You are warmly invited to attend our third pop-up display of the term: “What do Christ Church’s newly acquired Hebrew books tell us about the College in the 17th century?”
Where: Christ Church Upper Library (ask for directions at the Porter’s Lodge!) When: 19th and 20th February, 12-2pm Questions: library@chch.ox.ac.uk
Please join us for this pop-up display of some new and exciting Hebraica acquisitions, paired with items from our existing collections, with focus on the 17th century. Highlights will include Syriac, Arabic and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts but also Hebrew calendar volvelles.
Entry is free and open to all. Please note that there is no step-free access to the Upper Library.
The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) is pleased to invite Oxford-based researchers to participate in the workshop Forgotten Libraries to be held at The Queen’s College (Oxford) on Tuesday 16 June. Conceived as the first stage of a broader research initiative, the workshop aims to bring together scholars working across linguistic traditions and historical periods to reflect on neglected manuscript collections and their significance for the study of textual cultures.
Within the dominant frameworks of manuscript studies, research have long been anchored in the analysis of individual codices and in major, well-defined collections that structure institutional and disciplinary narratives. Yet many manuscripts survive in ways that render them effectively invisible: scattered across different holdings, insufficiently catalogued, marginalised by new political and linguistic orders, or remembered only through fragmentary references. These “forgotten”, “lost”, or “marginalised” collections raise fundamental questions about how manuscripts and libraries contingently relate to knowledge production over time.
While the workshop’s emphasis falls on libraries and manuscript collections—their formation, coherence, disintegration, and afterlives—we also recognise that individual artefacts often reveal broader dynamics. Manuscripts are mobile objects: they migrate across regions, institutions, and epistemic frameworks, and this movement profoundly shapes their visibility, accessibility, and scholarly legibility. A single codex may preserve traces of an otherwise vanished collection; an isolated manuscript may retain ownership marks, organisational clues, or textual relationships that point back to a forgotten ensemble. Attention to both scales—the library and the single object—is therefore essential.
Participants will present short case studies illustrating how forgotten libraries can be located, reconstituted, or reintegrated into scholarly practice, whether through surviving catalogues, dispersed manuscripts, institutional histories, or digital tools. The workshop aims to: (1) Map the diversity and significance of forgotten manuscript collections; (2) Develop shared methodological approaches that integrate collection-level thinking with close artefact analysis and digital methods; (3) Reflect on the broader structural, institutional, and historical conditions that produce manuscript displacement, fragmentation, and neglect.
Beyond these immediate aims, the workshop constitutes the first phase of a larger collaborative project on forgotten and displaced manuscript collections. It will be followed by an international conference in 2027, and its results will contribute to a collective volume to appear in the forthcoming book series Manuscript and Text Cultures (Liverpool University Press).
The workshop will be held at The Queen’s College (Oxford) on Tuesday 16 June.
Abstracts of up to 300 words, together with a short biographical note, should be submitted by Friday 14 March to Shaahin Pishbin and Clément Salah
Welcome to Week 4. An updated version of the OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. For your diary: The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner. Tony Hunt’s memorial service is will be held on 16th May, 2.30, St Peter’s College Chapel (booking etc in due course).
Events
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2:15, Weston Library. Emily Guerry (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Bodleian’s Gaignières Collection: A paper museum for Gothic tombs’.
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3:00, Archaeology Faculty. Matthew Johnson will be speaking on ‘New World Settlement and the English Middle Ages’.
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Cordelia Heß (Aarhus) will be speaking on “Medieval Racism? Social Practices in Colonial Contact Zones in Greenland and Sápmi (900-1500)
Theory and Play: Comparative Medievalisms – 5.15, Lady Margaret Hall. Selections from: Anandavardana’s Dhvanyaloka (9th century CE, tr. The Light of Suggestion); Mechthild of Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gottheit (13th century CE, tr. The Flowing Light of the Godhead); Cywydd Ymry
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Kirsty Bolton (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Power and conversion in middle English romance’.
Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Simon Egan, Queen’s University Belfast will be speaking on ‘God forebede that a wylde Yrishe wyrlynge shulde be chosene for to be there kynge’: Gaelic Recovery in a North Atlantic Context, c.1350-c.1550′
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. Clément Salah (Queen’s) will be speaking on ‘Materialising Translation: manuscripts and the movement of knowledge in tenth-century North Africa’.
Heraldry Society – 5:00, MacGregor Room, Oriel College. Patric Dickinson, CVO (Clarenceux 2010-21) will be speaking on ‘Symbolism in Heraldry: Mysterious or Manifest?’
Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’.
