Concert: ‘The Oxford Troubadors Return to the Maison Française’
9 May, 7:00pm, Maison Française d’Oxford
We are delighted to welcome back The Oxford Troubadors for an evening of medieval and modern songs in Occitan. The ensemble will perform iconic medieval troubadour pieces, including La Sestina by Arnaut Daniel and Lo riu de la Fontana by Jaufre Rudel, as well as popular modern songs from the repertoires of Peiraguda and Nadau. Expect an interactive experience with audiences often joining in the choruses of these catchy tunes. This event is free, but registration on TicketSource is required.
Lecture: ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ by Patrick Boucheron
29 May, 5:00pm, Pembroke College
We are delighted to welcome Professor Patrick Boucheron for the 2025 Collège de France – Maison Française d’Oxford – Pembroke College lecture. Professor Boucheron will give a lecture on ‘The Birth of the Black Death : New Approaches in World History’. For more details and to register for this lecture, visit this page.
Masterclass: ‘Pourquoi des médiévistes? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge’
29 May, 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford
Earlier that day, Patrick Boucheron will be teaching a masterclass at the Maison Française on what medieval history teaches us. Please note that the masterclass will be given in French. Fore more details and to register for this event, visit this page.
Ashley Castelino reflects on his time as Social Media Officer for Oxford Medieval Studies
After two and half years with OMS, my tenure as Social Media Officer is finally coming to an end and it’s time for me to pass on the passwords. As I look back over this weird and wonderful time, here are my top tips for anyone thinking about taking on the job after me.
1. Be Adaptable
When the platform formerly known as Twitter changed hands in 2022, it sparked a period of great turmoil in the social media landscape, a landscape that is now forever changing. In our efforts to keep up with these changes, we have ended up with accounts on Twitter/X, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube, each platform coming with different capabilities, priorities, and audiences. Besides these larger structural changes, you’ll want to try to keep up with and respond to rapidly evolving trends as well – some new (very demure, very mindful), some very very old (ancient Babylonian liver divination??).
2. Be Eager to Learn
Oxford Medieval Studies is home to such an incredibly diverse interdisciplinary academic community and, as Social Media Officer, you get a front-row seat to the most fascinating research across literature, history, art, archaeology, theology, music, and much more. From filming and editing a promotional video to finally setting up a TikTok account, this job has also given me the opportunity to learn so many new skills I never thought I’d have. Be warned though: given the extremely diverse demographics of our audience across different platforms, you might find yourself with the extremely challenging task of deciphering teenage slang…
3. Be Creative
Oxford has always been home to some of the world’s greatest medieval manuscripts, art, architecture, and other treasures. It’s no exaggeration to say that it has now also become a leading centre in medieval performance, not least as host of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Cycle. Whether or not you are yourself an artist or a performer, it’s impossible to not be inspired to find new ways to show off everything this city has to offer!
4. Be Collaborative
This is by no means a solitary job – you will be constantly working with academics and artists, colleges, departments, and libraries, medievalists around the world, and even the odd celebrity frog. Academic social media is a vibrant but perhaps overcrowded space, so it’s always worth finding ways to collaborate with other creators across the university. With a view to your future career, you may even make a few extremely useful contacts along the way.
5. Be Persistent
Social media algorithms are complex beasts and it’s very difficult to predict when a post or a video is going to perform well. Sometimes you just have to keep pushing content out into the ether and hope it helps at least one person learn or laugh. Whether it’s compiling extensive summaries of the termly medieval booklet or nudging colleagues to send you material, persistence is always a key part of the job.
6. Be Passionate!
At the end of the day, this job is whatever you choose to make of it, so all that really matters is that you are passionate about medieval studies and want to share that passion with the world. If you are, I would strongly encourage you to consider applying for this role! Have a look at what we’ve done so far – all our social media accounts can be accessed via our Beacons page – and let us know if you have any ideas to help us grow even further. Find out more about applying for the role at https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/2025/04/21/medieval-matters-week-0-update/.
Is this your first term in Oxford or have you been here for years? Are you visiting? Or perhaps planning on applying for our Medieval Studies programme?
