Category: events

Medieval Matters Week 0 Update

by

21/04/2025

18:35

Comments Off on Medieval Matters Week 0 Update

Around Oxford, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

With full term about to begin, I have three exciting developments for you all.

First, a final reminder that the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays take place on the 26 April (this Saturday) from 12 noon at St Edmund Hall. The incredible booklet can be found at the end of this post, which illustrates just how many of our community are involved, and the feast of entertainment available on the day. See you all there!

Second, the first draft of the termly OMS booklet can be found here. If you have submitted an event, please cast a quick eye over the information to ensure that it is correct. If you are yet to submit your events but woul like them to be included, please do so ASAP.

Finally, OMS is seeking a new Social Media Officer. The Social Media Officer is in charge of connecting all of Oxford’s medievalists via the OMS Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts and also occasionally posting on here, the OMS blog. You will be responsible for posting across these platforms to advertise OMS events, opportunities and news. Familiarity with social media advertising is beneficial but not essential: this is an ideal way to gain technical know-how about social media, advertising and marketing that can be used in your academic career and beyond. The post usually comprises an hour or two a week. You can read a retrospective of the current Officer Ashley here. Those interested should reply to this email address before Saturday, where there will be the chance to shadow.

Mysteries2025-Programme-A4Download

‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts

by

15/04/2025

18:13

Comments Off on ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts

Around Oxford, events, opportunities

, , , ,

Are you curious about what manuscripts can tell us beyond their texts? Join Digital Scholarship @ Oxford and the Bodleian Libraries for a hands-on workshop using data from manuscript catalogues to explore trends and patterns in medieval manuscript production.

You’ll learn:

  • What kinds of data can be recorded about manuscripts
  • How to interpret and analyse manuscript catalogue entries
  • Ways to identify trends and patterns using simple tools like Excel

You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with manuscripts from the Bodleian’s collections, learning new skills that you can apply in your future studies and research. You’ll also get to contribute to the ongoing development of the manuscript catalogues, with your contributions credited on the Bodleian website.

No technical experience is required, just a basic familiarity with Excel.

Spaces are limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.

Workshop dates:

  • Thursday of 3rd week (15th May), 1–5pm – undergraduates
  • Thursday of 4th week (22nd May), 1–5pm – undergraduates
  • Thursday of 7th week (12th June), 1–5pm – postgraduates

Please still fill in the form if you are unavailable on these dates, as we may be able to make additional workshops available if there is demand.

Signup deadline: Midday, Friday of 2nd Week (9th May)

Signup using the online form here: https://forms.office.com/e/cHL1Zg7qJU

If you have any questions, please contact Seb Dows-Miller at sebastian.dows-miller@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Light on Darkness – Book launch in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

by

21/03/2025

22:16

Comments Off on Light on Darkness – Book launch in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Around Oxford, events

, , , ,

On 24 April, 8pm, Antiquum Documentum are pleased to present a concert to celebrate the launch of the new book ‘Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy’ (Cosima Clara Gillhammer, Reaktion Publishers). The programme features music connected to the book’s main themes, by composers such as Palestrina, Byrd, Weelkes, Amner, Judith Weir, and others, sung in ornamented style.

Entry is free. Books and drinks will be available for sale in the interval.

About the book:
Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy offers a captivating journey through the history of religious rituals in Western Europe, showcasing the profound impact of Christian liturgy on art, literature, music and architecture. Through ten evocative stories, it explores medieval rituals and their cultural influence up to the present day, providing fresh insights into the enduring legacy of the liturgy as an expression of human emotion and religious experience. Accessible to all, this guide provides translations and explanations to uncover the hidden treasures of ancient rites and their lasting significance, appealing to those seeking a deeper understanding of Western liturgical traditions. For more information: www.liturgybook.com

The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2025: Programme

by

21/03/2025

09:39

Comments Off on The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2025: Programme

Around Oxford, events, opportunities

, ,

When? 26 April 2025, from 12 noon. Where? St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR

Come One, Come All! Free entry, no booking required.

On Saturday, 26 April 2025, a cycle of medieval mystery plays will be performed by various troupes around St Edmund Hall’s grounds. Medieval mystery plays were performed throughout the Middle Ages by and for everyday townspeople, and we’re excited to put on quite a day of shows for you!

Worried that you won’t understand the performances done in medieval languages? Never fear! Each play will be accompanied by a modern English prologue, which will help to summarise the play.