History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Céline Delattre and Robert Minte will be speaking on ‘Inks and Pigments’
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, First Part, ll. 127-771
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Pamela Armstrong (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Excavations of the Church of St Polyeuktos at Sarachane Revisited’
Islamic Studies Seminar: ‘Hajj the Art of Pilgramage’ – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
John Lydgate Book Club – 5:15pm. All Souls College, Hovenden Room. Mary Wellesley will speak on Lydgate and devotion.
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. Pilgrims and Travellers, including extracts from the works of Egeria, Margery Kempe and Lady Nijo.
Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Llion Wigley (University of Wales Press) will be speaking on ‘Ynysoedd Gobaith: Adeiladu Iwtopia yng Nghymru’r Ugeinfed Ganrif’.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. BOOK LAUNCH — Islamic Objects in Seventeenth-Century Italy: Ferdinando Cospi, the Bologna Collection and the Medici Court.
A Medieval Saint in the Modern World: Oswald of Northumbria in Words and Music – 6:15, The Chapel at King’s College London.
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.
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. Translations of the Bible in the Eastern Mediterranean: Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic and Arabic. 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 ‘Databases: A Skills Workshop’ – 4.00, Humanities Centre, History of Art Seminar Room.
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5:00, Sir Howard Stringer Room at Merton College, Emma J. Nelson (No take-backsies? Gerald of Wales and the Boundaries of Book Donation) and Elliot Cobb (Miraculous and Marginal Women in the Metz Psalter-Hours).
Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies.
CfP: 20th Annual MEMSA Conference: Connection, Conversation, Contention: Encounters in the Medieval and Early Modern World – deadline 9 March 2026
CfP: Gender and Medieval Studies conference 2026: Gender and Creativity. The conference will take place at University College, Oxford, 8-10 September. Deadline 13 April.
Call for submissions for a special issue of Public Humanities journal on the topic ‘Creating the Medieval Now.’ Edited by Laura Varnam and Eleanor Barraclough. Short essays of 2,000-3,000 words, due 1 May 2026, by medievalists who are also creative practitioners.
The OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner. Also: OMS sends condolences to our colleague Anna Abulafia (former Professor of Abrahamic Religions) for the death of her husband, Prof. David Abulafia FBA
Events
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Anna Molnár (Reading) will be speaking on “Nuns’ Financial Literacy and the Private Banking Activities of Female Religious Organisations in the Later Middle Ages”
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Joe Stadolnik (University of Chicago) will be speaking on ‘Bad books in medieval Bristol: alchemy, liturgy and Thomas Norton’s ordinals’.
Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tom Johnson, Oxford will be speaking on ‘‘He hath payd his part’: The Political Economy of Fishing Doles in Late-Medieval England’
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. Eugenia Vorobeva (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Devil’s Laughter, Language, and Sin in the Old Norse-Icelandic ‘Passio Domini’ Homily’
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:15, Maison Française d’Oxford. Cat Watts (St Anne’s College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘”Nothing Of Thine Own”: Fandom, Devilry, and Rewriting Holy Tales’ .
Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. laudia Rapp (Vienna) and Michael Whitby (Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyrius of Gaza (in collaboration with Translated Texts for Historians and LUP)’
Islamic Studies Seminar- 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. James McDougall (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Worlds of Islam: A Global History’.
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.
Environmental History Working Group – 12:30–2:00pm, Humanities Centre History Hub Room 20.421. Louis James Henry (PhD Medieval Environmental History, University of Stavanger, Visiting Student at KCL) will be speaking on “Timely Courts and Immediate Responses: Waste Management as a Temporal Issue in Late Medieval England”
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Millie Horton-Insch (British Museum & Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on “Technologies of Reproduction and Sonderauftrag Bayeux: Re-Creating the Bayeux Tapestry for the Third Reich”
Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanities Centre and Online). Rhiannon Marks (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘Envisaging the end: the representation of language decline in contemporary Welsh writing’
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. Maria Judith Feliciano (CSIC, Madrid) will be speaking on ‘the silk core, or lessons from medieval Iberian textile studies’
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 ‘The New Testament’ 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.
Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies.
CfP: 20th Annual MEMSA Conference: Connection, Conversation, Contention: Encounters in the Medieval and Early Modern World – deadline 9 March 2026
CfP: Gender and Medieval Studies conference 2026: Gender and Creativity. The conference will take place at University College, Oxford, 8-10 September. Deadline 13 April.
Call for submissions for a special issue of Public Humanities journal on the topic ‘Creating the Medieval Now.’ Edited by Laura Varnam and Eleanor Barraclough. Short essays of 2,000-3,000 words, due 1 May 2026, by medievalists who are also creative practitioners.
OMS is deeply saddened by the passing of Stephen Baxter (Professor of Medieval History). To view a number of touching memories of Stephen, and to contribute your own, please visit the memorial page. Further plans for remembering Stephen at St Peter’s will be announced in due course.
