Plenary speakers: James Simpson and Carolyne Larrington
We welcome proposals for papers at the 2026 Medieval Insular Romance conference.
Papers may address any aspect of romance composed in the languages of medieval Britain and Ireland, along with the ways that Insular romances engage with texts and traditions beyond those islands. The focus on discussion at these conferences is traditionally non-Chaucerian, non-Arthurian romances. We especially welcome papers that respond to the theme of the conference, ‘Moving Medieval Romance’. This may be interpreted broadly, from the ways that romances stage and provoke emotion; to studies of physical movement, travel and exchange; to textual shifts, adaptation and the remediation of romances, in and beyond the medieval period.
Proposals for 20-minute papers; complete sessions of three papers; or roundtables on a particular theme, should be sent to the conference organizers, Lucy Brookes (Merton College, Oxford) lucy.brookes@ell.ox.ac.uk and Nicholas Perkins (St Hugh’s College, Oxford) nicholas.perkins@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk. Please include: your name; affiliation; contact details; title of paper/session; and an abstract of up to 250 words.
The deadline for submitting proposals is 31 October 2025.
Illustration: Cristabel and her baby are cast out to sea; from Eglamour of Artois, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Douce 261, fol. 39v. Creative commons licence: CC-BY-NC 4.0
Join leading pre-modernists and technologists from around the world atArs Inquirendi, 4th-7th December 2025 (online / St Edmund Hall, Oxford ), to explore how Large Multimodal Models like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini – massive, humanly conversant assimilations of learning – are transforming pre-modern studies, and how to use them in your own research.
Format: the first three days are entirely online. Presentations will be pre-released in late November via the Oxford Medieval Studies website, with the live sessions devoted to discussion, and held in the UK afternoon to maximize participation from around the world. The hybrid workshops on Days 3 & 4 are live.
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Day 1 (Thursday, 4th December) – A New Age of Pre-Modern Inquiry. In his opening keynote, Maurizio Forte unfolds how AI is transforming the conditions of archaeological knowledge, enabling archaeologists to rethink, reconstruct and even simulate the pre-modern world. From the evolution of ancient societies to the relations of minds and artifacts, humans and environments, he surveys emerging techniques such as agent-based reconstruction of cultural transitions, and neuroaesthetic analyses of gaze and visual attention. The following panel, Creating Research Machines with LMMs, gathers varied technologists and humanists to compare how they are already building working research systems using LMMs – and how even modest inputs can yield disproportionately large results.
2.45pm
Stephen Pink and Anthony J. Lappin (co-organisers)
Opening Keynote (live): Rethinking the Past: An AI Perspective in Archaeology
Abstract: Archaeology, traditionally reliant on material traces and contextual interpretation, is now engaging AI to simulate the evolution and transformation of ancient societies, to generate new scenarios, and to study the relationships between minds and artifacts, humans and environments. This keynote offers a methodological overview of emerging research questions and applications across different periods, from agent-based reconstructions of cultural transitions to machine learning and neuroaesthetics applied to the analysis of gaze, attention, and affordances in art and architecture. Together, these approaches demonstrate that AI is not only a technical instrument but also a new epistemic partner. By integrating computation with contextual interpretation, AI enables us to rethink both the past itself and the conditions of archaeological knowledge in the twenty-first century.
Response and Questions on keynote and the following talks (pre-released on 27th November):Mark Faulkner & Elisabetta Magnanti (TCD), Evaluating LLM Performance on NLP Tasks for Old English: Towards Philological Benchmarks Stephen Pink (The Scriptomes Project)
6pm
Break
6.30pm
Panel
Creating Research Machines with LMMs, I
Participants: Panelists above, plus Ben Kiessling (Université Paris Sciences et Lettres).
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Day 2 (Friday, 5th December) – LMMs and / as the Archive. Our first panel exposes the unprecedented opportunities and challenges for using the technology with archival materials and records – how can one document and trust LMM records in the same fashion as those generated by people? The second panel asks what it means for LMMs themselves to be the archive. Almost automatically, such models infer a pre-modern Graphosphere: the Old World’s totality of scratched, daubed, written, and otherwise inscribed artifacts, extant and destroyed. Yet only a fraction of what survives is imaged, let alone readable by LMMs —and that survival itself is only a fraction of what once existed. How can an LMM usefully know the pre-modern? From there, we turn to what a realised Graphosphere might enable by mapping what exists and is missing: from guiding the allocation of scant human and financial resources, and correcting long-term historical biases; to opening wholly new fields of scholarship.