12 noon: Old Testament Plays (Front Quad):

The Fall of the Angels (Angels of Oxford) – Middle English

Adam and Eve (Oxford German Medievalists) – Hans Sachs, German

The Flood (The Travelling Beavers) – Middle English

Abraham and Isaac (Shear and Trembling) – Middle English

1.30pm: New Testament Plays (Churchyard):

The Annunciation (Low Countries Ensemble) – Middle Dutch

The Nativity (Les Perles Innocentes) – Marguerite de Navarre, French

The Wedding at Cana (Pusey House) – Modern English, with Middle English archaisms

The Crucifixion (The Wicked Weights) – Middle English

The Lamentation (St Edmund Consort) – Bordesholmer Marienklage, Low German and Latin

The Harrowing of Hell (The Choir of St Edmund Hall) – Latin Sequence

3.30pm: New Testament Plays Continued:

The Resurrection (St Stephen’s House) – Middle English

The Martyrdom of the Three Holy Virgins (Clamor Validus) – Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, Latin and modern English

The Last Judgement (MSt English, 650–1550) – Modern English

6.15pm: Evensong (Chapel)

No tickets or booking is required, and it is free to attend. You are welcome to drop in and out throughout the afternoon. All performances will take place outside, so please dress comfortably for the weather conditions. There will be two small tea breaks, at around 1.15pm and 3.15pm.

The Wicked Weights admire their purpose-built cross – all ready for the Crucifixion! Picture: Rebecca Menmuir

If you have any questions about the cycle or the performances, email the co-heads of performance: Sarah Ware (sarah.ware@merton.ox.ac.uk) and Antonia Anstatt (antonia.anstatt@merton.ox.ac.uk). And look out for updates to our website, where detailed information about the individual plays will be published.

For a trailer of the type of Medieval Mystery play which awaits you, have a look at the extract from the Towneley Last Judgement play performed for a HistoryHit programme about the Apocalypse

Play: The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester

by

16/03/2025

19:26

Comments Off on Play: The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester

Around Oxford, events

,

When? 28 March, 18:30–20:15
Where? Research Centre, Thatched Barn, Christ Church Meadow

The anonymous English Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester (c. 1529) is a fascinating play, unperformed since the 16th century. Ostensibly in praise of Esther, heroine of Jewish history, the play is actually a political satire about the demise of Cardinal Wolsey. The fall of Wolsey, who had been the monarch’s right-hand man, was a key moment in the reign of Henry VIII. Assuerus, King of Persia, stands for Henry, while Aman, the model of the evil counsellor, for Wolsey. Henry’s wife, Katherine of Aragon, is idealised in the figure of Hester, who fills a traditional role for virtuous royal women by interceding with her husband, but also boldly argues that queens should exhibit the same virtues as kings and can perfectly well govern kingdoms when their husbands are away fighting wars! She thus anticipates the strong secular heroines of Shakespearean comedy.

Originally, the play would have been performed by a boys’ company so it is appropriate that it will be staged by Edward’s Boys. This company, from King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, has, over the last two decades, revolutionised our understanding of the early modern repertoire. Alongside the English Enterlude, they will also present a short purimshpil, a Jewish folk play. The purim plays (still a living tradition in Yiddish) tell the story of Esther in a very different mode, celebrating the rescue of the Jewish people by their heroine in farcical style. The production is part of the WOMARD project, which explores connections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic Theatre and is sponsored by the SNSF.

Book your ticket here

The performance will be preceded by free talks, on Esther in Reformation Europe, and the purimshpil: 

16:00-16:45 Professor Cora Dietl, talk on ‘The Esther tradition and Reformation in medieval and early modern Europe‘

16:45-17:15 Rabbi Bex introduces the purim tradition, and a Q and A session with Bea Baldwin 

Esther pleads for the Jewish people; from The Queen’s College Library, Sel. d. 81, a Sammelband of Reformation-related pamphlets. Retratos o Tablas de las Historias de testamento (1568)
Retratos o tablas de las historias del Testamento viejo, : hechas y dibuxadas por vn muy primo y sotil artifice. Iuntamente con vna muy breue y clara exposicion … de cada vna dellas en Latin, con las quotas de los lugares de la sagrada scritura de donde se tomaron, y la mesma en lengua Castellana, para que todos gozen delas. Frellon, Jean, -1568 M. D. XLIX. | En Lion de Francia, : [Excudebat Ioannes Frellonius] | [52] leaves : ill. ; 4⁰


 

The Netherhole Martyr – Dramatic Reading

by

14/03/2025

05:44

Comments Off on The Netherhole Martyr – Dramatic Reading

Around Oxford, events

,

When? 2 May 2025, 6-8pm
Where? Old Library (drinks) and Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (performance)

Come one, come all! Prepare to worship the power of a good shit and marvel at the agonies and ecstasies of excrement!

The year is 1320 in the stinking town of Netherhole. A young nun feels the hand of God clutch her guts, an ambitious Earl issues a dangerous decree, and a ghost rises from the river. Doctors, priests and rumours descend and Netherhole’s fortunes are changed forever.

The Netherhole Martyr is a play recounting a year in the fortunes of the people of Netherhole, a Yorkshire town in the grip of religious fervour after a young novitiate enacts a painful communion with the divine through her constipated bowels.

