Medieval Matters – Oxford Medieval Studies

Medieval Matter MT25, Week 7

24/11/2025

08:54

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Week 7, and the prospects of the vac creeps ever closer! Two particular items of note this week. First, there is no Medieval History Seminar this week. Second, Prof. Roberta Mazza’s lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures has been postponed until next term. If you are looking for an alternative manuscript fix: come to the Medieval Manuscripts Support Group, following the Friday coffee morning this and next week.

As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here. Any last-minute changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
There is Medieval History Seminar this week.

Tuesday

Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Mark Vessey (UBC) will be speaking on ‘Some Problems in the Earliest History of the Latin Life of Antony’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:00, Maison Française d’Oxford. Prof. Francis Gingrass (University of Montreal) will be speaking on ‘Luttes fratricides dans l’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’.
Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter

Wednesday

Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10:00, Clarendon Institute.
John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
Medieval German Graduate Seminar on the Constance Chronicle – 11:15, Somerville College.
EMBI Mapping Workshop – 2:00 in room 00.056 of the Schwartzman Centre. A few spaces are still available – sign up here.
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Thomas Laver (Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Estates, Economy, and ‘Holy Men’ in Late Antique Egyptian Monasteries’

Thursday

Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Environmental History Working Group – 12:30, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Meeting details to be announced.
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Gwen Angharad Gruffudd & Arwel Vittle will be speaking on ‘‘Dros Gymru’n Gwlad’: hanes sefydlu’r Blaid Genedlaethol’
King Faisal Lecture – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Professor Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi (Columbia University) will be speaking on ‘The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction’. All Welcome. No registration is required.
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30pm, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Medieval MSS Support Group at the Weston Library – 11:30, Horton Room (Weston Library).
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Colloquium: ‘Journals, Past, Present and Future’, hosted by The Review of English Studies – 2:00, All Souls. Registration here.
Launch of the Peasants’ War Pamphlet ‘Wider die Rotten der Bauern’ – 5:00, Taylorian, Room 2.
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group: Library Visit (Merton) – 5:00. Sign-up required.
Prof. Roberta Mazza (Bologna)’s lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures has been postponed until next term.

Opportunities

Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
CfP: Saints Outside Hagiography. More information here. Deadline 15th Jan 2026.
CfP: Canadian Society of Medievalists panels. More information here.
Society for Court Studies Seminar – Charles Farris (HRP) will be speaking on ‘Of Wonderful Beauty: An Inventory of Jewels of Margaret of France in 1302’. More information here.
AGRELITA, Université de Caen Normandie – call for applications “Visiting researchers” 2026. More information here.
CfP: Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2026 – ‘Sounds and Silence’. Deadline 8th December 2025.
Register before 30 November for Ars Inquirendi – Querying the Pre-Modern in the Age of Large Multimodal Models
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.
CfP: Locational Lives: Medieval Experience in Town and Country. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
CfP: Character Groupings in Classical and Medieval Art and Literature at the University. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
Mortimer History Society Essay Prize. Deadline: 15th February 2026.

Medieval Matter MT25, Week 6

by Tristan Alphey

17/11/2025

08:41

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

An extra large offering of medieval events for sixth week, and a particularly busy Monday! As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here. Any last-minuted changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3.00, Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. Roberta Gilchrist will be speaking on ‘The medieval ritual landscape: Persistence and place-making in later medieval England’
Historical and Systematic Theology Research Seminar – 3:30, Campion Hall. Professor Thomas Joseph White (Rector of the Angelicum, Rome) will be speaking on ‘‘How can one say that God has become human? John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas on the Semantics of the Incarnation’
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Angus Russell (King’s College, Cambridge) will be speaking on “Between truth and justice: towards an intellectual history of post-Mongol Rus”.
History of Liturgy Seminar (IHR) – 5:30, Balliol College and online. Cosima Gillhammer will be speaking on ‘Writing about liturgy for a general audience: some reflections’; Molly Bray will be speaking on ‘Statue Dresses, Rituals and Kinship at Kloster Wienhausen c. 1469-1530’. The poster for the event can be viewed here.
Thomistic Institute Lecture – 7:30, Balckfriars. Sr. Catherine Joseph Droste, O.P. (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas) will be speaking on ‘Virtue and Self-Knowledge in St. Catherine of Siena’

Tuesday

Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. Caroline Batten (U of Pennsylvania) will be speaking on ‘Vulnerable Bodies: The Old English Verse Charms, Again’
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar: 5:15pm, Harris Manchester College (tea & coffee from 5.00). In a change of topic, Alice Rio (All Souls) will be speaking on ‘Otherworldly Tribunals and the State (9-10th c): Wetti, Theodora, Mulien’.

