Author: Tristan Alphey

Medieval Matter HT26, Week 4

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08/02/2026

16:04

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Call for Papers, conference, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

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Welcome to Week 4. 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 Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner. Tony Hunt’s memorial service is will be held on 16th May, 2.30, St Peter’s College Chapel (booking etc in due course).

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2:15, Weston Library. Emily Guerry (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Bodleian’s Gaignières Collection: A paper museum for Gothic tombs’.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3:00, Archaeology Faculty. Matthew Johnson will be speaking on ‘New World Settlement and the English Middle Ages’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Cordelia Heß (Aarhus) will be speaking on “Medieval Racism? Social Practices in Colonial Contact Zones in Greenland and Sápmi (900-1500)
  • General Linguistics Seminar – 5.15, Humanities Centre 30.400. Henrike Lähnemann will be speaking on The nuns’ language: Latin-German code-mixing in the Lüne letters
  • Theory and Play: Comparative Medievalisms – 5.15, Lady Margaret Hall. Selections from: Anandavardana’s Dhvanyaloka (9th century CE, tr. The Light of Suggestion); Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (13th century CE, tr. The Flowing Light of the Godhead); Cywydd Ymry

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Kirsty Bolton (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Power and conversion in middle English romance’.
  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Simon Egan, Queen’s University Belfast will be speaking on ‘God forebede that a wylde Yrishe wyrlynge shulde be chosene for to be there kynge’: Gaelic Recovery in a North Atlantic Context, c.1350-c.1550′
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Clément Salah (Queen’s) will be speaking on ‘Materialising Translation: manuscripts and the movement of knowledge in tenth-century North Africa’.
  • Heraldry Society – 5:00, MacGregor Room, Oriel College. Patric Dickinson, CVO (Clarenceux 2010-21) will be speaking on ‘Symbolism in Heraldry: Mysterious or Manifest?’
  • Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’. 
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Céline Delattre and Robert Minte will be speaking on ‘Inks and Pigments’
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, First Part, ll. 127-771 
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Pamela Armstrong (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Excavations of the Church of St Polyeuktos at Sarachane Revisited’
  • Islamic Studies Seminar: ‘Hajj the Art of Pilgramage’ – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
  • John Lydgate Book Club – 5:15pm. All Souls College, Hovenden Room. Mary Wellesley will speak on Lydgate and devotion.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
  • Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College. Pilgrims and Travellers, including extracts from the works of Egeria, Margery Kempe and Lady Nijo.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Llion Wigley (University of Wales Press) will be speaking on ‘Ynysoedd Gobaith: Adeiladu Iwtopia yng Nghymru’r Ugeinfed Ganrif’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. BOOK LAUNCH — Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Ferdinando Cospi, the Bologna Collection and the Medici Court.
  • A Medieval Saint in the Modern World: Oswald of Northumbria in Words and Music – 6:15, The Chapel at King’s College London.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. Translations of the Bible in the Eastern Mediterranean: Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Arabic. Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact Péter Tóth
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • EMBI ‘Databases: A Skills Workshop’ – 4.00, Humanities Centre, History of Art Seminar Room.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5:00, Sir Howard Stringer Room at Merton College, Emma J. Nelson (No take-backsies? Gerald of Wales and the Boundaries of Book Donation) and Elliot Cobb (Miraculous and Marginal Women in the Metz Psalter-Hours).

Opportunities and Reminders

Medieval Matter HT26, Wk 3

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02/02/2026

08:26

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Call for Papers, conference, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities, Uncategorized

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The OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner. Also: OMS sends condolences to our colleague Anna Abulafia (former Professor of Abrahamic Religions) for the death of her husband, Prof. David Abulafia FBA

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Anna Molnár (Reading) will be speaking on “Nuns’ Financial Literacy and the Private Banking Activities of Female Religious Organisations in the Later Middle Ages”