Start 2.30pm
Panel
LMMs and the Archive. Including Response and Questions to the following talks (pre-released 27th November):Madeline Rose (TCD): (Re-) Structuring the Catalogue: Limitations and Design Strategy for Applying LLMs to Medieval Manuscript Catalogues
Achim Rabus (Freiburg): Visual Language Models and Traditional HTR for Multilingual Handwritten TextDmitri Sitchinava (Potsdam), ‘Birchbark letters: the case of complex fragmented texts calling for LLM reconstruction’
4pm
Half-hour Break
4.30pm-6pm
Panel
LMMs as Archive
Participants: panelists above, others TBC
Imagine a pre-modern graphosphere: an LMM-inferred reconstruction of the totality of the Old World’s scratched, daubed, written, and otherwise inscribed artifacts – extant and destroyed – before the dominance of movable type. LMMs are already, almost automatically, inferring such a thing. Yet its likely centrality to future research also exposes the profound inadequacy of the current pre-modern LMM archive – that is, of the material on which these models train. This “archive” differs radically from an LMM’s usual training data: not printed matter (by our definition of the pre-modern), not born-digital texts and images, but a fragmented, mediated corpus. What survives is only a fraction of what once existed—and of that, only a fraction has been imaged, let alone transcribed (indeed most remains untranscribable by machine), or made accessible outside paywalls. The first part of the panel examines this predicament: how the structure of digital availability shapes what AI can usefully “know” of the pre-modern world, and technologies such as machine transcription are working to improve that structure. The second part turns to the opportunity even at a foundational phase: how LMMs can help map what exists and what is missing, guide digitisation priorities for funders, correct long-term biases in the historical record, and begin to uncover the evolution – or polygenesis – of ideas and cultures across regions of the Old World and beyond.
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Day 3 (Saturday, 6th December)– Emergent Properties. We explore the unpredictable behaviours that appear as LMMs become more complex – above all, their apparent intellectual and aesthetic creativity. In his keynote, Roger Martínez-Dávila presents an AI-powered simulation of a fifteenth-century Castilian city, Plasencia, which resolved a civic dispute through an unforeseen strategy—one unattested in the sources yet historically plausible. The following panel broadens the discussion to ask what these behaviours mean for history, interpretation, and knowledge itself.
Keynote (live). When Players Rewrite History: Gameworlds, LMMs, and Alternative Medieval Scenarios
Abstract: In this keynote I’ll present Virtual Plasencia v4.0: The Medieval Vines of Three Religions, an AI-powered simulation of a fifteenth-century Castilian city, modeling its social, religious, and economic networks. In a course test run, a student team resolved a dispute involving a senorial lord, civic council, and bishop in an unforeseen way—one not attested in primary sources—yet arrived at the same result. Their novel strategy hints at a plausible but unrecorded historical pathway. I’ll analyse this surprise and propose that AI simulations like Virtual Plasencia v4.0 function not as rigid reconstructions, but as speculative spaces where LMM-driven agents can explore trajectories beyond the constraints of archival silence.
3.30pm
Respondent TBC
Response and Questions to Keynote and Following Talks (pre-released 27th November)Anthony Harris (Cambridge) Using Generative AI for Medieval Studies Research, I Peter Broadwell , Simon Wiles (Stanford) and Katherine McDonough (Lancaster): AI Models for Transcription and Exploration of Historical Maps and Other Troublesome Materials Damon Wischik (Cambridge), Agentic AI and homoiconic coding Pablo Acosta-García (UAB), Soundspaces of devotion: using AI to explore emotional communities in the pas
4.45pm
Break
5pm-7pm
Panel
The Future of Pre-Modern Inference Studies
Participants: Panelists above, with Sarah Bowen Savant (Aga Khan University)
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Day 4 (Sunday, 7th December)– Workshops. A hands-on continuation of Day 1’s theme, hybrid online / in-person workshops at St Edmund Hall, Oxford invite all participants to begin building and experimenting directly in their browsers. From promptotyping to map-based AI exploration and automated manuscript transcription, tutors guide attendees through the practicalities of integrating LMMs into their research.
Borders, Boundaries, and Barriers have become increasingly prominent themes in historical scholarship. Over the last decade, these concepts have been the focus of sustained scholarly interest, drawing especially upon theoretical frameworks and (trans-)national contexts. There is, therefore, a pressing need to examine how these constructs have shaped the lived experiences of historically marginalised groups, as well as how they were perceived, defined, and engaged with by those groups.
