News – Oxford Medieval Studies

Medieval Matters Week 0 – Draft Booklet

06/10/2025

09:42

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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.

Medieval Matters: Summer Vacation Notices

by Henrike Lähnemann

14/08/2025

08:38

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Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

trinity 25

A quick update in the middle of the summer break with a few notices which cannot wait for the start of term.

A very warm welcome to Elizabeth Crabtree, our new Social Media Officer. Read a short blogpost about her interests, and contact her for any news you would like to see spread via the numerous social media channels which OMS operates.
Apply by 12 September to take part in one of the numerous language classes offered by the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies this Michaelmas for rare Jewish languages (OSRJL).
Attend on 12 September a conference in honour of Peggy Brown (in-person at UPenn or via Zoom). The event will also mark the official launch of the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ archive, a new initiative at Penn Libraries to collect the professional papers of scholars of the Middle Ages and of associated professional organizations.
Visit the exhibition Sing Joyfully: Exploring Music in Lambeth Palace Library which runs until 6 November to mark the 500th birthday of the ‘Arundel’ or ‘Lambeth’ Choirbook (Arundel, Sussex, c. 1525) and attend upcoming concerts on 20 and 25 September.
As part of two Germanist conferences beginning of September, there will be a new exhibition ‘German in the World’ at the Taylor Institution Library including a case on the ‘Nibelungenlied’, and a couple of public events, see the conference programmes for the Association for German Studies and the Anglo-German Colloquium.
Apply by 3 November for a two-year postdoc position, the John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship at UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.
The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages. 25–26 September 2025, Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LU. Registration is free but compulsory. The Latin hymnic tradition is one that spans over a millennium from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the Reformation (and beyond). In that period, there are aspects of it that have remained in many ways stable and enduring, but individual and local contexts and usages at various junctures in its long-lived history have required it to change and to adapt. The corpus also represents a group of texts that would, in many cases, have been very well known beyond the narrow confines of the intellectual and social elite who operated at the highest levels of Latinity and – even if largely penned by incredibly adept Latinists – had a much wider reach than many other Latin texts because of the performed nature of hymns. The relationship of hymns to other exegetical traditions and to the liturgical and para-liturgical contexts in which they were used is also noteworthy.
Call for Papers for Ars Inquirendi, a multi-day joint conference to be held on 4-7 December 2025 (online, with in-person workshops in Stockholm and Oxford), invites demonstrations of all aspects of the nascent art of using LMMs to query the pre-modern – by which we mean, broadly, any Old World cultures before their domination by movable-type print – from pre-modernists already using LMMs, and computer scientists building them, to philosophers and historians of knowledge. Submissions deadline of 30th September. https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/ars-inquirendi-querying-cfp/
Presenting the Guild of Medievalist Makers, co-founded by Eleanor Baker, Kristen Haas Curtis, and Laura Varnam. The Guild was the recipient of an Oxford Medieval Studies Small Grant in Trinity Term 2025 to support the launch of their website and to assist with publicity materials for their first two conference appearances this summer. In this blogpost, Oxford co-founders Eleanor Baker and Laura Varnam introduce the Guild and its activities.
Researcher position: ‘A Quiet Revolution’: Exploring West Horsley Place’s Pre-Modern Landscape. The West Horsley Place Trust has recently received a National Lottery Heritage Fund award for a project titled ‘A Quiet Revolution’, for which they are partnering with the University of Oxford to understand more about the site and its history. We are looking for a skilled and motivated researcher to conduct 239 hours (approximately 30 days) of research on the pre-modern landscape of West Horsley and its historical communities. The role combines desk-based and on-site archival research to produce high-quality outputs in support of a collaborative heritage project. If you are a late stage doctoral or postdoctoral researcher with expertise in medieval and/or early modern landscape history and an interest in working with or in the heritage sector, we’d love to hear from you. More details on how to apply. Deadline: Friday 19th September 2025. Prospective applicants are welcome to direct informal enquiries about the opportunity to Dr Rachel Delman, Heritage Partnerships Coordinator in the Humanities Division (Rachel.delman@humanities.ox.ac.uk)
Call for Leeds panel on Writing the Past and Shaping the Future in Thirteenth-Century Norway. In this session we invite papers which address any aspect of the political, legal, cultural, and literary life of the Norwegian court in the thirteenth century. We particularly welcome inter-disciplinary approaches which highlight the intersection of historical and literary trends shaping the political and milieu of the thirteenth century Norwegian court. Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by Friday 19 September and a brief biography to both Jonas Zeit-Altpeter and Mary Catherine O’Connor.