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Joe Stadolnik (University of Chicago) will be speaking on ‘Bad books in medieval Bristol: alchemy, liturgy and Thomas Norton’s ordinals’.
  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tom Johnson, Oxford will be speaking on ‘‘He hath payd his part’: The Political Economy of Fishing Doles in Late-Medieval England’
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Eugenia Vorobeva (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Devil’s Laughter, Language, and Sin in the Old Norse-Icelandic ‘Passio Domini’ Homily’
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:15, Maison Française d’Oxford. Cat Watts (St Anne’s College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘”Nothing  Of  Thine Own”: Fandom, Devilry, and Rewriting Holy Tales’ .
  • Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’. 
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Martin Kauffmann will be discussing Decoration
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. laudia Rapp (Vienna) and Michael Whitby (Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyrius of Gaza (in collaboration with Translated Texts for Historians and LUP)’
  • Islamic Studies Seminar- 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. James McDougall (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Worlds of Islam: A Global History’.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. All are welcome as we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: bring any edition of the original text.
  • Environmental History Working Group – 12:30–2:00pm, Humanities Centre History Hub Room 20.421. Louis James Henry (PhD Medieval Environmental History, University of Stavanger, Visiting Student at KCL) will be speaking on “Timely Courts and Immediate Responses: Waste Management as a Temporal Issue in Late Medieval England”
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Millie Horton-Insch (British Museum & Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on “Technologies of Reproduction and Sonderauftrag Bayeux: Re-Creating the Bayeux Tapestry for the Third Reich”
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanities Centre and Online). Rhiannon Marks (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘Envisaging the end: the representation of language decline in contemporary Welsh writing’
  • Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15. Email Harriet Carter for location.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Maria Judith Feliciano (CSIC, Madrid) will be speaking on ‘the silk core, or lessons from medieval Iberian textile studies’
  • Guild of Medievalist Makers, Making Space Session  – 5:30, online. Optional theme: birds.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. The theme this week is ‘The New Testament’ Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer at Péter Tóth  
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.

Opportunities and Reminders

Medieval Matters HT26, Week 2

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25/01/2026

16:16

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Call for Papers, conference, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

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OMS is deeply saddened by the passing of Stephen Baxter (Professor of Medieval History). To view a number of touching memories of Stephen, and to contribute your own, please visit the memorial page. Further plans for remembering Stephen at St Peter’s will be announced in due course.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2:15, Weston Library. Kees Dekker (Groningen) will be speaking on ‘Manuscripts in the hands of Franciscus Junius (1591-1677)’
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3:00, Archaeology Faculty. Jennifer Coulton (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Structural Depositions, Haunted Houses, and Domestic Protection in England c.800-1250’
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Rob Portass (Robinson College, Cambridge) will be speaking on “Estate Management and the Beginnings of Specialised Production in Early Medieval Iberia”.

Tuesday

  • ‘A Quiet Revolution’: Engaging Heritage Audiences with West Horsley Place’s Historic Landscape – 11:00, Learning Centre (Room 00.018), Humanities Centre. Book a place.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Rachel Moss (University of Northampton) will be speaking on ‘Chivalry is a code for men willing to fight’: medievalism, masculinity and the modern far-right’.
  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Annabel Hancock (Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on ‘Negotiating Uncertain Waters: Trust in trade and diplomacy in the Mediterranean’
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Natasha Bradley (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Trans Saints in Old Norse Translation: Marina*us the Monk and Pelagia*us the penitent in the medieval North’
  • Maghrib History Seminar – 5:00, The Queen’s College. Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Power and Peace: Re-viewing the Dynastic History of the Western Maghrib through an Urban Lens’.
  • Heraldry Society – 5:00, MacGregor Room, Oriel College. Mr Mark JR Scott (Somerset Herald) will be speaking on “British Royal Heraldry: 1800-2025”.
  • Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’. 
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:00, Weston Library. Andrew Honey & Matthew Holford will be discussing ‘Writing supports (parchment and paper) and manuscript structure’.
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, First Part, ll. 127-771.
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Julian Baker (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Medieval Epiros and Albania: Geopolitical and Economic Reflections in the Light of Coinage’.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. All are welcome as we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: bring any edition of the original text.
  • Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College. The Debate on Women – extracts from the works of Christine de Pizan, Teresa de Cartagena and Lady Murasaki.
  • Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5:00, online. Kévin Roger (University of Lorraine) will be speaking on ‘Latin Motets and Literary Networks in the Late Middle Ages: Intertextuality, Rhetoric, and Digital Reading’. Discussants: Yolanda Plumley (University of Exeter) and Karl Kügle (Universities of Oxford and Utrecht).
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Robert Mills (University College London) will be speaking on “Wild Forms: Hermits, Saints and Rock Art in Medieval England” 
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Elizabeth Edwards (CAWCS) will be speaking on ‘Home Circuits: the Ladies of Llangollen, queer temporalities and Welsh landscapes’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Joumana Medlej (Independent Scholar) will be speaking on ‘The hidden life of Kūfī scripts: practice-based insights and theories’.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • In Tesserae workshop – details TBC.
  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. The theme this week ‘The Septuagint and its Transmission’. Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer at peter.toth@bodleian.ox.ac.uk  
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5:00, online.