This conference seeks to reorient discussions around borders, boundaries, and barriers by foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of marginalised groups and considering how these divisions were perceived fromthe peripheries of societies. Rather than treating these concepts as abstract or solely geopolitical, we will explore the ways in which they have operated — both historically and historiographically — as tools of exclusion and differentiation.
Organised by Natasha Jenman (University of Oxford), Naomi Reiter (QMUL), and Dean A. Irwin (University of Lincoln/OCHJS), the conference will focus on individuals, religious groups, social groups, societal constructions, and natural phenomena. Participants are invited to explore the role played by evolving borders, boundaries, and barriers in the medieval world as part of group identities; and how groups used them to their advantage. Likewise, it will consider the extent to which borders, boundaries and barriers have been imposed upon the medieval world by modern scholars. Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
Legal jurisdictions
The natural and the supernatural worlds
Socio-economic strata
Ritual and religion
Space, time, and the environment
Gender and sexuality
Disability
Transgression, delinquency, and the grey middle space
This conference adopts a broad chronological and geographical approach with submissions from all historically-related disciplines being welcome. The conference will take place on 20 and 21 April 2026 in Oxford. To submit, please send a title, abstract (c. 250 words), and a bio (c. 100 words) to: bordersboundariesbarriers@gmail.com. Any questions should be directed to the same e-mail address. The organisers hope to be able to offer a limited number of bursaries for students and those on low income. Please indicate in your proposal whether you would like to be considered for one of these if this becomes possible.
Image ref: Latin Psalter (13th-15th C), f.9 – BL Add MS 28681,
Another academic year draws to a close: welcome, finally, to Week 8. The full Medieval Studies booklet is available here.
Next Thursday, 19 June, 4:30-6pm, is the official launch date for the “The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays – the Film”. This is a wonderful chance to come together to celebrate the end of the year, and watch some of the excellent performances that were put on earlier in the term. At 4:45pm, the film will have its youtube premiere. You can tune in from anywhere in the world to comment; find the full schedule of when each play will start, more information, and a teaser here.
NB. If you are leaving us at the end of this year, and you would like to remain a member of this mailing list (and you are most welcome to do so), please register here with your personal email (link always available from our homepage https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/).
Monday
Poetry, Power, Literacy, and the Emergence of Vernacular Literatures – 9am in the Radcliffe Humanities Building, Seminar Room. The workshop is part of the activities of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World.
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 am in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Stuart Airlie (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Returns of the Repressed: Aby Warburg’s cultural history of Percy Ernst Schramm’. Following the talk, a special drinks reception will be held to mark Julia’s retirement. Please sign up here.
Tuesday
The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Medieval Church and Culture – tea and biscuits from 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room, with talks from 5.15. Cassidy Serhienko (Pembroke) will be speaking on ‘‘That Fayre Lady’: women and the code of chivalry in late Arthurian romance’; Senia Magzumov (Worcester) will be speaking on ‘Imagining the Rus’ Pagan Past in the Radziwill Chronicle: a comparative study with the Litsevoi Letopisnyi Svod’.
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’ and this week Lucian Shepherd and Monty Powell will present. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates for future terms, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Special OCBR lecture – Marc Lauxtermann (Exeter) will be speaking on ‘The Emergence of Fiction: Byzantium and the East’.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Dr Glaire Anderson (University of Edinburgh) will be speaking on ‘A Bridge to the Sky: Science and Arts in the Age of Ibn Firnas (d. 887)’.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 5pm in the Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. The theme is ‘Letters of Friendship and Gratitude’.
Lincoln Unlocked – 5.15pm in the Weston Library. Rebecca Menmuir will be speaking on ‘Achilles at Lincoln: Unlocking the Medieval Text of a Classical Poem’. Book here.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Opportunities (new additions in bold)
British Academy talks on Anglo-Saxon and medieval Irish numismatics. More info here.
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.
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.
Thank you to those who have submitted their publications for the OMS impact booklet – please continue to send short blurbs to the Oxford Medieval Studies email addressASAP. Pictures also welcome!
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 pm in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar is cancelled due to illness.
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15 in the English Faculty. Rowan Wilson (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Feeling Aliene, Now and Then: Work, Contemplation, and Alienation between Medieval Devotion and Modern Academia’, and Anine Eglund (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Speaking Dead: Conversing with the Living from Beyond the Grave in Early English Literature ‘.
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 – 4pm, location TBC.
