

Report by Leonie Erbenich, Visiting Graduate Student in Modern Languages, on a workshop with Giles Bergel for the History of the Book students in Modern Languages 2025. Cf. the History of the Book blog on the workshops in 2024 ‘Seeing Materiality through a Computer’s Eyes‘ and 2023 ‘Digital Tools for Image Matching‘ How Archivists can… Read more: The Secret Geometry Behind Words

Friday, 28 November, 5-6.30pmRoom 2 of the Taylor Institution Library The launch featured a dramatised reading of the text and a display of the Taylorian holdings of German Peasants’ War pamphlets by a group of readers from across the University. The new edition comprises a historical and bibliographic introduction as well as the edition, translation,… Read more: Launch of Peseants’ War Pamphlet

Week 7, and the prospects of the vac creeps ever closer! Two particular items of note this week. First, there is no Medieval History Seminar this week. Second, Prof. Roberta Mazza’s lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures has been postponed until next term. If you are looking for an alternative manuscript fix:… Read more: Medieval Matter MT25, Week 7

We invite expressions of interest to participate in a new series of online workshops examining how saints and holy people are represented outside the classic form of the single-text hagiography, what Thomas J. Heffernan calls the ‘sacred biography’. This group aims to bring together scholars interested in saints and sanctity across global history and culture,… Read more: CfP: Saints Outside Hagiography

Call for Papers 1: You Are On Native Land:  Understanding Medieval Studies in Turtle Island The EDID Committee of the CSM/SCM invites papers on Indigeneity and the medieval. It has been over a decade since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released their report and 94 Calls to Action. Academia was called to decolonize, reconcile, and Indigenize… Read more: CfP – Canadian Society of Medievalists panels