Philip Flacke completed an internship in Oxford in Trinity 2024, and he’s prepared an important list of 10 rules for Oxford you’d regret not knowing:
This video was filmed by Henrike Lähnemann in the courtyard of the old university library in Göttingen, next to the statue of the philosopher and scientist and aphorist Lichtenberg and adjacent to the repurposed Paulinerkirche. Fun fact: Göttingen had close links to Oxford as founded by one of the King Georges of England and Hanover!
The long wait is over! We are extremely excited to finally present a complete video recording of the Old Norse eddic poem Vǫluspá (The Seeress’s Prophecy) by Clare Mulley:
This was the premiere performance of Vǫluspá by Clare Mulley, which took place at The Oxford Story Museum, in honour of the third Old Norse Poetry and Performance Conference (Oxford, June 2023). This was later followed by a repeat performance at The Aarhus Old Norse Mythology Conference (November 2023), and both performances have since aided and inspired other exciting projects by scholars and artists alike. This is just the beginning of a larger exciting project, so keep your eyes peeled for more!
Professor Terry Gunnell of the University of Iceland wrote of this performance, “Clare Mulley’s Vǫluspá is a multi-dimensional work of art that steps off the page to touch the lives of its twenty-first century audiences. Based around a new, creative, free translation of the original Old Nordic work, and effectively given additional depth by the atmospheric musical of Kjell Bråten, Mulley’s powerful presentation returns the poem to its original conception as a piece of essentially oral poetry, something designed to perform in both space and time. Like the original, which it builds on while retaining creative freedom, the translation is couched in striking musical, alliterative language and rhythm, evoking stark images of the original creation and eventual destruction of the world. Firmly touching the ancestral past of the ancient work, this is a presentation that simultaneously effectively draws on the present. It is something that needs to be experienced.”
The performance features soundscapes, backing vocals, accompaniment and sound recordings by musician Kjell Braaten.
It was filmed by Natascha Domeisen and edited by Ashley Castelino, with the support of Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS) and The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).
Putting a halt to in-person events, face-to-face conversations unmediated by a digital screen, and forcing people around the world to re-think how the interacted with each other, COVID-19 also placed a stranglehold on much academic dialogue and conferences experiences. One of the victims of the pandemic era was the Cambridge, Oxford, and London Symposium on Old Norse, Old English, and Latin (COLSONOEL). The last COLSONOEL was due to take place in St. John’s College, University of Oxford in May 2020 but which was sadly cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions.
In 2024 a new committee at the University of Oxford, headed by Natasha Bradley, and comprising of Ashley Castelino, Simon Heller, and Mary Catherine O’Connor, took up the reins to bring this symposium back to life. In the spirit of its return to the world of conferences and academic discourse, the theme of COLSONOEL 2024 was ‘Rebirth, Renewal, Renaissance’. This symposium for post-graduate students and early career researchers was set up as a supportive and welcoming academic environment for presenters to test new ideas and to share their research. And it is in this vein, that COLSONOEL began again and hopes to continue for many years to come.
COLSONOEL 2024 kicked off on a wet and dismal Friday 3rd May in St Hilda’s College in the Garden Room Suite, which transformed into an exciting day of papers and conversations. Exquisite views stretching over Oxford with its dreaming spires rising to the rain-sodden heavens framed the speakers and their presentations at St Hilda’s as we welcomed ten speakers from Oxford, Cambridge, and Birkbeck.
Considering the question of reception and intertextual relationships in the first session, David Bond West opened COLSONOEL with his paper on ‘Rhetorical Storytelling in Bergr Sokkason’s Mikjáls saga’. Moving from Old Norse to Old English, Mingwei Lu examined the relationships between psalms and elegies in the paper ‘“Hu lange wilt þu, Drihten” – A Comparison of Religious Revival in the Old English Psalms and the Old English Elegies’. Leaping forward to the modern era, Emily Dixon asked what it meant to think through soil and landscapes in her paper ‘Rebirth through soil: The earth of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Beowulf and The Wanderer’.