Opportunities and Reminders

The OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner.

Medieval Matters HT26, Week 1

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19/01/2026

08:43

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Call for Papers, conference, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities, Uncategorized

,

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 Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner.

Tony Hunt’s memorial service is will be held on 16th May, 2.30, St Peter’s College Chapel (booking etc in due course).

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. John Sabapathy (UCL) will be speaking on “Humanism and bestiality in the land of Cockagne”.
  • Celtic Language Teaching continues throughout the week – please consult the booklet, p. 39 for a full table of dates and locations.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Stacie Vos (University of California, San Diego) will be speakin on “Norfolk Broads, or Discovering medieval women with twentieth-century collectives”.
  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell (Oxford) will be speaking on “Beyond the Mediterranean by land and sea: Two medieval cases in a (very) broad context”.
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. John Mulhall (Purdue University) will be speaking on “‘Blessings on All the Prophets’: Islamic prayers in the Latin scientific translations of the twelfth century”.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The first week will be a shortish planning meeting. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’. 
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Theme: ‘Palyce of Honour, Prologue, ll. 1-126’.
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. John Mulhall (Purdue) will be speaking on “The Republic of Translators: Translating from Greek and Arabic into Latin in the Twelfth-Century Mediterranean”.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. All are welcome as we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: bring any edition of the original text.
  • Environmental History Working Group (EHWG) – 12:30, Room 20.421 (Humanities Centre). Niklas Groschinski (DPhil History) “Environing from Below — Supplications, Denunciations, and Other Sources for Rewriting Early Modern Environmental History”
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Brigid Ehrmantraut (St Andrews) will be speaking on “Death of the author? Authorship and authority in the Middle Irish classical adaptations”.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Yusuf Tayara (Wolfson College) will be speaking on “Timekeeping between art and science: integrated approaches to the history of Mamluk astronomy”.
  • Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15. Location is variable so please email Hattie Carter or James Tittering if you’re interested. This term’s text is Apollonius of Tyre.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall. Sung by the College Choir in English

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. The theme this week is ‘The Hebrew Bible”. Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer, Péter Tóth.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo
  • EMBI ‘Databases: A Skills Workshop’ has been POSTPONED until Week 4 on 13 February, 16:00-17:15.

Opportunities (see booklet for further details)

Medieval Matter HT25, Week 0

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12/01/2026

17:02

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Medieval Matters

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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:

  • If you have submitted an event, check that the details are correct and  provide any corrections ASAP.
  • Note that a large number of entries have no information (noted by the symbol ##). If you are in charge of one of these events, or have previously been so, please reply to this email address ASAP with further information, or informing us that the event is not running this term.

Finally, a few upcoming events and deadlines for week 0:

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.

Medieval Matter MT25, Week 8

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30/11/2025

23:07

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Medieval Matters, News

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 Studies Booklet here.  Any last-minute changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/. As a little Oxmas gift, have a look at Péter Tóth explaining the layout of this early polyglot Bible fragment in the Bodleian Library, the newest contribution to the OMS Youtube channel.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3.00, Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. Aleks Pluskowski, will be speaking on ‘Re-thinking the “Green Revolution” in the Medieval Western Mediterranean (6th-16th centuries)’
  • Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Robert Swanson (University of Birmingham) will be speaking on “Margins, marginality, and marginalisation: drawing lines within and around late medieval Catholicism”

