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“OH, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice […] – Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) Going back to Germany after my two-week adventure in Oxford, I, just like Alice, felt as if waking up from a magical dream. It is not an overstatement to say that the city has bewitched me and, trust me,… Read more: Two Weeks in Wonderland

Week 3 is upon us – please find below the weekly offering of events, groups, and opportunities. As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here.  Any last-minuted changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Opportunities

Three reasons to study Palaeography by Hannah Free (MSt. Medieval Studies 2025) It was an exciting time being one of this years MML History of the Book students as we met up for the second time this term to have a three hour introduction to medieval Latin Palaeography. Dr Laure Miolo and Dr Alison Ray… Read more: Between bats, bindings, and hidden unicorns

Welcome to week 2, and the Medieval Matters email – a day early this time to coincide with St Frideswide’s Day! In honour of the occasion, Jesus College has paid for the Pershore Legendary to appear on Digital Bodleian, which includes the most accurate copy of Robert of Cricklade’s Life of St Frideswide. Browse away!… Read more: Medieval Matters MT25, Week 2

Fragmented Worlds, Shared Histories The MEMRN Committee are delighted to announce the return of the Winter Conference after the huge success of last year’s inaugural in-person event in Norwich. The MEMRN Winter Conference 2025 will be held from the 13th to the 16th November 2025 at the University of East Anglia. Please find the provisional… Read more: MEMRN Winter Conference 2025

Welcome to Michaelmas 2025 and to the definite version of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet! And greetings from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. Among the many superlatives it boasts, there can probably be added the claim that this is the largest grouping (a madness?) of medievalists in the world, allowing encounters across… Read more: Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 1

There are a number of palaeography offers available for anybody interested in Oxford happening in Michaelmas 2025, coordinated by Dr Laure Miolo, Lyell Career Development Fellow in Latin Palaeography and Dilts Fellow at Lincoln College, historian of late medieval Europe, specialising in manuscript studies and history of early libraries with a special focus on scientific… Read more: Palaeography Offers in Michaelmas 25

6-7 November 2025Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut (NIKI), Florence, Italy (In Person and Online) How can art historians explore, understand, or even ‘feel’ the material evidence of the past? How can we approach the problem of historical distance, of our anachronistic nostalgia and our intellectual desire for pre-modern periods and artefacts? Can we inhabit the time… Read more: The Challenge of Historical Distance: Historicism and Anachronism in the Study of Art

The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference (OMGC) is one of the highlights of the graduate academic calendar every year. Over two days, this interdisciplinary conference brings together graduate students from the UK and around the world to present their research on a wide variety of topics from across the Middle Ages. Read a review of the… Read more: Call for Committee Members – Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference

The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature has awarded the Medium Ævum Essay Prize since 2008. The competition is run annually, with postgraduates and those recently graduated with a higher degree invited to submit an essay on a topic that falls within the range of the interests of Medium Ævum in the medieval period (loosely defined… Read more: Medium Ævum Essay Prize

Dear Oxford Medievalists,  Hello from your new Social Medial officer!  As we prepare for the start of term, I want to encourage anyone and everyone to contribute ideas for content on the Oxford Medieval Studies social media. We are active anywhere and everywhere — Beacons (this platform),  BlueSky, Instagram, and Threads — and eagerly awaiting your suggestions. If you want an event,… Read more: Probatio pennae

By Mathilde Mioche The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) is a collective of eight postgraduate students and early-career researchers who bonded in Oxford over their passion for medieval manuscripts. We host a seminar series which gathers a community of emerging scholars, from the University of Oxford and beyond, around the study of medieval books and… Read more: Reintroducing the Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group

With the start of First Week just around the corner, the draft of this term’s OMS Booklet is here! For those of you joining us for the first time, this booklet includes a compilation of the events, seminars, and reading groups that will take place across Oxford over the coming term. An updated version will… Read more: Medieval Matters Week 0 – Draft Booklet