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2:15, Weston Library. Kees Dekker (Groningen) will be speaking on ‘Manuscripts in the hands of Franciscus Junius (1591-1677)’
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3:00, Archaeology Faculty. Jennifer Coulton (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Structural Depositions, Haunted Houses, and Domestic Protection in England c.800-1250’
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Rob Portass (Robinson College, Cambridge) will be speaking on “Estate Management and the Beginnings of Specialised Production in Early Medieval Iberia”.
Tuesday
‘A Quiet Revolution’: Engaging Heritage Audiences with West Horsley Place’s Historic Landscape – 11:00, Learning Centre (Room 00.018), Humanities Centre. Book a place.
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Rachel Moss (University of Northampton) will be speaking on ‘Chivalry is a code for men willing to fight’: medievalism, masculinity and the modern far-right’.
Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Annabel Hancock (Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on ‘Negotiating Uncertain Waters: Trust in trade and diplomacy in the Mediterranean’
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. Natasha Bradley (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Trans Saints in Old Norse Translation: Marina*us the Monk and Pelagia*us the penitent in the medieval North’
Maghrib History Seminar – 5:00, The Queen’s College. Amira Bennison (University of Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Power and Peace: Re-viewing the Dynastic History of the Western Maghrib through an Urban Lens’.
Heraldry Society – 5:00, MacGregor Room, Oriel College. Mr Mark JR Scott (Somerset Herald) will be speaking on “British Royal Heraldry: 1800-2025”.
Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’.
History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:00, Weston Library. Andrew Honey & Matthew Holford will be discussing ‘Writing supports (parchment and paper) and manuscript structure’.
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Palyce of Honour, First Part, ll. 127-771.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. Julian Baker (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Medieval Epiros and Albania: Geopolitical and Economic Reflections in the Light of Coinage’.
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.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College. The Debate on Women – extracts from the works of Christine de Pizan, Teresa de Cartagena and Lady Murasaki.
Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5:00, online. Kévin Roger (University of Lorraine) will be speaking on ‘Latin Motets and Literary Networks in the Late Middle Ages: Intertextuality, Rhetoric, and Digital Reading’. Discussants: Yolanda Plumley (University of Exeter) and Karl Kügle (Universities of Oxford and Utrecht).
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Robert Mills (University College London) will be speaking on “Wild Forms: Hermits, Saints and Rock Art in Medieval England”
Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Elizabeth Edwards (CAWCS) will be speaking on ‘Home Circuits: the Ladies of Llangollen, queer temporalities and Welsh landscapes’.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Joumana Medlej (Independent Scholar) will be speaking on ‘The hidden life of Kūfī scripts: practice-based insights and theories’.
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.
Friday
In Tesserae workshop – details TBC.
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 ‘The Septuagint and its Transmission’. Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer at peter.toth@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5:00, online.
Opportunities and Reminders
The OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner.
Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies.
CfP: 20th Annual MEMSA Conference: Connection, Conversation, Contention: Encounters in the Medieval and Early Modern World – deadline 9 March 2026
CfP: Gender and Medieval Studies conference 2026: Gender and Creativity. The conference will take place at University College, Oxford, 8-10 September. Deadline 13 April.
Call for submissions for a special issue of Public Humanities journal on the topic ‘Creating the Medieval Now.’ Edited by Laura Varnam and Eleanor Barraclough. Short essays of 2,000-3,000 words, due 1 May 2026, by medievalists who are also creative practitioners.
Medieval Commentary and Exegesis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Cosima Gillhammer and Audrey Southgate, includes chapters by Alastair J Minnis, Alexandra Barnes, Anna Wilmore, Audrey Southgate, Cosima Clara Gillhammer, David J Elliott, Edit Anna Lukács, Eduardo de Oliveira Correia, Elizabeth Solopova, Jiani Sun, Joshua Caminiti, Lesley Smith, Michael P Kuczynski, Rachel Cresswell, Simon Whedbee, William Marx, Zachary Guiliano.
More information on the volume can be found here. Use the voucher code BB135 for 35% off.
There will be a book launch at LMH on 24 February; all are welcome. For further details see below.
Welcome to Week 1. Thanks to all those who submitted their events for the upcoming term. An updated version of the OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term.
For your diary: The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner.
Tony Hunt’s memorial service is will be held on 16th May, 2.30, St Peter’s College Chapel (booking etc in due course).
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. John Sabapathy (UCL) will be speaking on “Humanism and bestiality in the land of Cockagne”.
Celtic Language Teaching continues throughout the week – please consult the booklet, p. 39 for a full table of dates and locations.
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Stacie Vos (University of California, San Diego) will be speakin on “Norfolk Broads, or Discovering medieval women with twentieth-century collectives”.
Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell (Oxford) will be speaking on “Beyond the Mediterranean by land and sea: Two medieval cases in a (very) broad context”.