Tuesday

  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Medieval Church and Culture Seminar:  5:15pm, Harris Manchester College (tea & coffee from 5.00). Antonia Anstatt (Tübingen): ‘Holy Emotions? Love, Grief, and Anger in the Later Medieval Lives of Elizabeth of Hungary’

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Somerville College. The topic for this term is Ulrich von Richental, Chronik des Konzils zu Konstanz (1414-1438).
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
  • Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Olivier Delouis (Paris) will be speaking on ‘Byzantium in Correspondence: 171 Letters of Athanasios Papadopoulos-Kerameus to Non-Greek Byzantinists (1875–1911)’

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
  • Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College. – Poetic Exchanges, Including poems by Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, Muhja bint al-Tayyani, Tecla de Borja and ‘Vayona’
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Kristine Tanton (U of Montreal) will be speaking on ‘Seeing Anew: Digital Methods and the Return of the Medieval Object’.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Merryn Davies-Deacon (Belfast) will be speaking on ‘Lexical prescription in Breton: what does it involve and who is taking notice?’
  • Book Launch: Landscapes and Producers in Medieval England – 5:30, Main Lecture Theatre, Rewley House. A wine reception, with opportunity to purchase copies of the volume, will follow. More information here.

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • Followed by the Medieval Manuscript Support Group 11:30, also in the Weston Library, Horton Room – to get help with a manuscript from a panel of experts, use the form on the website
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group ‘Reading Group’ – 5:00, online

Opportunities

Book Launch: Landscapes and Producers in Medieval England

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30/11/2025

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events

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Essays presented to Rosamond Faith

Thursday 4 December – 5.30pm. Main Lecture Theatre, Rewley House. 1 Wellington Square, Oxford, OX1 2JA
The 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 of Lincoln). A wine reception, with opportunity to purchase copies of the volume, will follow. All are welcome

Landscapes and Producers launchDownload

UArctic Congress 2026

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30/11/2025

15:00

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Call for Papers, events

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, Christian, Euro-centric perspective. Important work on the Global Middle Ages is seeking to rectify this narrow view of the medieval world, and engagement with the history of indigenous peoples in history and literature is an essential component of such scholarly reclamation.

We invite papers on literary engagements with Sámi, First Nations, and Indigenous Peoples across the globe in medieval texts (c.500–c.1500 CE). Topics may include, but are not limited to:

* Representations of indigenous peoples in literary texts

* Engagement with texts and artworks of indigenous origin

* Ecocritical analysis, particularly in relation to stolen lands and seas

* Movement of peoples across land and sea

* Intersectional identities, such as race, religion, gender, and sexuality

Our aim for this panel is to create meaningful dialogue based on dignity and understanding. Literary and historical sources provide essential windows into past lives, individual and collective, that broaden and deepen our engagement with each other. This panel aims to learn from the past to create a better future.

This session is organised by the UArctic Thematic Network in the Environmental Humanities.

Session 134: The Ocean as a Connector Between People, Places, and Cultures in Literature and History

For as long as people have been travelling, the ocean has served as a powerful connector, facilitating movement, trade, cultural exchange, and conflict, whilst also shaping identities and inspiring artistic expression. It acts as both a physical pathway and a metaphorical space, impacting human societies in profound ways. Literature and historical sources record and explore this impact, showing us the multi-faceted relationships that humanity has with the world’s waters.

In this session, we invite papers that will speak to each other about how different cultures, nations, peoples, and individuals explore these relationships through literature and historical record. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

* Representations of sea travel

* Personifications of the ocean

* Connections and exchanges between characters/historical figures facilitated by the sea

* Identity and nationhood as defined by watery borders

* Metaphorical explorations of personhood through the ocean

We welcome papers from a wide temporal and geographical scope, though we anticipate a focus on the northern seas. With water as a natural conduit, we hope that these papers on humanity’s relationships with and through the ocean will create connections across times and spaces, highlighting the fluid natures of seas and human identities.

This session is organised by the UArctic Thematic Network in the Environmental Humanities.

Session 162: When the waters came: Building resilience to flooding in Arctic communities through flood myths and stories

The Arctic is often described as the canary in the coal mine of global climate change, but melting ice and glaciers are also causing flood risks that are unique to the Arctic and its people. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report highlights multiple flood hazards, fluvial and pluvial, from permafrost thaw, snow melt, and increased precipitation, while also pointing to growing risks of coastal flooding in Arctic regions caused by retreating sea ice.

