Author: Tristan Alphey

Medieval Matters: MT 24, week 0

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08/10/2024

15:30

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events, News

Hello my friends, and welcome (back) to Oxford.

The beginning of another term means a new set of exciting events to put in your calendars. The first version of the new Medieval Booklet of events can be found here. If you are organising an event or series this term, please have a quick check through: addenda and corrigenda to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk.

Each week I will be emailing out a list of that week’s events and opportunities, bright and early on a Monday morning. This week’s selection can be found below.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Thursday 10th October:

  • The Celtic Seminar starts at 5pm in the Memorial Room at Jesus College.

Friday 11th October:

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning 10.30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library. All welcome
  • The NEW Medieval MSS Support Group 11:30-12:30 in the Horton Room in the Weston Library: once or twice a term, in which readers of medieval manuscripts can pose questions to a mixed group of fellow readers and Bodleian curators in a friendly environment. Come with your own questions, or to see what questions other readers have! If you wish to pose a question, please order the relevant manuscript to the issue desk, and email the details to Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, the day before, so that he can arrange for it to be transferred across to the Horton Room for the session. Alternatively, provide a good quality digital image that we can display on a large monitor. A second date this term will be on 6 December.

COMING UP

  • On Tuesday, 15 October, there will be a chance to meet together as a community with the Welcome Social, held in the Wellbeloved Room at Harris Manchester College. If you are hosting a reading group/ lecture series/event this year we highly encourage you to come along to help spread the word. See you all there!

OPPORTUNITIES

  • University College Dublin is advertising a PhD studentship in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE), supervised by Dr Megan Welton. For more information, please see the recent blog post here.

If you know of anybody interested in the medieval who is not on this mailing list, please encourage them to register here for the mailing list.

T.K.A

Balliol College MS 238A, fol. 1r

University College Dublin PhD opportunity

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08/10/2024

15:27

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opportunities

The College of Arts and Humanities, University College Dublin, Ireland, is pleased to announce a generously funded Ph.D. studentship specialising in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton, Assistant Professor in Medieval History and recently appointed Ad Astra Fellow at the School of History (https://people.ucd.ie/megan.welton).

Deadline: 4 November 2024 by email to megan.welton@ucd.ie.

The studentships are open to EU and non-EU candidates and are for a maximum of four years, renewable each year, subject to satisfactory progress. The award includes full tuition fee waiver, a PhD stipend of €25,000 per annum, and €4,000 per annum towards research costs of the Ph.D.  We anticipate that the successful candidate will start in January 2025.

Please submit the following application materials by email:

  • Personal statement and CV as one document
  • Writing sample (e.g. an essay or section of MA dissertation)
  • Two academic references
  • A proposal (1000-1500 words plus indicative bibliography).

The Selection Panel will shortlist candidates for interview, likely to take place in the last week of November. Successful applicants will be informed by email.

For the application procedure please see the relevant school guidelines below. The outcome of this competition will be communicated directly to all applicants.

Specialisation: Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE)

Proposals for a Ph.D. project in the history of early medieval politics and intellectual thought are welcomed, specialising in one or more post-Roman kingdoms, including (but not limited to) east and west Francia, early English kingdoms, and northern Italy. Proposals that incorporate a comparative approach are encouraged.

In addition to a competitive stipend, the successful candidate also will have access to an annual research budget of €4,000 for archival research in relevant collections abroad or related research expenses.

The UCD School of History stands as one of Europe’s premier centers for historical research, offering a vibrant research community. The School of History is well-connected through its active engagement with international partners and a broad array of UCD research centres and institutes. The successful candidate will join a robust graduate community of early career medieval scholars, from MA students in Medieval Studies in the School of History, to postgraduates and postdoctoral fellows in connected schools in Art History, Archaeology, and Irish, Celtic Studies and Folklore.

As such, interdisciplinary work is welcomed, and candidates from all relevant areas of medieval studies are encouraged to apply.

Introducing the new OMS Comms officer

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23/09/2024

12:24

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News

Greetings friends, old and new.

My name is Tristan Alphey, and I am the new OMS comms officer for the coming year. I’ll be popping up in your inboxes throughout the year with all sorts of opportunities and events, and so I want to take this quick chance to briefly introduce myself and my research.

My research explores the social implications of nicknaming in pre-Conquest and early Norman England. I look at the themes, number, and distribution of nicknames in an attempt to understand what motivated people to give and repeat names, and whether we can begin to unpick some of the social systems that lay behind these names. My approach draws on a body of scholarship known as socio-onomastics, increasingly popular among linguists and anthropologists, that sees names as playing an active role in shaping the ways people interact with each other.

We find these nicknames all over the place: in Domesday Book, within witness-lists of charters, in manumissions, in confraternity books, (very occasionally) in poetry. Some of these English nicknames are simple observations: two late 7th century missionaries are given the nicknames ‘Black’ and ‘White’ for their hair colour. Others are openly pejorative: one Domesday subtenant is named, simply, ‘Bad Neighbour’. Yet others are downright unintelligible: if anyone can offer me a convincing interpretation for the nickname of Alric ‘Winter Milk’, I am all ears…

Elsewhere in Oxford I run the Medieval Misuse reading group, which explores the ways in which the medieval past has been misused by modern political parties and extremist groups. We hope to bring this back in the coming term, so keep your eyes peeled.

I look forward to getting to know you all better, and meeting many of you in person – feel free to email me with any specific questions. I’m always keen to convert other medievalists to the thrills of onomastics, particularly socio-onomastics, so do please reach out if you’d ever like to discuss names. Until then, enjoy this week’s downpour of rain and I will see you all in first week.

header image: Cnut and Emma as they appear in the liber vitae of New Minster: BL, Stowe, MS. 944, fol. 6 (https://imagesonline.bl.uk/asset/524)