I hope you have a good summer and remember that it is never too early to send seminar or event announcements to Tristan Alphey under the Oxford Medieval Studies email!

Penn’s LJS 267, De ludo schacchorum seu de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium, fol. 4r

Making the Medieval Archive: Celebrating Elizabeth A. R. Brown at Penn

by Elizabeth Crabtree

11/08/2025

09:27

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events, Medieval Matters, News

archives, conference, events

September 12, 2025, 10:00am–7:00pm

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia
And online via Zoom

On September 12, 2025, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania will host a day-long symposium commemorating Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown’s extraordinary legacy in the field of Medieval Studies. The event will also mark the official launch of the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ archive, a new initiative at Penn Libraries to collect the professional papers of scholars of the Middle Ages and of associated professional organizations. The goal of the symposium is to honor Peggy’s legacy and gift by celebrating research on her area of specialty, namely Medieval France.

The symposium will consist of three panels of short papers devoted to subjects featured in Peggy’s work: Source and Archive; Politics and Kingship; and Liturgy and Sacred Image.

The day will also include an introduction to the research possibilities and historical interest of the medievalists’ archive at Penn, presented by the inaugural Elizabeth A.R. Brown Archivist, an endowed position in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The day will conclude with reminiscences by friends, students, and mentees, and a reception for all attendees.

Co-organized by Nicholas Herman (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Penn) and Ada Kuskowski (Department of History, Penn). Closing reception generously sponsored by the New York Medieval Society.

See here for event details, program, and abstracts.
For Registration, click here.
Donations to the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ Archivist Fund can be made here.
Public messages honoring Peggy Brown’s contributions to the field of medieval studies can be left here.

Medieval Matters, The Long Vac

by Tristan Alphey

24/06/2025

10:54

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events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

trinity 25

Dear all,

Weekly emails will stop over the long vac, but it is worth drawing to your attention a number of opportunities that take place before term starts up again. It is never too early to send in events for the booklet and / or the calendar – we will keep posting events on the OMS calendar as soon as you send them in.

Two more things OMS is looking for:
1) We are still seeking information on your publications for the production of an impact document – please send information of any monographs/edited volumes etc with a short blurb to this email address ASAP.
2) The social media officer position is still vacant – we know that Ashley Castelino is a hard act to follow (see his report here) but he is prepared to help whoever is taking over to learn the trade secrets.

Last week saw the premiere of the filmed version of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Play – thank you to all of you who watched along online! The entire collection is available on our Youtube channel here, where each individual play can also be found.

IMC Leeds 2026 has opened its Call for Papers. Following the death of Twitter, it can be hard to circulate CfPs – if you are organising an event for this, please send me information ASAP, and I will try and make sure that these are all circulated as a group. Medievalists Coffee Mornings continue throughout the term break, only stopping in August.

Events

26th June, 6:30pm. Oxford University Heraldry Society online lecture on ‘The King’s Esquire. The life of Robert Waterton ( c.1365-1425 ) in its heraldic context’. Zoom link here.
1st July, 5.15pm-6.15pm. ‘Invisible Treasures’ film screening and panel discussion. More information, and free tickets, here.

Opportunities

Three-year postdoc research fellowship in Göttingen in Early Medieval Manuscript Studies and Germanic Philology, on the ERC INSULAR project. More information here.
CfP for ‘Borders, Boundaries and Barriers: Real and Imagined in the Middle Ages’, a conference held at Oxford 20th-21st April 2026. More information here.

Medieval Matters, TT25 Wk 8

by Tristan Alphey

16/06/2025

08:28

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

Another academic year draws to a close: welcome, finally, to Week 8. The full Medieval Studies booklet is available here.

Next Thursday, 19 June, 4:30-6pm, is the official launch date for the “The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays – the Film”. This is a wonderful chance to come together to celebrate the end of the year, and watch some of the excellent performances that were put on earlier in the term. At 4:45pm, the film will have its youtube premiere. You can tune in from anywhere in the world to comment; find the full schedule of when each play will start, more information, and a teaser here.

NB. If you are leaving us at the end of this year, and you would like to remain a member of this mailing list (and you are most welcome to do so), please register here with your personal email (link always available from our homepage https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/).