This semi-staged reading of the play, held in the spectacular Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East at St Edmund Hall, celebrates its recent publication by Strange Region Press. Written in shades of Donne and Swift, the text of this surreal and macabre work by Good Friends for a Lifetime is fully illustrated by Sigrid Koerner and Hannah Mansell.

The event is free to attend and no booking is required. Copies of the book will be available to purchase. The event will begin with drinks in the Old Library at 6pm, followed by a performance in the Crypt that will last approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Maeve Campbell, Minna Jeffery and Lily Levinson are Good Friends for a Lifetime. They met on the MA Text and Performance at Birkbeck and RADA. Their first production, Shades of Mediocrity, about friendship, the cult of male genius and Simon & Garfunkel was performed at Camden People’s Theatre and the Old Red Lion. They were associate artists at Bathway Theatre, University of Greenwich, in 2021.

Strange Region is a publisher of experimental writing by artists, novelists and poets. They endeavour to use publishing as a tool to celebrate writing as performance, as architecture , as a mechanical component of creative practice and as a space to enjoy the perilous corners of the human experience. 

Medieval Matters HT25, Week 8

by

10/03/2025

07:37

Comments Off on Medieval Matters HT25, Week 8

events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

We have made it to 8th week, and the sun has come out in celebration. The full booklet of weekly events, as always, can be found here. A few brief notes to begin:

  • Please take a moment to fill in a short survey exploring the possibilities of turning the Bodleian’s TEI-encoded medieval manuscript catalogues into accessible tabular formats such as CSV. Posted by Seb Dows-Miller and Matthew Holford for a new DiSc-funded project within the Bodleian Libraries.
  • The 2025 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference programme has now been released, and can be found here. The OMGC2025 will be followed directly by the Medieval Mystery Cycle on 26 April! Join us on Thursday for a brainstorming session if you want to get involved.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2.15 in the Horton Room. Lucio del Corso will be speaking on ‘Greek papyri in the Bodleian Library. A tale of lost texts and forgotten books’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Daisy Livingston (Durham) will be speaking on ‘How to qualify as a notary in the early-16th century Mamluk Sultanate’.
  • 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. Katy Beebe (North Texas) will be speaking on ‘Movement in the Mind: A Typology, Critique, and New Interpretative Model of Imagined Pilgrimage’.
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2pm, Weston Library.
  • EMBI Lecture – 4pm in the Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College. Sue Brunning (British Museum) will be speaking on ‘Silk Roads at the British Museum: A co-curatorial journey’.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Maria Czepiel (University of Warwick) will be speaking on ‘Hebraist Erudition in Spanish Renaissance Biblical Poetry’.

Wednesday

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall will conclude with a presentation by Irene Van Eldere on Middle Dutch texts: the Annunciation play which she is staging for the Medieval Mystery Cycle and on the prayerbook project in Leiden
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo will be speaking on ‘Text Identification’.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre.  Michael Featherstone (Oxford) & Juan Signes Codoñer (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) will be speaking on ‘A Team of Palace Historians: the Final Redactions of Theophanes Continuatus and the De Cerimoniis’.

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. Paul Kolb (University of Leuven) will be speaking on ‘Contextuality and Irregularity in Late-Medieval Mensural Notation’.
  • Preparatory Meeting for the Medieval Mystery Cycle – 5pm at St Edmund Hall in the Principal’s Lodgings. Anybody welcome who would like a site-visit, meet other actors, directors, and survey the costume stock in Henrike Lähnemann’s office.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm at St Catherine’s College. Eleanor Townsend (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘All the werkemanship and masonry crafte of a frounte’: The problem of the Jesse reredos in St Cuthbert’s, Wells’.
  • 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. Edward Zychowicz-Coghill (King’s College London) will be speaking: title TBC.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. A special treat to end the term: the German Blockbook Apocalypse will be out, combined with the performance of an extract from the Towneley Last Judgement Play.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Deadline today for The Ashmolean’s Krasis Scheme: ‘a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme’. You can find out more about this wonderful opportunity here.

Opportunities

  • Eruditio Nummorum: Symposium on Coins in Honour of Hugh Pagan (29th March) – more info here.
  • Postdoctoral fellowship opportunity at the university of Notre Dame (deadline 31 March) – more information here.
  • The Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer School (23–25 September 2025, Exeter College) is welcoming expressions of interest. More information can be found 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).
  • 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 Sorrowful Virgin workshop takes place at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
  • CfP for ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading), 2nd April 2025
  • The next deadline for OMS Small Grants applications is Friday of 4th Week.