Flooding can be undeniably destructive, but research at the University of Hull’s Centre for Water Cultures has highlighted the importance of creativity in our work with flood-risk communities. Using a place-based, participatory approach, we use literature, art, and history to make grand narratives about global flooding locally meaningful. Flooding has always been central to the stories of circumpolar communities, from the myths of the Inuit, Sámi, and Chukchi to the deluge of Ragnarök. Yet in these stories, flooding also marks a new beginning, bringing hope for the future. How can we harness the power of these stories for Arctic communities today?

In this roundtable, we invite researchers, artists, and community practitioners to reflect on the creative potential of flood stories to engage Arctic communities in conversations about flooding. Topics might include:

– The role of traditional flood myths in today’s Arctic communities

– Flooding as a source of inspiration for new stories by Arctic writers and poets

– Case studies of projects that explore creative responses to flooding in community settings

– Multi-media responses to flooding, in music, art, theatre, and film.

This session is organised by the University of Hull Centre for Water Cultures and the UArctic Thematic Network in the Environmental Humanities.

To submit an abstract for any of these sessions, please go directly to the Congress’s portal: https://www.uarcticcongress.fo/programme/call-for-abstract-proposals

Please contact Kirsty Bolton (kirsty.bolton@ell.ox.ac.uk) or Stewart Mottram (s.mottram@hull.ac.uk, session 162 only) with any questions.

Medieval Matter MT25, Week 7

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24/11/2025

08:54

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events, Medieval Matters, News

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: come to the Medieval Manuscripts Support Group, following the Friday coffee morning this and next week.

As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here.  Any last-minute changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

Tuesday

  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Mark Vessey (UBC) will be speaking on ‘Some Problems in the Earliest History of the Latin Life of Antony’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:00, Maison Française d’Oxford. Prof. Francis Gingrass (University of Montreal) will be speaking on ‘Luttes fratricides dans l’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’.
  • Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter

Wednesday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10:00, Clarendon Institute.
  • John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on the Constance Chronicle – 11:15, Somerville College.
  • EMBI Mapping Workshop – 2:00 in room 00.056 of the Schwartzman Centre. A few spaces are still available – sign up here.
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
  • Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Thomas Laver (Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Estates, Economy, and ‘Holy Men’ in Late Antique Egyptian Monasteries’

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
  • Environmental History Working Group – 12:30, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Meeting details to be announced.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Gwen Angharad Gruffudd & Arwel Vittle will be speaking on ‘‘Dros Gymru’n Gwlad’: hanes sefydlu’r Blaid Genedlaethol’
  • King Faisal Lecture – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Professor Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi (Columbia University) will be speaking on ‘The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction’. All Welcome. No registration is required.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30pm, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

Opportunities

CfP: Saints Outside Hagiography

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23/11/2025

13:50

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Call for Papers, opportunities

New York, Morgan Library, M.S15. E. 53v detail

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, to explore how they are constructed in other forms poetry, visual art, sermons, letters, monuments, drama, chronicles, liturgy, objects, didactic literature, and others – in an informal, work-in progress format focused on discussion of primary sources from any historical period. We envision each meeting consisting of 1-2 brief presentations, with the text or object and a short description or summary (max 500 words) circulated in advance along with one or two questions for discussion. If you have a historical source or item related to sanctity that you would like to bring to an interdisciplinary forum, please get in touch with Laura Moncion (laura.moncion@philosophie.uni-tuebingen.de) and Alicia Smith (alicia.smith@uib.no) by 15 January 2026 with a brief description, your career stage and institutional affiliation if any.
Guidelines:
The chronological and geographical scope is intentionally open. We are happy to receive proposals that argue for definitions of saint / sanctity outside the mainstream
Speakers are free to contest whether a text is ‘outside hagiography’ or ‘not a classic hagiography — the goal is to study saints and the construction of saint/sanctity beyond canonical textual forms. including troubling our understanding of those forms.
If your source is not in English, you will need to include an English translation.