Mondays, 17:00–18:30 Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College Further information from Dr Franklinos (tristan.franklinos@classics.ox.ac.uk). Week 1 (13th Oct) Introduction (TEF) Week 2 (20th Oct) 33 Non te lusisse pudeat & 34 Deduc, Syon Nell Mulhern Barnes50 Heu, uoce flebili cogor enarrare Max Hardy Week 3 (27th Oct) 62 Dum Diane uitrea Charlie Baker63 Olim sudor Herculis… Read more: Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar

Term draws near. Please send all entries for next term’s OMS booklet to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, by Wednesday of -1 week at the latest (1st October). Until then, please see below a number of upcoming deadlines and opportunities:

The Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop is inviting paper submissionsfor Michaelmas term 2025. We host presentations on the cultures, economies, literature, material cultures, politics,thought, religions, and reception of the medieval world, which we define as broadly aspossible as the global period between c.500 and c.1500. We welcome interdisciplinaryscholarship and encourage submissions which stretch our conception… Read more: CFP: Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop

November (14th-16th) at the University of East Anglia. Deadline: Friday (12th September). The CHASE Medieval and Early Modern Research Network (MEMRN) are delighted to share the details for our second annual in-person Winter Conference. Join us from the 14th – 16th of November at the University of East Anglia and online for three days of panels, social… Read more: CFP reminder: CHASE Medieval and Early Modern Research Network (MEMRN) postgraduate conference

‘In our own tongues’: The Medieval Vernacular Bible and its European Contexts’ is organised jointly by the Oxford and Augsburg research teams of the ‘Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict’. The project is based at the universities of Oxford and Augsburg and is supported by the UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities (Arts… Read more: Medieval Vernacular Bibles

Time marches ever on, and the new term is on the horizon. It will soon be time to put the next iteration of the OMS booklet together. If you are organising a seminar series, reading group, or one-off event (conference, medievally-themed social event, workshop etc), please email the details to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk ASAP. If you are… Read more: MT 25 Booklet: Call for Contribution

This year’s Dorothy Whitelock Lecture will be given by Profesor Jane Roberts (University of London) on ‘Guthlac: What the Early Medieval Records Tell Us’. The lecture will take place on 3 December at 5.15pm at St Peter’s College chapel, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, OX1 2DL.  To secure your (free) ticket, please use the Eventbrite link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dorothy-whitelock-lecture-tickets-1368622870849?aff=ebdssbdestsearch… Read more: The 2025 Dorothy Whitelock Lecture

OXFORD, 8–10 APRIL 2026 Plenary speakers: James Simpson and Carolyne Larrington We welcome proposals for papers at the 2026 Medieval Insular Romance conference. Papers may address any aspect of romance composed in the languages of medieval Britain and Ireland, along with the ways that Insular romances engage with texts and traditions beyond those islands. The… Read more: Medieval Insular Romance Conference

A quick update in the middle of the summer break with a few notices which cannot wait for the start of term. I hope you have a good summer and remember that it is never too early to send seminar or event announcements to Tristan Alphey under the Oxford Medieval Studies email!

We have a new Social Media Officer! Elizabeth Crabtree is a Junior Research Fellow at Blackfriars. Her research interests lie in the Christian interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages, and especially in how recourse to Jewish sources shaped a Christian understanding of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Her doctoral project explores the… Read more: Introducing our new Social Media Officer

OSRJL Applications for Michaelmas Term 2025 are now open! As part of the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL), applications for language classes beginning in Michaelmas Term 2025 are now open! The deadline to apply is 12 September at 12 noon UK time. Classes beginning in Michaelmas Term 2025 include those on the following languages: For more information… Read more: Rare Jewish Languages at Oxford

September 12, 2025, 10:00am–7:00pm Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and ManuscriptsVan Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, PhiladephiaAnd online via Zoom On September 12, 2025, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania will host a day-long symposium commemorating Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown’s extraordinary legacy in the… Read more: Making the Medieval Archive: Celebrating Elizabeth A. R. Brown at Penn

25–26 September 2025. Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LURegistration is free but compulsory https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/event/the-latin-hymn-as-scriptural-exegesis-from-late-antiquity-to-the-middle-ages The Latin hymnic tradition is one that spans over a millennium from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the Reformation (and beyond). In that period, there are aspects of it that have remained… Read more: The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages