Category: events

Nigel F. Palmer Travel Fund Launch

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21/04/2026

11:09

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

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

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

A Multilingual Moses Play

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12/04/2026

20:08

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Moses. The ‘Exagoge’ of Ezekiel. ‘Moses and the Shepherd’ by Rumi

Friday, May 8, 2026 – 18:30
Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles

David Wiles directs a production of the extant fragments of a tragedy written in Alexandria in the second century BC.  Drawn from the Book of Exodus, the story tells of the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt.  The play was written by a Jew, and is the first extant dramatization of a biblical text. 

Image of a man touching a burning bush, from a medieval manuscript

The performance will mostly be given in ancient Greek, with the opening scene played in English.  The project follows on from Hrosvita’s Martyrdom of the Three Virgins performed in Latin in 2025, and prior to that Seneca’s Octavia in a Renaissance translation.  

The cast are a mix of students and seniors. The production style will be choral, using movement to illustrate narrative passages such as the burning bush and the crossing of the Red Sea – so fluent knowledge of ancient Greek will not be required.  

The production is sponsored by Wolfson College’s ‘Ancient World Research Cluster’.

Workshop on Late Medieval German Drama

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23/03/2026

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When: 2 May 2026, 11:30-16:45
Where: Taylor Institution Library, Room 2 (tbc)

Organisers: Henrike Lähnemann, Monty Powell, Carlos Rodríguez Otero, Sharang Sharma

A group of Oxford medievalists is currently working on an edition of the liturgical music for the Frankfurt Passion Play which was left unfinished by the late Peter Macardle (Die liturgischen Gesänge der Frankfurter Dirigierrolle und des Frankfurter Passionsspiels, under contract with Open Book Publishers). As part of the launch, planned for autumn 2026, they intent to perform an extract of the Mary Magdalen scenes from the play in a new dramatic English translation. The workshop on 2 May is meant to help prepare this performance by creating an English verse version and testing the musical transcription (with musicologist Margot Fassler as guest of honour).

Everybody is invited to the workshops who is interested in creative dramatic translation, or pre-modern German, or liturgical music, or an intersection of these. Please register your interest with one of the organisers at St Edmund Hall, Henrike Lähnemann or Carlos Rodríguez Otero; free lunch is included.

  • 11.30 – 12.30        First part of the workshop
  • 12.30-1.30            Brunch
  • 2-4pm                   Workshop continues
  • 4-4.15pm              Tea break
  • 4.15-4.45pm         Read-through performance

Medieval Matters – Vac

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23/03/2026

10:46

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The OMS emails will be put on brief pause over the vac, although the blog will be continually updated with new events. Please see below a number of important opportunities and reminders before term starts. Of particular note to those interested in early medieval England (and who amongst us doesnt fall into that category) is the British Library’s upcoming PhD placement on the Norman Conquest. Applications are open for three PhD placements which will support the development of our upcoming major exhibition on the Norman Conquest, marking the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror. Apply by Monday 6 April 2026. Apply by Monday 6 April 2026.

A Conference at the British Library: Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis

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23/03/2026

10:31

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Friday 9th June, at 10:00

The British Library recently undertook a new multispectral digitisation campaign of the Cotton Genesis (British Library, Cotton MS Otho B VI), one of the greatest works of manuscript art to survive from late Antiquity and one of the most tragic casualties of the Cotton Library fire of 1731. The new imagery made visible parts of the manuscript unseen since the fire. Pages that look black to the naked eye now reveal portions of readable texts; illuminations that look like blocks of colour now show layers of paint, brush strokes, and fold outlines. This opens exciting opportunities for new research on this manuscript, which is a significant witness both of an influential late-antique visual tradition and of the text of the Septuagint. The British Library will celebrate the launch of the multispectral images of the Cotton Genesis on its website with an interdisciplinary conference fully dedicated to the manuscript: Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis.

View the full programme and register here.

Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (AMARC).

Thank to support from AMARC, five free student tickets are available. To apply, please contact  elena.lichmanova@bl.uk and e.zingg@hist.uzh.ch.

Texts in transition

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22/03/2026

15:55

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A workshop on editing texts from medieval Britain

The Early English Text Society for graduate students and early career scholars.

Featuring: Richard Dance, Ralph Hanna, Kathryn Lowe, William Marx, Ad Putter, and Susan Irvine.

St Hilda’s College, Oxford

11.00 a.m. – 5.00 p.m.

Saturday 18 April 2026.

£20 for members of the EETS,

£34 for non-members.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided free

For registration or membership of the EETS, contact Dr Daniel Orton at eets@ell.ox.ac.uk

It is possible to obtain the members’ discount by joining at the time of registration. Website EETS

Medieval Matter HT26, Week 8

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08/03/2026

15:59

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We have made it, at long last, to the end of another Hilary term – but the events don’t stop coming! Please find below another week full of medieval events for you to enjoy, and an ever-increasing list of future opportunities. NB: the Maison Française d’Oxford lecture this Tuesday has had to move earlier and is now at 12:00.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library.
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2:15, Weston Library. Seamus Dwyer (Cambridge) will speak on ‘Pen-Flourishing and the Boundaries of Meaning’.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3:00, Archaeology Faculty.  Eugene Costello will be speaking on ‘Exploring the expansion of pastoral farming in northern Europe’s uplands, c.1200-1600’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Nick Evans (Birkbeck) “Cowries, Cloth and Coins: Currency in Medieval Economic Anthropology”.
  • Theory and Play: Comparative Medievalisms – 5.15, Lady Margaret Hall.

Tuesday

  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Mike Carr (Edinburgh) will be speaking on ‘Popes, Ambassadors and Falcons: Trade and Diplomacy between Latin Europe and the Mamluk Sultanate in the Fourteenth Century’.
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
  • Maison Française d’Oxford lectures: ‘Children in the Middle Ages’ – 12:00, Maison Française. NB. the new, earlier, time.
  • Maghrib History Seminar: “Reading the Qurʾān across the Mediterranean: Toward a Maghribī School of Tafsīr in Early Islam” – 5:00, The Queen’s College.
  • Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Celeste Pan (Balliol) will be speaking on ‘Some issues of translation in an illuminated Hebrew bible manuscript from medieval Brussels (Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibl., Cod. Levy 19)’.
  • Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell.

Wednesday

  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo will be speaking on ‘Text identification’.
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, Thyrd Part, ll. 1288-2142; Palyce of Honour, Dedication, ll. 2142-2169.
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Islamic Studies Seminar – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie (University of Oxford) will speak on ‘Leviathan’s Health: State Capacity and Epidemics from the Black Death to Covid’.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Nathan Websdale (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Unbecoming Roman: Performative Ethnicity and Panspermía in the Byzantine World c.1190-1235’.
  • eCatalogus+: A Digital Tool for the Automated Study of Latin Manuscripts (Liturgical Case Studies) – 5:00, Weston Library. More infomation here.
  • Lydgate Book Club – Weston manuscript visit with Laure Miolo. Meet 3:50pm at the Weston lockers for a 4pm start. Please email Shaw Worth for any information.

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. Making and Breaking Connections, including letters sent by Hildegard von Bingen and Catherine of Lancaster, queen of Castile.
  • Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5:00, online. Elisabeth Giselbrecht, Louisa Hunter-Bradley and Katie McKeogh (King’s College London) will be speaking on ‘No two books are the same. Interactions with early printed music and the people behind them’.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, hybrid. Eleanor Stephenson (Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Landscapes of Extraction: Philippe de Loutherbourg and the Morris Family’s Copper Works, Swansea’.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’ College. Emily Guerry (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Silver trees and pearl crosses: Franco-Mongolian diplomacy and cultural exchange in thirteenth-century Karakorum’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis (Freie Universität, Berlin) will be speaking on ‘A Greek-Orthodox monastery in the desert: Mount Sinai and the material culture of its Arabic (and Islamic) manuscripts’.

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Jana Lammerding will speak on the representation of witches in the Douce Collection.
  • The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. Week 8: The Bible printed. 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 ‘New Books: A Celebration’. – 4:30, Schwartzman Room 421. Helena Hamerow and Conor O’Brien will talk informally about the process of researching and writing the projects that they have both just published, and we will also hear some reflections on being a postdoctoral researcher on a major project such as the ERC-funded grant for FeedSax. End-of-term drinks in Jude the Obscure, Walton St.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5:00, John Roberts Room at Merton College. Julian Harison (Curator, British Library) will be speaking on ‘Sir Robert Cotton and Oxford’.

Opportunities and Reminders

eCatalogus+: A Digital Tool for Latin Manuscripts

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03/03/2026

17:28

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11 March, 5pm, Horton Room, Weston Library
Dr Paweł Figurski Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw
eCatalogus+: A Digital Tool for the Automated Study of Latin Manuscripts  (Liturgical Case Studies)

The presentation introduces eCatalogus+, an innovative digital platform designed for the comprehensive description and automated analysis of medieval Latin manuscripts, with a particular focus on liturgical sources. At its core, eCatalogus+ combines HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) technology with advanced tools that improve transcription accuracy and enable the automatic analysis of manuscript contents. Its main features—powerful search functions, interactive databases, and collaborative research modules—facilitate both individual and collective work on medieval texts. The system has been successfully implemented in research projects such as eCLLA+ and Liturgica Poloniae: A Descriptive Catalogue of Polish Liturgical Manuscripts, where it supports the study, cataloguing, and interpretation of medieval liturgical sources. Through selected liturgical case studies, the presentation will demonstrate the platform’s research potential and its contribution to the evolving field of digital manuscript studies. Ultimately, the talk aims to show how digital technologies are transforming the study of medieval manuscripts, opening new avenues for both academic inquiry and public engagement.

Paweł Figurski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The focus of his research is on the history of liturgy and its political significance as well as on medieval manuscript culture, book illumination, and the theology of politics in the Early and High Middle Ages. He is also an active researcher, database analyst, and developer of tools for automated research on the Latin liturgical tradition in the field of digital humanities. He is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of two projects: “Liturgica Poloniae…”, funded by the Polish Ministry of Higher Education (NPRH), and “Dangerous Prayers…”, funded by the Polish National Science Centre (SONATA)  

Please let Matthew Holford know if you would like to join him and the speaker for dinner after the talk.

Medieval matter HT26, Week 7

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02/03/2026

08:59

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Welcome all to week 7, and another packed schedule of events. The ‘Opportunities and Reminders’ section is growing particularly large, with a number of new additions – keep an eye out for CfPs and funding opportunities. The OMS blog continues to grow rapidly: Cris Arama (MSt. Medieval Studies) has recently written a report on Ian Forrest’s workshop.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Jo Story (Leicester) “Insular manuscripts: why membrane matters” [Please note: this session will be in-person only, not hybrid – this is due to restrictions governing the sharing of unpublished data by grant partners].

Tuesday

  • EMBI workshop: ‘Reading’ manuscript membrane: bioarchaeology of early medieval books’ – 10:00, Weston Library. Requires pre-booking.
  • 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. Simon Heller (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Translation, Transformation, and Transmission: the case of the Old English Beowulf’
  • Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:15, Maison Française d’Oxford. Nathalie Koble (ENS Paris) will be speaking on ‘Sens et sentibilité. Pour une lecture multimédiale de la Dame à la Licorne (Musée de Cluny, Paris)’ .
  • Poetry Reading: Kevin Crossley-Holland – 5:30, St Edmund Hall. More information here.
  • Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell

Wednesday

  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo will be discussing Medieval Libraries and Provenance
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, Thyrd Part, ll. 1288-2142 
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Islamic Studies Seminar – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Dr Moin Nizam will be speaking on ‘Transnational Ties of Faith: Imdadullah’s letters and writings from the Hijaz during the late-19th century’.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Alasdair Grant (Hamburg) will be speaking on ‘Ubiquitous and Universal? Rebellion and State Formation between Byzantium and Early Islam’

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.
  • Heraldry Society – 5:00, Oriel College. Dr Beatrice Groves (Research Fellow, Trinity) will be speaking on ‘”Azure-laced / With blue of heaven’s own tinct:” Shakespeare’s heraldic language’.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanities Centre and Online). Emmet Taylor (Cork) will be speaking on ‘Heads, hierarchy and the heroic’
  • 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. Günseli Gürel (Khalili Research Centre) will be speaking on ‘Picturing marvels, magic and monsters at the Ottoman court, 1574–1603’.
  • Guild of Medievalist Makers – 5:30, online. Optional theme: regrowth.

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 ‘Vernacular Bibles of the Middle Ages’. 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

Kevin Crossley-Holland Reading

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25/02/2026

21:50

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Kevin Crossley-Holland will be reading from his newly-published Collected Poems in the Old Dining Hall at St Edmund Hall on Tuesday 3 March at 5:30pm.

Bringing together over five decades of work. Collected Poems celebrates one of Britain’s most admired and enduring voices. Kevin Crossley-Holland’s writing spans the landscapes of memory, myth and the human heart. Rooted in lived experience and rich in literary tradition, his poetry draws on folklore and the natural world to speak vividly to our own time. This landmark volume captures the full measure of his craft and imagination-a celebration of a lifetime devoted to words.

Kevin is a prize-winning poet, translator from Anglo Saxon (including Beowulf), re-teller of traditional tale (The Penguin Book of Norse Myths and Between Worlds: British Folk Tales), librettist and novelist for children, winning the Carnegie Medal for Storm and the Guardian Fiction Prize for The Seeing Stone, the first book in his Arthur trilogy.

He has collaborated with many composers, including Sir Arthur Bliss, William Mathias, Nicola LeFanu, Bob Chilcott , Bernard Hughes and Cecilia McDowall, and artists including Charles Keeping, John Lawrence, Norman Ackroyd and Chris Riddell.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, was a Fulbright Distinguished Visiting Professor and endowed chair in the Humanities in Minnesota from 1991 until 1996, and served as President of the School Library Association 2012-2017. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Society of Authors, and an Honorary Fellow of Saint Edmund Hall, Oxford.

“Kevin Crossley-Holland is a master, a magician and commander of the language, the roots of whose work are deeply entwined with ancient patterns of truth and knowledge. I salute and venerate him.” Philip Pullman

“This is a fantastic collection, and I love it. His poetry is so very rich and so varied, and covers such an impressive amount of ground. There are anthems, war cries, memories, love songs and hymns to the glory of nature, all written in language that is clear, robust, and sometimes luminously, breathtakingly beautiful.” Joanne Harris

Entry is free and no need to register.