Welcome to Week 7: the full Medieval Studies booklet is available here. First, a number of important reminders.
The Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland is hosting an online exhibition of artefacts and manuscripts that explore the lives of early medieval women. To submit an item, or to attend the even, follow this link.
The Medieval History research seminar in Week 8 (16 June) has been moved to the Old Library in All Souls. There will be a drinks reception afterwards, 6.30-7.30pm, in the Great Quad, to mark Julia’s retirement. For catering purposes, people planning to attend should RSVP using this form: https://forms.office.com/e/Mr92xB66jh
Monday
- French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 pm in the Weston Library.
- Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Andrew Dunning (Bodleian Library Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Cult of Saint Frideswide in Medieval Oxford’.
Tuesday
- The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
- EMBI ‘Women in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland’ online exhibition – 3.30pm, Massey Room, Balliol College.
- Medieval Church and Culture – 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room. Francesca Peacock (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Thu and thi wyff arn barrany and bare!’: the experience of infertility and the cult of St Anne in medieval East Anglia, c. 1100 – 1500′; Isabelle Amy Job (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Blanche of Castile and Le Miroir de l’Ame’; Molly Bray (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Conspicuous Materiality, Collective Devotion: making and exchanging textiles in the Lüneburg Heath c. 1500’.
- Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Bastien Racca (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland) will be speaking on ‘‘L’amour rêvé: des métalepses dans le Songe Vert ?’’
Wednesday
- The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets Wednesdays 11.15am–12.45pm in Oriel College, Harris Lecture Room. The topic for this term is the ‘Alexanderroman’. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
- The ‘science of the stars’ in context: an introduction to medieval astronomical and astrological manuscripts and texts – 2pm in the Horton Room (Weston Library). Session 6: Horoscope: dating and interpretating medieval horoscopes.
- Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
- June & Simon Li Lecture in the History of Art – 5pm at Lincoln College. Aden Kumler (University of Basel) will be speaking on ‘Vera mensura. Dimensional realism in medieval manuscripts’.
- Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. John-Francis Martin (Oriel) will be speaking on ‘“The Last Byzantine Controversy” — Politics, Rhetoric, and Religion from the Council of Ferrara-Florence to the Fall of Constantinople’.
- Medieval Society and Landscape Seminar Series – 5pm in the Department for Continuing Education. Simon Townley (Victoria County History of Oxfordshire) will be speaking on ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once: Exploring Medieval Place and Society through Local History’. Book here.
- Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Dr Sophia Vasalou (University of Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘Al-Ghazālī and the Ideal of Godlikeness’.
- Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar– 5pm, Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. Kat Smith (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Virgin Mary in Medieval and Early Modern Women’s Writing’.
Thursday
- Oxford Environmental History Working Group – 12:30 online. Bill Smith (DPhil History) will be speaking on “Chains of Control and Reins of Resistance: Nonhuman Animals and the Plantationocene in the American South”.
- ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts – 1–5pm.
Friday
- Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
- Medieval Manuscripts Support Group – 11:30 in the Horton Room. 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!
- Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.
- Research Workshop: Working with modern theory on Medieval Women’s Writing – 5pm in the Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College.
- Oxford Translation Day 2025 – 6pm at the Taylor Institute. More info here.
Opportunities (new additions in bold)
- The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages – 25–26 September 2025. Registration is free but compulsory. Futher details here: https://classics.web.ox.ac.uk/event/the-latin-hymn-as-scriptural-exegesis-from-late-antiquity-to-the-middle-ages
- Essay Prize for Review of English Studies seeking applications – more information here.
- A number of roles are available at Hamburg’s ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’: Doctoral Researchers, post-docs, and advanced post-docs.
- London Medieval Society’s 80th anniversary colloquium on ‘Memory and Commemoration’ is being held at on Saturday 28th June at The Warburg Institute.
- ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts Exploring the Potential of Large-Scale Catalogue Data – Thursday 26th June, 1–5pm, Weston Library. More information here.
- The Terence Barry Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Irish Medieval Studies – deadline May 30, 2025. More information here.
- Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society Travel Grant – more info here.
- Call for Submissions: Taube Prizes for Student Writing in Hebrew & Jewish Studies – see blog post.
- National Archives Skills Courses – see blog post.
- CfP for ‘Staging Silence from Antiquity to the Renaissance’ – more information here.
- CfP for ‘Music and Reformation: A Symposium at Lambeth Palace Library, 16 September 2025’
- A regular pub trip is being organised on a Friday at 6pm at the Chequers, from 0th week to 8th week, for all medievalists at Oxford. Email maura.mckeon@bfriars.ox.ac.uk
- Additional spaces are available on the ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts workshop – please sign up here.
- Registration for the Masterclass by Patrick Boucheron – Pourquoi des médiévistes ? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge – 29 May, 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford.
- Registration for Patrick Boucheron’s lecture entitled ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ – 29 May, 5:00pm, Pembroke College.
- The Digital Medieval Studies Institute is hosting a set of workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists as part of the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. More information can be found here.