Following this line of movement to earth-centred evidence and thinking about what can be uncovered through archaeology, Katie Beard opened the second session with her investigation into amulets, ‘Armaments as Amulets in Old Norse in Old Norse Literature and Archaeology’. Daisy Bonsall worked through the theme of the conference in thinking about the multiple uses and re-purposing of textiles in Anglo-Saxon England in ‘A Case for Regifting: Reusing Textiles to Create and Renew Connections in Anglo-Saxon England’.
The inter-relationship of life and death and the possibility of comparing through these ontological concerns took centre stage in session three as Alexia Kirov discussed images and themes of birth and death in ‘Re: birth and death – from (pre-)cradle to grave in Early English Literature’. What are the appropriate responses to the death of king and what is the emotional performance a poet may engage in when his king dies? Molly Bovett looked at some of these questions and more in ‘The Death of the King in Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds’. Staying in the realm of Old Norse literature but migrating from the historical world of medieval Norway and Iceland to the world of the mythological texts, Kendra Nydam closed the third session with her paper ‘Thrice-burnt, Thrice-born: Revisiting the Fateful Role of Gullveig in Norse Mythology’.
How different medieval historians and societies think about and write about the past formed a key concern of the concluding papers in the fourth and last session of the day. In ‘Reviving the Gothic Past and justifying a Swedish present in the Festum patronorum regni Suecie’ Adrián Rodríguez turned attention to historiographical concerns in fifteenth-century Sweden. Moving one last time from Scandinavia back to medieval England, Emily Clarke gave the closing paper ‘Reforming the Past: History and Antiquarianism in the English Benedictine Reform’.
An intellectually curious atmosphere and friendly environment created a fertile and productive day of discussions in the form of question-and-answer sessions after the papers as well as more informal conversations in the tea breaks and lunch. The COLSONOEL Committee would like to thank everyone who attended this year’s symposium. We would also like to extend a special thanks to our sponsors, Oxford Medieval Studies and TORCH, who made COLSONOEL 2024 possible. We look forward to the return of COLSONOEL 2025.
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.
The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference is back on April 20-21, 2023 with the theme of ‘Names and Naming’!
The conference takes place fully hybrid, in Oxford and online. Follow us on Twitter @OxMedGradConf and In the meantime, check out the conference website (https://oxgradconf.wixsite.com/omgc), with its extensive digital collection of Oxford medieval medical manuscripts and its blog featuring some excellent articles on past conference themes. If you’d like to contribute a blog post or have any questions about the conference, you can get in touch at oxgradconf@gmail.com.
Tristan Alphey, ‘Nicknames in Early Medieval England and Social Regulation’
Will Hoff, ‘In the name of Robin Hood: a new look at byname evidence for the outlaw tradition’
Sebastian Dows-Miller, ‘Jean from Saint-Quentin: who was he, and does it matter?’
12:00-13:30 Session 2: Patterns & Variations
Madeleine Killacky, ‘Rubricating Names in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’
Birger Mård, ‘Name-phrase variation in the Arboga municipal court records (1450–1569)’
Marina Ilia, ‘Naming Patterns in Venetian Cyprus’
14:30-16:00 Session 3: Reading the Land
Abigail Lloyd, ‘How to find a medieval settlement by the name of a hill? A challenge to the Gelling and Cole hypothesis’
Christophe de Coster, ‘‘Hic Sunt Dracones’: data-driven analysis of the (un)changing nature of toponyms and its implications for toponym-based landscape-reconstructions
Em Horne, ‘An Examination of the value of place-names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of the Lancashire Coast’
16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 1 Dr David Zakarian, ‘The World through the Eyes of Medieval Armenian Scribes’
FRIDAY, APRIL 21
10:00-11:30 Session 4: Genealogies & Histories
Claire Lober, ‘Monuments to Meaning in the Historia and Brut y Brenhinedd’
Deepashree Dutta, ‘The Little Kingdom of Bishnupur: Naming, Self-Fashioning and Making of a Vaishnava Devotional Realm’
Jodie Miller, ‘Naming and Moral Lineage in Les Enfances de Renart
