Author: Eleanor Baker

Nigel F. Palmer Travel Fund Launch

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21/04/2026

11:09

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The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature warmly invites OMS community members to a wine reception to launch the Nigel F. Palmer Travel Fund, to be held at 18:00 on Monday 11 May in the Hinrich Reemtsma Auditorium of the Warburg Institute (Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB).

The Fund will support graduate students whose research in medieval languages and literature necessitates travel, and its launch comes at a point when funding for graduate students across the arts and humanities is becoming increasingly restricted. Its specified aim is to enable students to visit libraries and archives to consult manuscripts or other archival material, and to visit archaeological sites and/or monuments of direct relevance to their research. The Fund is named in honour of Nigel F. Palmer, executive editor of the Society’s journal Medium Ævum, and its responsible editor for German, Latin and all historical disciplines for well over thirty years from 1990 until his death in 2022. Our Society’s intention with the Fund is to take forward Nigel’s work, undertaken through the Society and widely beyond, in encouraging young scholars, by supporting graduate students in medieval studies to travel and pursue research on original materials.

Please email the Society’s Executive Officers at ssmll@history.ox.ac.uk to confirm your attendance by 1 May. If you are unable to join us on 11 May, I would be delighted if you would consider a donation towards the endowment of the Fund. You can donate to the fund via this link: Donate

The Guild of Medievalist Makers

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29/07/2025

13:41

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In April 2025, the Guild of Medievalist Makers was launched, co-founded by Eleanor Baker, Kristen Haas Curtis, and Laura Varnam. The Guild was the grateful recipient of an Oxford Medieval Studies Small Grant in Trinity Term 2025 to support the launch of their website and to assist with publicity materials for their first two conference appearances this summer. In this blogpost, Oxford co-founders Eleanor Baker and Laura Varnam introduce the Guild and its activities.

The Guild of Medievalist Makers is a newly formed organisation for academic and academic-adjacent creatives and makers dedicated to furthering creative-critical practice in the humanities and making space for creative play.

The Guild’s founders are medievalists who make: Eleanor Baker is a linocut artist (who produced the cord in our Guild logo, more on that below!), Kristen Haas Curtis is a cartoonist and creative writer, and Laura Varnam is a poet. We founded the Guild in order to connect with other creative medievalists, to foster future collaborations, and to promote the burgeoning field of creative criticism in the humanities.

Our mission statement is embodied by the acronym CORD: Community, Outreach, Recognition, Development. Our website fosters Community by providing a dedicated and accessible online space for medievalist creatives to find each other and for academics who might be looking for creative partners to get in touch with us.

  • Finally, we support the Development of members’ creative-critical skills by running online and in person events, including co-working events and workshops, as well as maintaining an online bibliography of resources and scholarship.

This summer, co-founder Laura Varnam represented the Guild at two important conferences in Medieval Studies: the Middle Ages in the Modern World at King’s College, London (https://themamo.org/) and the Gender and Medieval Studies conference at Christ Church Canterbury (https://medievalgender.co.uk/2025-canterbury/)

Laura Varnam at the Guild stall at MAMO

At MAMO, Laura ran a stall advertising the Guild and she had chats with lots of delegates about their creative-critical work in medievalism. We’re very grateful to everyone who subsequently signed up to join the Guild at MAMO! (Our sign-up page is here: https://www.guildmedmak.com/join-the-guild)

Bunting (designed by Eleanor Baker), postcards, and Kristen’s Nun’s Priest’s Tale cartoon (https://hellomizk.com/comics/the-nuns-priests-tale/)  at the MAMO Guild stall

At the Gender & Medieval Studies conference, Laura also shared our newly printed Guild postcards and pin badges, and she advertised the Guild to delegates.

If you’d like to join the Guild please visit our website. And we’re very grateful once again to OMS for their financial assistance in launching the Guild!