Wednesday

Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Somerville College. The topic for this term is Ulrich von Richental, Chronik des Konzils zu Konstanz (1414-1438).
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Peter Frankopan and Jonathan Shepard (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Revisiting the Byzantine Commonwealth: A Discussion’.

Thursday

Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College. Including extracts from the letters of Hildegard von Bingen, Catherine of Siena, Violant de Bar and María de Castilla
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, Khalili Research Center (NB. change of location). Mariam Rosser-Owen (V&A) & Ashley Coutu (Pitt Rivers) will be speaking on “New directions in the study of ivories from the Islamic world: A talk and handling session” Co-sponsored with the Khalili Research Center.
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Roan Runge (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘‘Turn and face the strange’: Analysing animal species present in medieval Irish narratives of transformation’
Multilingual Medieval Compline in the Crypt – 9:30pm, in the crypt below St-Peter-in-the-East, St Edmund Hall (see below).

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Oxford Medieval Mansucript Group ‘Reading Group’ – 5:00, online. J. E. Murdoch and and Laure Miolo will both present; the deadline for attendance has passed.

Opportunities

CfP: Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2026 – ‘Sounds and Silence’. Deadline 8th December 2025.
Call for readers: For a Multilingual Medieval Compline in the Crypt on 20 Nov, 9.30pm, Henrike Lähnemann is looking for versions of the Our Father in as many medieval languages as possible. Old High German, Middle High German, Old English, Middle English, Gothic, Anglo-Norman, Old High German, Middle High German, Church Slavonic, Byzantine Greek, and Hungarian have been assigned but any further languages are welcome! Contact her if you have a version and are willing to read it.
CfP: Shaping the Word – the Form and Use of Biblical Manuscripts in the Early Medieval West. Deadline 17th Nov 2025.
Colloquium: ‘Journals, Past, Present and Future’, hosted by The Review of English Studies. More info and registration here.
Register before 30 November for Ars Inquirendi – Querying the Pre-Modern in the Age of Large Multimodal Models
Register for MEMRN Winter Conference 2025 13-16 November via Eventbrite HERE.
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.
CfP: Locational Lives: Medieval Experience in Town and Country. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
CfP: Character Groupings in Classical and Medieval Art and Literature at the University. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
Mortimer History Society Essay Prize. Deadline: 15th February 2026.

Medieval Matter MT 25, Week 5

by Tristan Alphey

10/11/2025

08:48

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

A medieval event a day keeps the blues away – meet week 5 head-on with another set of seminars and events! As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here. Any last-minuted changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

This week, on the 13th and 14th of November, the Crafting Documents project, alongside the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, is hosting the ‘Heritage Science and Manuscript Conference‘. Registration is free, and the full programme of events is available here.

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Italian Research Seminar – 1:00, Taylorian Room 2. Ryan Pepin will be speaking on ‘‘Dietro la memoria non può ire’: Copyists’ Slips in the Textual Tradition of the Commedia‘.
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Tom Johnson (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Inscription Economy in Fifteenth-Century England’.

Tuesday

Medieval English Research Seminar AND Medieval French Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. Juluan Mattison (U of Georgia) will be speaking on ‘What is an English book? French Scribes, Scripts and Texts in England’
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Nancy Thebaut (Catz) will be speaking on ‘Gender, Nature, and the Limits of Art: A Close Reading of ‘Two Riddles of the Queen of Sheba’, a Late Medieval Tapestry at the Met Cloisters‘.
Old Norse Research Seminar – 5:00, New Seminar Room, St. John’s College. Caz Batten (Pennsylvania) will be speaking on ‘Unmaking a Man: The Contested Bodies of the Völundr Legend’. Drinks to follow.
Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter

Wednesday

John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
Medieval German Graduate Seminar on the Constance Chronicle – 11:15, Somerville College.
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Marlena Whiting (Groningen) will be speaking on ‘Hodology, Wayfinding, and Geographical Knowledge in Late Antique Pilgrimage Accounts’