Medieval Church and Culture – 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room. Rachel Cresswell (Blackfriars) will be speaking on ‘Scripture, text and proof-text in Anselm of Canterbury’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Catherine Léglu (University of Luxembourg) will be speaking on ‘ ‘The Anglo-Norman Bible (c.1350): rethinking a context’.
Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures Work-in-Pogress seminar – 5.15pm in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College. Laure Miolo (Lincoln College) will be speaking on ‘Predicting and observing eclipses in fourteenth-century Paris: what the manuscripts tell us’, and Shazia Jagot (University of York) will be speaking on ‘Astrolabe as archive and an archive of astrolabes: Chaucer’s astrolabe and its Islamic affordances’.
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 5: Conjunctions and eclipses.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Rustam Shukurov (IMAFO, Vienna) will be speaking on ‘The Empire of Trebizond: The State of Research and Possible Future Directions’.
Medieval Society and Landscape Seminar Series – 5pm in the Department for Continuing Education. Chris Briggs (Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘The Popular Classes and Royal Justice in Medieval England: Evidence from the Derbyshire Eyre of 1330-31’. Book here.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Professor Blain Auer (University of Lausanne) will be speaking on ‘The Origins of Perso-Islamic Courts and Empires in India’.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar– 5pm, Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. Victoria Sands (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Dormer Newdigate Family, London Charterhouse and English Reformation’.
Thursday
Environmental History Working Group – 12:30 in the Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty. Lucia Nixon (Classical Archaeology, Senior Tutor, St Hilda’s, Co-Director, Sphakia Survey) will be speaking on ‘Toward an Archaeology of Sustainability: Resource Packages and Landscape Management in Sphakia, Southwest Crete’.
Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 2pm in the Smoking Room (Lincoln College). Join us to read the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde in a weekly reading group. We will be reading from the end of Book IV. For more information or to be added to the mailing list, please email rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
Masterclass by Patrick Boucheron – Pourquoi des médiévistes ? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge – 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford.
Patrick Boucheron’s lecture entitled ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ – 5:00pm, Pembroke College.
Friday
Fragments of Lives. Medieval Lives in the Muniments of Magdalen, Lincoln, and Beyond – from 9am at Lincoln College. Enquiries to laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk.
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.
Opportunities (new additions in bold)
‘Big Data’ and Medieval ManuscriptsExploring 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.
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.
OMS are working towards producing an ‘Impact Booklet’, emphasising all of the wonderful things that go on throughout the year. At the moment we are searching for publications – if you have published a relevant monograph/ edited volume/ edition during the past year, please drop an email to this address with a short blurb. Also: Applications to be the next Social Media Officer still welcome; contact Henrike Lähnemann for an informal discussion of the role!
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 pm in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Julia Smith (All Souls) and Ana Dias (Brasenose) will be speaking on ‘Surviving in the archives: how to make sense of early medieval relic labels’.
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15 in the English Faculty. (NB change of speaker). Professor Christophe Grellard (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris)) will be speaking on ‘St. Erkenwald – Orthodoxy on the Edge?’.
The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Medieval Church and Culture – tea and biscuits from 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room, with talks from 5.15. Kevin Carlson (St Peter’s) will be speaking on ‘Reorienting Towards Life: a queer, medieval phenomenology of death in an anonymous 12thc Latin poem’, and Leslie Pencheng (St Catz) will be speaking on ‘Transforming the Ineffable: metaphors in Julian of Norwich and the Cloud of Unknowing’.
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’ and this week Patrick Leuenberger will be speaking on Alexander’s horse Boucephalus. 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 4: Planetary motions and horoscope.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 2pm, Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. Ved Prahba Shama (Independent Researcher) will be speaking on ‘Moving Beyond Knowledge in a Gendered Space’. See their TORCH website to book.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Dr Michael Callen (London School of Economics) will be speaking on ‘Building State Capacity in Fragile States’.
Thursday
Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 2pm in the Smoking Room (Lincoln College). Join us to read the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde in a weekly reading group. We will be reading from the end of Book IV. For more information or to be added to the mailing list, please email rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15 in the KRC Lecture Room. Elizabeth Kelly (Independent researcher, London) will be speaking on ‘Zoomorphic incense burners of medieval Khurasan’.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group Reading Group: Connoisseurship – 5pmonline. Write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com for more information.
Opportunities (new additions in bold)
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.
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 is open 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 is open 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.
From the Editor-in-Chief: We invite contributions to The Explicatoron any work of medieval literature that is conventionally considered (or should be considered) an epic. Eligible works include Beowulf, Waltharius, the Song of Roland, the Nibelungenlied, and other works traditionally associated with them. Less prominent works, such as bridal-quest epics (e.g., König Rother, Salman und Morolf) or epics pertaining to Dietrich von Bern, are likewise eligible for the issue. Contributions on German material are particularly welcome; they need not address whether the work being studied should be considered an epic. Each contribution needs only to put forward an original interpretation of a passage (or passages) in the work under scrutiny. Papers published in The Explicator should contain fewer than 2500 words.
Papers intended for this special issue should be uploaded directly through the Submission Portal on the website of The Explicatorprior to 1 October 2025.
Welcome to week 7: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. A few important points to draw your immediate attention to:
Although the Ford lectures have now finished (watch them here), Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be hosting an informal seminar discussion covering the topics she has discussed over the term- All Souls Old Library, 5pm on Thursday 6 March.
A preparatory meeting for all those who are involved in the Medieval Mystery Cycle (or are still looking for ways to get involved!) takes place on Thursday 8th week, 5pm, at St Edmund Hall. More info here
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3pm in the Institute of Archaeology. Helena Hamerow will be speaking on ‘Feeding Medieval England: A long ‘agricultural revolution’’.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Simon MacLean (St Andrews) will be speaking on ‘Listing royal lands in the Carolingian Empire’.
Tuesday
Europe in the Later Middle Ages – 2pm, Dolphin Seminar Room, St John’s College. Sylvia Alvares Correa (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Sacred Connections: The Eleven Thousand Virgins and Family Networks in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’.
The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Lecture of Medieval Poetry – 5pm, Location: t.b.d. Zuzana Dzurillová (Czech Academy of Sciences) will be speking on ‘Late Byzantine Romance. On the Wings of Repetition’.
Medieval Church and Culture – 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room. Carolyn LaRocco (St John’s) will be speaking on ‘The Cult of Saints in Visigothic Iberia’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Charles Samuelson (University of Colorado, Boulder) will be speaking on ‘Consent in Old French Narratives of Female Martyrdom’.
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group.
History and Materiality of the Book – 2pm in the Visiting Scholars Centre. Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo will be speaking on ‘Medieval Libraries and Provenance’.
Germanic Reading Group ‒ 4pm on Teams. Extracts from Old Icelandic/Old Norse showing biblical style in sagas and saga style in Bible translations.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Tommaso Giuliodoro (Durham University) will be speaking on ‘New Approaches to the Byzantine Army of North Africa in the 7th Century: Organisation, Strategies, and Challenges’.
Daisy Black, Medieval Storytelling Performance of Yde and Olive: A Medieval Lesbian Romance – 7pm in the Chapel at University College.
Thursday
Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be hosting an informal seminar discussion covering the topics she has discussed over the term- All Souls Old Library, 5pm on Thursday 6 March.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre.
Zeynep Aydoğan (Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Rethymno) will be speaking on ‘Epicscapes of medieval Anatolia: geographical imagination and identity in Anatolian Turkish frontier narratives’.
Compline in the Crypt at 9.30pm: The St Edmund Consort is singing Latin Compline with some Reformation period settings in the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library church of St Edmund Hall. Everybody welcome with the only caveat being uneven steps and limited space.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Péter Tóth, Curator of Greek Manuscripts, will bring out some special papyri for International Women’s Day!
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.
Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 5pm in Merton College, Mure Room. Nancy Thebaut (Art History Department and St Catherine’s College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Learning to Look: (Mis)reading the Visitatio sepulchri, ca. 900-1050’.
Upcoming
Alyce Chaucer Festival – Ewelme, 16th-18th May 2025. More info here.
The Reading Medieval History Postgraduate Research Forum is inviting registration for their upcoming conference – more info here.
Opportunities
The Ashmolean’s Krasis Scheme: ‘a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme’. You can find out more about this wonderful opportunity here (deadline 14 March).
CfP for ‘lluminating Nature: Explorations of Science, Religion, and Magic’ (21-22 July 2025 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durham Castle).
Register for ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’ (24 March 2025, 9am – 5.30pm).
Register now for the workshop on 21st March From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humphrey to celebrate the arrival of the French New Testament which was recently recognised to have been owned by Humfrey, duke of Gloucester. The event is free (including tea and coffee).
‘Transcribing Old and Middle French (1300-1500)’ – a short online course from the University of London, 10th-11th March. More info here.
CfP for the 35th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (University of Málaga, 24th-26th September 2025). More info here.
The Ashmolean is looking for a University Engagement Lead. This is a parttime fixed term role to research and possibly pilot opportunities for University Engagement. This is a good role for someone that knows the students in Oxford and is looking at a parttime role – and, obviously, loves museum collections! Full job description
The CfP for the ‘Sorrowful Virgin’ is now closed; contact Anna Wilmore if you missed the deadline or simply would like to take place in the workshop at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
Welcome to week 6: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. This week features the last of the Ford Lectures: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving a lecture entitles ‘“Et lors que parlerez anglois /Que vous n’oubliez pas le François” (manuscript dedication, c. 1445): Off-shoring French?’. Of special interest to many of you will be the Ashmolean’s Krasis Scheme: ‘a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme’. You can find out more about this wonderful opportunity here.
Errata or changes to announcements will be corrected in the google calendar and on the blog post, so please check these regularly.
Monday
French Palaeography Reading Group – 10.30pm in the Horton Room. Malatenia Vlachou (IRTH, Paris) will talk about An Interpretable Deep Learning Approach for Palaeographical Description and Analysis. All Welcome!
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – Institute of Archaeology Lecture Room, 3pm. Gabor Thomas, Roland Smith, and Darko Maricevic will be speaking on ‘Old Windsor: A Reassessment’.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Alexandra Sapoznik (KCL) will be speaking on ‘Economic and Cultural Connections within Mediterranean Ecosystems’.
Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30, English Faculty Graduate Common Room. This term we will be reading Hrafnkels saga.
Tuesday
Europe in the Later Middle Ages – 2pm in the Dolphin Seminar Room, St John’s College. Aleksander Paroń (Warsaw/Wrocław) will be speaking on ‘Nomads or ‘Nomads’? Considerations on the Mode of Life of Medieval Populations of the European Steppe *** This meeting is online, but will take place at the normal time in the Dolphin Room ***
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2pm, Weston Library.
Medieval Church and Culture – 5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Alex Peplow (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Depicting the Unfamiliar: Scorpions in Northern Europe’.
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall, on the ‘Wiener Susannaspiel’ (Das leben der heyligen frawen Susanna). Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group.
History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Laure Miolo will be speaking on ‘Calendars and Time-reckoning’
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Andy Hilkens (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) will be speaking on ‘Dialogue and Debate between Syriac and Armenian Miaphysites in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’.
Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Artefacts’. Book a place.
Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building.
Cathy Hume (University of Bristol) will be speaking on ‘Biblical poetry and its place in medieval English culture’
Thursday
Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music- 7pm online. Helen Coffey (The Open University) will be speaking on ‘Music for Dancing in the Empire of Maximilian I’.
Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the final of her lectures: ‘“Et lors que parlerez anglois /Que vous n’oubliez pas le François” (manuscript dedication, c. 1445): Off-shoring French?’
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm at St Catherine’s College. Ana Días will be speaking on ‘Painting the Apocalypse in Medieval Iberia: The Making of the Beatus Illuminations’.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Sinem Eryılmaz (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona) will be speaking on ‘Knowledge and its transmission in Ottoman manuscript culture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: observations and propositions’.
Tolkien and the Organ – 7pm, Exeter College Chapel.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
Upcoming
Dr Daisy Black’s medieval storytelling event in week 7 (5th March, 7pm, Univ chapel):Yde and Olive. Book tickets here.
Opportunities
The Ashmolean’s Krasis Scheme: ‘a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme’. You can find out more about this wonderful opportunity here.
CfP for ‘lluminating Nature: Explorations of Science, Religion, and Magic’ (21-22 July 2025 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durham Castle).
Register for ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’ (24 March 2025, 9am – 5.30pm).
Register now for the workshop on 21st March From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humphrey to celebrate the arrival of the French New Testament which was recently recognised to have been owned by Humfrey, duke of Gloucester. The event is free (including tea and coffee).
‘Transcribing Old and Middle French (1300-1500)’ – a short online course from the University of London, 10th-11th March. More info here.
CfP for the 35th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (University of Málaga, 24th-26th September 2025). More info here.
The Ashmolean is looking for a University Engagement Lead. This is a parttime fixed term role to research and possibly pilot opportunities for University Engagement. This is a good role for someone that knows the students in Oxford and is looking at a parttime role – and, obviously, loves museum collections! Full job description
The CfP for the ‘Sorrowful Virgin’ is now closed; contact Anna Wilmore if you missed the deadline or simply would like to take place in the workshop at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