Until next term,

Tristan

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference Registration and Programme Release

by

05/03/2025

12:01

Comments Off on Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference Registration and Programme Release

events

The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference Committee is pleased to announce the program for their twenty-first annual conference, held at the Maison Française d’Oxford on 24-25 April 2025, on the theme ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’. Interested in attending? Register for in-person or online attendance on the conference website.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24

9:00-9:25 Registration (in-person)

9:25-9:30 Opening remarks

9:30-11:30 Session 1: Saints and Staging

  • Isadora Martins Fontoura de Carvalho, ‘Sacred water and martyrdom: Towards an interdisciplinary approach on the celebration of Saint Marina in the village of Augas Santas’
  • Anna MacDonald, ‘From Ritual Murder to Ritual Economy: Constructing the Cult of William of Norwich’
  • Clare Whitton, ‘Garlanded priests, a pig, and the blood of San Gennaro: The Festa dell’Inghirlandati in Medieval Naples’
  • Simone Kügeler-Race, ‘Recording Ritual, Representation and Performance: The Passion Play in the Manuscript Matrix of Codex Donaueschingen 137’

11:30-11:45 Break with refreshments

11:45-13:15 Session 2: Eating and Abstinence

  • Isabel Hedgecock, ‘Omne temporus ieiunii constitutum est’: a literary analysis of Wulfstan of York’s De ieiunio quattuor temporum‘
  • Caitlin Kelly, ‘Hungry Eyes: The Art of (Not) Eating in Late Medieval English Literature’
  • Arsany Paul, ‘Domestic Eucharistic Rituals: Partaking of the Eucharist in Private Spaces among the Copts through the Middle Ages’

13:15-14:30 Lunch
14:30-16:00 Session 3: Relics, Textiles, Amulets

  • Rachel Maxey, ‘Becoming “Heavenly-Minded”: The Use of Amulets for Angel Invocation in the Middle Ages’
  • Janine Weingärtner, ‘The Seamless Robe of Christ and the Epic Poem of Orendel: Rituals of Relic Veneration and Narrative Agency’
  • Tracey Davison, ‘Skeuomorphic Textiles as Devotional Objects in the Early Churches of Rome’

16:00-16:15 Break with refreshments

16:15-17:15 Keynote Address 1: Dr Helen Gittos, ‘Christianity before Conversion’
18:30 Conference Dinner (optional)

FRIDAY, APRIL 25
9:30-11:30 Session 4: Death and Grief

  • Divya Sharma, ‘Ritualizing Laments and Lamenting Rituals in Medieval Tamilaham’
  • Isla Defty, ‘Going mad as a grief ritual in Sir Orfeo and Partonope of Blois: The highly structured nature of madness in Middle English romances’
  • Emilie Badoux, ‘Teaching Funeral Rites in the Auchinleck Life of Adam and Eve: A Family Matter’
  • Caitriona Dowden, ‘Processions in Paradise: Imaginary rituals in medieval visions of the afterlife’

11:30-11:45 Break with refreshments
11:45-13:15 Session 5: The Body

  • Charlotte Stobart, ‘Making and Unmaking Disabled Bodies: Rituals and Disability in Viking Age Scandinavia’
  • Celeste van Gent, ‘Rituals of Healing: Injury and the medical practice of later medieval soldiers’
  • Willa Stonecipher, ‘Genuflection in Medieval England: Ritual and Osteoarchaeological Interpretation in Monastic Populations’

13:15-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:00 Session 6: Rites of Passage

  • Zachary Young, ‘The Rite of Degradation as a Locus of Theological Elaboration’
  • Bastien Paulin Verdier, ‘Essay of Anthropological History: Rituals and Ceremonies Attached to sénéchaux and sergents féodés offices in Britanny (13th to 15th centuries)’
  • Kaiyue Zhang, ‘The Crossroad for Liberty: The four-road Ritual and the Manumission Ceremony in Lombard Italy’

16:00-16:15 Break with refreshments
16:15-17:15 Keynote Address 2: Professor Aleks Pluskowski, ‘Reaching for the Otherworld: Ritual and Religious Practice After the Baltic Crusades’

17:15 OMGC 2026 Theme Selection + Closing Remarks

SATURDAY, APRIL 26

12:00-17:00 Oxford Medieval Mystery Cycle (St Edmund Hall)

Medieval Matters HT25, Week 7

by

02/03/2025

17:07

Comments Off on Medieval Matters HT25, Week 7

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

,

Welcome to week 7: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. A few important points to draw your immediate attention to:

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.
  • Registration for the conference Byzantium and its Environment – 27th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society on 1/2 March now open
  • For all Graduate Students (Master & DPhil): fully funded Wolfenbüttel Summer School on Late Medieval Manuscripts (in English). Apply by the end of February. Call for Papers the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
  • 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
  • CfP for ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading), 2nd April 2025
  • OMS Small Grants are no longer open for applications – deadline was Friday of 4th Week. If you missed it, contact Lesley Smith.