Thursday

Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Environmental History Working Group – 12:30, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Ryan Mealiffe will be speaking on ‘What are White Storks (Ciconia ciconica) Doing in High and Late Miedieval Calendars’?
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Simon Rodway (Aberystwyth) will be speaking on ‘Gwlithod Blewog a Mygydau Barddol: Golwg Newydd ar Garchariad Aneirin yn y Tŷ Deyerin’
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St. Catherine’s College. Carly Boxer (Bucknell University) will be speaking on ‘Abstract Figures and Bodily Change: Giving Form to Unseen Things in Late Medieval England’
Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5:00, online. Elina Hamilton, Peter Lefferts and Elzbieta Witkowska-Zaremba will be speaking on ‘Theinred of Dover (fl. c. 1300): A New Context for him in Fourteenth-Century Music Theory’
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30pm, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group: Library Visit (Merton) – 5:00. Sign-up required.

Saturday

Workshop and Vespers for St Edmund. -14:00, St Edmund Hall Chapel. Open to all, no singing experience required. For registration, follow this link.

Opportunities

Call for readers: For a Multilingual Medieval Compline in the Crypt on 20 Nov, 9.30pm, Henrike Lähnemann is looking for versions of the Our Father in as many medieval languages as possible. Old High German, Middle High German, Old English, and Middle English have been assigned but any further languages are welcome! Contact her if you have a version and are willing to read it.
CfP: Shaping the Word – the Form and Use of Biblical Manuscripts in the Early Medieval West. Deadline 17th Nov 2025.
Colloquium: ‘Journals, Past, Present and Future’, hosted by The Review of English Studies. More info and registration here.
Register before 30 November for Ars Inquirendi – Querying the Pre-Modern in the Age of Large Multimodal Models
Register for MEMRN Winter Conference 2025 13-16 November via Eventbrite HERE.
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.
CfP: Locational Lives: Medieval Experience in Town and Country. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
CfP: Character Groupings in Classical and Medieval Art and Literature at the University. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
Mortimer History Society Essay Prize. Deadline: 15th February 2026.

Medieval Matter MT25, Week 4

by Tristan Alphey

03/11/2025

08:25

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

medieval matters, michaelmas 25

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3.00, Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. Wyatt Wilcox will be speaking on ‘Isolated Barrows in Early Medieval England: A Spatial Analysis’
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary, University of London) will be speaking on “Non-Binary Gender in Abbasid Baghdad: Reality vs. Fiction”

Tuesday

Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. Kathy Lavezzo (U of Iowa) will be speaking on ‘The Darker Side of the Middle Ages’.
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Clare Whitton (Blackfriars) will be speaking on ‘Resurrecting a Patron Saint: The Feast of San Gennaro in 14th century Naples’

Wednesday

Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Somerville College. The topic for this term is Ulrich von Richental, Chronik des Konzils zu Konstanz (1414-1438).
Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Welcome Lunch – 12.30, Balliol College
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Erin Thomas Dailey (Leicester) will be speaking on ‘Why Did the Byzantine Empire Forbid SlaveOwners from Making Eunuchs of their Slaves? Castration, Masculinity, and Identity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages’

Thursday

Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10:00, Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute and online.
Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Chronicling the Self: including extracts from the memoirs of Lady Nijo and Leonor López de Córdoba
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, online. Lloyd Bowen (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘London Puritan networks and the publication of the 1630 Welsh Bible’
David Patterson Lecture – 6:00, Clarendon Institute, Walton St. Dr Emily Rose (Academic Visitor, OCHJS) will be speaking on “A Bleeding Corpse, A Grim Grimm Fairy Tale with Early Modern Shivers: The Dubious Margaret of Pforzheim (1267?), A Singular Female Blood Libel”. In order to participate in this lecture via Zoom, please register at this link.
Latin Compline in the Crypt – 9:30pm, in the crypt below St-Peter-in-the-East, St Edmund Hall

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Oxford University Heraldry Society Lecture – 4:30, Harris Seminar Room of Oriel College. Professor Yorick Gomez Gane will be speaking on “The Italian Language in British Heraldry,” followed by a drinks reception.