Monday

Poetry, Power, Literacy, and the Emergence of Vernacular Literatures – 9am in the Radcliffe Humanities Building, Seminar Room. The workshop is part of the activities of the TORCH Network Poetry in the Medieval World.
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 am in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Stuart Airlie (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Returns of the Repressed: Aby Warburg’s cultural history of Percy Ernst Schramm’. Following the talk, a special drinks reception will be held to mark Julia’s retirement. Please sign up here.

Tuesday

The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Medieval Church and Culture – tea and biscuits from 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room, with talks from 5.15. Cassidy Serhienko (Pembroke) will be speaking on ‘‘That Fayre Lady’: women and the code of chivalry in late Arthurian romance’; Senia Magzumov (Worcester) will be speaking on ‘Imagining the Rus’ Pagan Past in the Radziwill Chronicle: a comparative study with the Litsevoi Letopisnyi Svod’.

Wednesday

The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets Wednesdays 11.15am–12.45pm in Oriel College, Harris Lecture Room. The topic for this term is the ‘Alexanderroman’ and this week Lucian Shepherd and Monty Powell will present. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates for future terms, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Special OCBR lecture – Marc Lauxtermann (Exeter) will be speaking on ‘The Emergence of Fiction: Byzantium and the East’.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Dr Glaire Anderson (University of Edinburgh) will be speaking on ‘A Bridge to the Sky: Science and Arts in the Age of Ibn Firnas (d. 887)’.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 5pm in the Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. The theme is ‘Letters of Friendship and Gratitude’.

Thursday

The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays: Film launch – 4:30pm at the Farmingdon Institute, Harris Manchester College.
Lincoln Unlocked – 5.15pm in the Weston Library. Rebecca Menmuir will be speaking on ‘Achilles at Lincoln: Unlocking the Medieval Text of a Classical Poem’. Book here.

Friday

Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.

Opportunities (new additions in bold)

British Academy talks on Anglo-Saxon and medieval Irish numismatics. More info here.
The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages – 25–26 September 2025. Registration is free but compulsory. Futher details here: https://classics.web.ox.ac.uk/event/the-latin-hymn-as-scriptural-exegesis-from-late-antiquity-to-the-middle-ages
Essay Prize for Review of English Studies seeking applications – more information here.
A number of roles are available at Hamburg’s ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’: Doctoral Researchers, post-docs, and advanced post-docs.
London Medieval Society’s 80^th anniversary colloquium on ‘Memory and Commemoration’ is being held at on Saturday 28^th June at The Warburg Institute.
‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts Exploring the Potential of Large-Scale Catalogue Data – Thursday 26th June, 1–5pm, Weston Library. More information here.
The Terence Barry Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Irish Medieval Studies – deadline May 30, 2025. More information here.
Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society Travel Grant – more info here.
Call for Submissions: Taube Prizes for Student Writing in Hebrew & Jewish Studies – see blog post.
National Archives Skills Courses – see blog post.
CfP for ‘Staging Silence from Antiquity to the Renaissance’ – more information here.
CfP for ‘Music and Reformation: A Symposium at Lambeth Palace Library, 16 September 2025’
A regular pub trip is being organised on a Friday at 6pm at the Chequers, from 0th week to 8th week, for all medievalists at Oxford. Email maura.mckeon@bfriars.ox.ac.uk
Additional spaces are available on the ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts workshop – please sign up here.
Registration for the Masterclass by Patrick Boucheron – Pourquoi des médiévistes ? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge – 29 May, 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford.
Registration for Patrick Boucheron’s lecture entitled ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ – 29 May, 5:00pm, Pembroke College.
The Digital Medieval Studies Institute is hosting a set of workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists as part of the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. More information can be found here.

Medieval Matters TT25 Week 7

by Tristan Alphey

09/06/2025

07:52

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Around Oxford, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

Welcome to Week 7: the full Medieval Studies booklet is available here. First, a number of important reminders.

The Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland is hosting an online exhibition of artefacts and manuscripts that explore the lives of early medieval women. To submit an item, or to attend the even, follow this link.

The Medieval History research seminar in Week 8 (16 June) has been moved to the Old Library in All Souls. There will be a drinks reception afterwards, 6.30-7.30pm, in the Great Quad, to mark Julia’s retirement. For catering purposes, people planning to attend should RSVP using this form: https://forms.office.com/e/Mr92xB66jh

Monday

French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 pm in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Andrew Dunning (Bodleian Library Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Cult of Saint Frideswide in Medieval Oxford’.