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. John Mulhall (Purdue University) will be speaking on “‘Blessings on All the Prophets’: Islamic prayers in the Latin scientific translations of the twelfth century”.
Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The first week will be a shortish planning meeting. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’.
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 (Humanities Centre). Theme: ‘Palyce of Honour, Prologue, ll. 1-126’.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. John Mulhall (Purdue) will be speaking on “The Republic of Translators: Translating from Greek and Arabic into Latin in the Twelfth-Century Mediterranean”.
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.
Environmental History Working Group (EHWG) – 12:30, Room 20.421 (Humanities Centre). Niklas Groschinski (DPhil History) “Environing from Below — Supplications, Denunciations, and Other Sources for Rewriting Early Modern Environmental History”
Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanties Centre) and Online. Brigid Ehrmantraut (St Andrews) will be speaking on “Death of the author? Authorship and authority in the Middle Irish classical adaptations”.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Yusuf Tayara (Wolfson College) will be speaking on “Timekeeping between art and science: integrated approaches to the history of Mamluk astronomy”.
Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15. Location is variable so please email Hattie Carter or James Tittering if you’re interested. This term’s text is Apollonius of Tyre.
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall. Sung by the College Choir in English
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 ‘The Hebrew Bible”. Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer, 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 ‘Databases: A Skills Workshop’ has been POSTPONED until Week 4 on 13 February, 16:00-17:15.
Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies.
12 February, 6:15–8pm, The Chapel at King’s College London/River Room, Strand Campus with Sarah Bowden, Hannah Conway, Johanna Dale and Hazel Gould
An evening exploring creative responses to medieval saints. The focal point is the world premiere of the new work “My Name is Oswald” by award-winning composer Hannah Conway and writer Hazel Gould. This work draws on stories of Oswald of Northumbria, a significant early English king and pan-European saint, and new research by King’s academics Sarah Bowden and Johanna Dale. The performance will be accompanied by short readings from medieval texts and discussion.
“My Name is Oswald” will be performed by Tim Dickinson (baritone), Peter Sparks (clarinet), Joseph Walters (horn), and Hannah Conway (piano).
Rescheduled: Friday week 2, Trinity Term 2026, 5–10pm, St Edmund Hall (tbc) with Louise Tjoline Keitsch
This workshop invites everyone – students, researchers, and anyone curious – to take part in a Wikipedia Editathon for Medievalists. Whether you have always wanted to write or improve a Wikipedia article, are looking for a low-pressure way to start writing about your topic, or simply want a productive and enjoyable distraction from exams or papers, this editathon offers a space to do so!
Participants are encouraged to bring a topic they would like to work on: this could be a medieval object, person, concept or manuscript; an existing Wikipedia article that needs improvement; or an article that could be translated into another language. Prior experience with Wikipedia editing is not required – beginners are very welcome. Bringing a few sources is helpful, but online articles or similar are perfectly acceptable starting points.
The editathon is designed as a low-pressure entry. Participants can focus on clarity, structure, and communicating knowledge to a broad audience rather than perfection or originality in the academic sense. Contributions can be published immediately, offering a rare sense of instant gratification alongside meaningful scholarly engagement. Throughout the session, support will be available, either through a short introductory tutorial or hands-on help in small groups, depending on participants’ needs.
Editing Wikipedia means contributing to a vibrant, active community and helping shape what knowledge is publicly visible. Make a public impact, practice digital humanities, be part of a broader effort to make Wikipedia more equitable (for example by addressing the persistent gender gap in biographical articles) and increase the visibility and accuracy of medieval topics on the platform! Please come by to write, to learn, to experiment, and to contribute to shared knowledge – all while eating pizza at 6pm!
Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow): Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church
St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm, followed by drinks
All welcome!
The fringes of the institutional church in the later Middle Ages were difficult to control. Pardoners, summoners, and priests of dubious status caused headaches for bishops and scandalized the public. The stories people told about them often concerned deceptive or ambiguous gender presentation. Touching upon famous fictions like Chaucer’s Pardoner and Summoner, and Pope Joan, the lecture will also examine the political culture of violent direct action against humans and their animals which sought to regulate gender and status at the edges of the medieval clerical estate.
After the talk and the drinks, there will be the opportunity to stay for a buffet dinner a in St Edmund Hall at 7pm. Please contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to take part in this. At 9:30pm, there will be the opportunity to take part in the Compline in the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library church of St Edmund Hall (more details on that in the current Medieval Studies booklet.).
This is linked with a workshop on Friday 20 February, 10am for the graduate students of the MSt. in Medieval Studies: ‘Fragments and photographs: what are we doing when we try to get close to medieval people?’ which will start using examples from medieval records and Ian Forrest’s account of publishing with the photographer Martin Stott.
Header image: Pope Joan / John VII in the Nuremberg Chronicle (Hartmann Schedel 1494)