Opportunities

CfP: Locational Lives: Medieval Experience in Town and Country. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
CfP: Character Groupings in Classical and Medieval Art and Literature at the University. Deadline 5th Jan 2026.
CfP: Shaping the Word- the Form and Use of Biblical Manuscripts inthe Early Medieval West. Deadline 17th Nov 2025.
MEMRN Winter Conference 2025 signups open.
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.

Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 3

by Tristan Alphey

27/10/2025

08:50

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

Week 3 is upon us – please find below the weekly offering of events, groups, and opportunities. As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here. Any last-minuted changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Lucy Donkin (University of Bristol) will be speaking on “Ex urbe et ab Hierosolomis: The Materiality and Portability of Place in Pre-Reformation Europe”.

Tuesday

Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. A range of contributors will be speaking on ‘On the Life and Works of Vincent Gillespie’
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Susanna Heywood (KCL): will be speaking on ‘A Practical Guide to Kingship?: the virtue of prudence in Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum’
Medieval French Researsh Seminar – 5:00, Maison Française d’Oxford. Prof. Ellen Delvallée (Université Grenoble Alpes) will be speaking on ‘‘Éclats de la Chronique française de Guillaume Cretin: de l’inachèvement aux explorations esthétiques’
Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter
Oxford Architectural and Historical Society – 5:30, Rewley House. Duncan Taylor will be speaking on ‘A New Understanding of Oxford’s Divinity School Vault’

Wednesday

John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Somerville College.
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Stratis Papaioannou (Athens) will be speaking on ‘The Synaxarion of Constantinople as Historiography’
Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures Lecture – 5:15, Memorial Room (The Queen’s College). Daniel Schwemer (Würzburg) will be speaking on ‘Ancient Kings, a New Language (and sometimes wheelbarrows): a decade of field epigraphy at the Hittite capital Boğazköy-Ḫattuša’

Thursday

Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Environmental History Working Group – 12:00, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Madeleine Fyles (UToronoto) will be speaking on ‘More than Kindling: Algarrobo Posts and Social Memory on the Peruvian North Coast’.
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Jaione Diaz Mazquiaran (Alan R King Etxepare Chair 2025) will be speaking on ‘Language, Beliefs, and Belonging: Immigrant Students in Basque-Medium Education’
Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St. Catherine’s College. Hannele Hellerstedt (Ox.) will be speaking on ‘Seeing Double: Visualizing La Cité des dames and La Cité de Dieu‘.
Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5:00, online. Anne Walters Robertson (The University of Chicago) will be speaking on ‘a cycle of masses for all seasons in the Burgundian court’
Spooktacular Manuscripts – 3:00, Visiting Scholars’ Centre (Weston Library). To celebrate Halloween, Alison Ray will present a range of spooktacular medieval manuscripts, from magical spell books and alchemical texts to depictions of black cats and a witches’ sabbath. Costumes are optional! NOTE that a University or Bodleian reader card is required for access, which is via the Readers’ entrance to the Weston Library
Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group: Library Visit (Merton) – 5:00. Sign-up required.

Opportunities

Cambridge Colloquium in ASNC: Women and the Weird (Saturday 21 February 2026). Deadline 10th November 2025.
Those wishing to join the Old Norse Reading Group mailing list should email brooklyn.arnot@magd.ox.ac.uk.
The programme for the Heritage Science and Manuscripts Conference is now available.
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
Medieval Insular Romance Conference CfP. Deadline 31 October 2025.
Special Issue: Points of Friction CfP. Deadline 2 November 2025.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.

Medieval Matters MT25, Week 2

by Tristan Alphey

19/10/2025

16:34

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

Welcome to week 2, and the Medieval Matters email – a day early this time to coincide with St Frideswide’s Day! In honour of the occasion, Jesus College has paid for the Pershore Legendary to appear on Digital Bodleian, which includes the most accurate copy of Robert of Cricklade’s Life of St Frideswide. Browse away!

As always, you can find a complete copy of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet here. Any last-minuted changes will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College.
Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. Peter Jones (King’s College, Cambridge), will be speaking on ‘Event, story and image in writings of John Arderne (1307-c.1380), English surgeon’.

Tuesday

Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. David Scott-Macnab (North-West U) will be speaking on ‘Edward, Second Duke of York’s Master of Game: A New Edition for EETS
Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
Medieval Church and Culture Seminar – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. John Merrington (All Souls) will be speaking on ‘Reading the Five Thousand: gender, the body and the interpretation of John 6 in medieval Europe’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm at the at the Maison Française d’Oxford. Prof. Johannes Junge Ruhland (University of Notre Dame) will be speaking on ‘The Bookishness of French Prose Histories’.