Tuesday

The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
EMBI ‘Women in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland’ online exhibition – 3.30pm, Massey Room, Balliol College.
Medieval Church and Culture – 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room. Francesca Peacock (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Thu and thi wyff arn barrany and bare!’: the experience of infertility and the cult of St Anne in medieval East Anglia, c. 1100 – 1500′; Isabelle Amy Job (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Blanche of Castile and Le Miroir de l’Ame’; Molly Bray (Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Conspicuous Materiality, Collective Devotion: making and exchanging textiles in the Lüneburg Heath c. 1500’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Bastien Racca (Université de Fribourg, Switzerland) will be speaking on ‘‘L’amour rêvé: des métalepses dans le Songe Vert ?’’

Wednesday

The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets Wednesdays 11.15am–12.45pm in Oriel College, Harris Lecture Room. The topic for this term is the ‘Alexanderroman’. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
The ‘science of the stars’ in context: an introduction to medieval astronomical and astrological manuscripts and texts – 2pm in the Horton Room (Weston Library). Session 6: Horoscope: dating and interpretating medieval horoscopes.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
June & Simon Li Lecture in the History of Art – 5pm at Lincoln College. Aden Kumler (University of Basel) will be speaking on ‘Vera mensura. Dimensional realism in medieval manuscripts’.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. John-Francis Martin (Oriel) will be speaking on ‘“The Last Byzantine Controversy” — Politics, Rhetoric, and Religion from the Council of Ferrara-Florence to the Fall of Constantinople’.
Medieval Society and Landscape Seminar Series – 5pm in the Department for Continuing Education. Simon Townley (Victoria County History of Oxfordshire) will be speaking on ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once: Exploring Medieval Place and Society through Local History’. Book here.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Dr Sophia Vasalou (University of Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘Al-Ghazālī and the Ideal of Godlikeness’.
Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar– 5pm, Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College. Kat Smith (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Virgin Mary in Medieval and Early Modern Women’s Writing’.

Thursday

Oxford Environmental History Working Group – 12:30 online. Bill Smith (DPhil History) will be speaking on “Chains of Control and Reins of Resistance: Nonhuman Animals and the Plantationocene in the American South”.
‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts – 1–5pm.

Friday

Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Medieval Manuscripts Support Group – 11:30 in the Horton Room. Readers of medieval manuscripts can pose questions to a mixed group of fellow readers and Bodleian curators in a friendly environment. Come with your own questions, or to see what questions other readers have!
Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.
Research Workshop: Working with modern theory on Medieval Women’s Writing – 5pm in the Lower Lecture Room, Lincoln College.
Oxford Translation Day 2025 – 6pm at the Taylor Institute. More info here.

Opportunities (new additions in bold)

The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages – 25–26 September 2025. Registration is free but compulsory. Futher details here: https://classics.web.ox.ac.uk/event/the-latin-hymn-as-scriptural-exegesis-from-late-antiquity-to-the-middle-ages
Essay Prize for Review of English Studies seeking applications – more information here.
A number of roles are available at Hamburg’s ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’: Doctoral Researchers, post-docs, and advanced post-docs.
London Medieval Society’s 80^th anniversary colloquium on ‘Memory and Commemoration’ is being held at on Saturday 28^th June at The Warburg Institute.
‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts Exploring the Potential of Large-Scale Catalogue Data – Thursday 26th June, 1–5pm, Weston Library. More information here.
The Terence Barry Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Irish Medieval Studies – deadline May 30, 2025. More information here.
Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society Travel Grant – more info here.
Call for Submissions: Taube Prizes for Student Writing in Hebrew & Jewish Studies – see blog post.
National Archives Skills Courses – see blog post.
CfP for ‘Staging Silence from Antiquity to the Renaissance’ – more information here.
CfP for ‘Music and Reformation: A Symposium at Lambeth Palace Library, 16 September 2025’
A regular pub trip is being organised on a Friday at 6pm at the Chequers, from 0th week to 8th week, for all medievalists at Oxford. Email maura.mckeon@bfriars.ox.ac.uk
Additional spaces are available on the ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts workshop – please sign up here.
Registration for the Masterclass by Patrick Boucheron – Pourquoi des médiévistes ? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge – 29 May, 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford.
Registration for Patrick Boucheron’s lecture entitled ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ – 29 May, 5:00pm, Pembroke College.
The Digital Medieval Studies Institute is hosting a set of workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists as part of the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. More information can be found here.