Wednesday

Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Somerville College. The topic for this term is Ulrich von Richental, Chronik des Konzils zu Konstanz (1414-1438).
Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre. Johannes Pahlitzsch (Mainz) will be speaking on ‘Concepts of Space and Orthodoxy beyond Byzantium’.

Thursday

Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 4:00, Somerville College (meet at Lodge). Authorising the Text: including extracts from the prose works of Teresa de Cartagena and Anna Komnene.
Celtic Seminar – 5:00, hybrid. Rhys Kaminski-Jones (CAWCS) will be speaking on ‘Bardic liberties: Bardism and slavery in the poetry of Iolo Morganwg’.
Guild of Medievalist Makers – 5:30, online. Making Space Session.
Oxford University Heraldry Society – 6:30, online. Mike Rumble will be speaking on ‘The Heraldry of Kensington and Chelsea, London’.

Friday

Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).
Memorial Service for Professor Vincent Gillespie – 2:00, Keble College Chapel.
Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group Workshop – 5:00, Merton College. Workshop with Joumana Medlej.

Opportunities

MEMRN Winter Conference 2025 signups open.
Call for Committee Members for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference.
Medium Ævum Essay Prize welcomes applications. Deadline 1 December 2025.
Medieval Insular Romance Conference CfP. Deadline 31 October 2025.
Special Issue: Points of Friction CfP. Deadline 2 November 2025.
Data Visualization in the Humanities: Nodegoat Open Workshop.

Medieval Matters Week 0 – Draft Booklet

by Tristan Alphey

06/10/2025

09:42

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Medieval Matters, News

With the start of First Week just around the corner, the draft of this term’s OMS Booklet is here! For those of you joining us for the first time, this booklet includes a compilation of the events, seminars, and reading groups that will take place across Oxford over the coming term. An updated version will follow at the end of the week but the link will stay the same, so please follow this link to the Medieval Booklet!

Please can I ask for your assistance on two points:

If you have submitted an event for the booklet, please check through the pdf to confirm that the details are correct. Any corrections must be returned to me by Wednesday at the latest.
For all: please let me know of any new medieval members of teaching or research staff, and visiting scholars, so that they can be briefly introduced at the beginning of the booklet.

This mailing list is open to all those interested in keeping informed about medieval goings-on at Oxford: if you know of anyone who is not yet a member of the mailing list, please encourage them to Oxford, register here for the mailing list via our website https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/; if there are problems or queries, email me under medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, or forward them this email.

To close: a particular plug for the Medieval Church and Culture ‘Welcome Social’ on the 14th October at 5pm, in the Wellbeloved Room (Harris Manchester College). This will be a great chance to meet members of the community – new and old – and to learn about the exciting list of upcoming speakers!

Interim Medieval Matters (Long Vac)

by Tristan Alphey

11/09/2025

14:05

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

Term draws near. Please send all entries for next term’s OMS booklet to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, by Wednesday of -1 week at the latest (1st October). Until then, please see below a number of upcoming deadlines and opportunities:

CFP: CHASE Medieval and Early Modern Research Network (MEMRN) postgraduate conference – deadline 12 September. More info here.
Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages classes. The deadline to apply is 12 September at 12 noon UK time. More info here.
The Medieval Academy of America’s podcast series The Multicultural Middle Ages is accepting episode proposals for their 5th season. More info here.
CFP: Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop. Deadline 29th September. More info here.
Applications are open for the John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will be a scholar whose research aligns with the goals of the study of “Europe in the world” and who has demonstrated evidence of innovative methodologies. Deadline 10th Nov. More info here.
The West Horsley Place Trust seeks a researcher. More info here.

MT 25 Booklet: Call for Contribution

by Tristan Alphey

03/09/2025

14:52

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events, Medieval Matters, News

Time marches ever on, and the new term is on the horizon.

It will soon be time to put the next iteration of the OMS booklet together. If you are organising a seminar series, reading group, or one-off event (conference, medievally-themed social event, workshop etc), please email the details to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk ASAP. If you are still awaiting confirmation on the finer points of your event (eg. paper titles), please send a place-holder email so that an entry can be made in preperation.