Category: News

Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 3

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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

Medieval Matters MT25, Week 2

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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

Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 1

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13/10/2025

09:29

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events, News

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Welcome to Michaelmas 2025 and to the definite version of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet! And greetings from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. Among the many superlatives it boasts, there can probably be added the claim that this is the largest grouping (a madness?) of medievalists in the world, allowing encounters across the Humanities faculties. We’ll start this year and term in the traditional way with a social in Harris Manchester College on Tuesday of week 1, 13 October, from 5pm – everybody welcome. 

This email will arrive every Monday in your inbox; any changes after that 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. James Miller  (Christ Church, Oxford) will be speaking on “Imagining Monastic Perfection: Benedict, Fleury, and Beyond in the Central Middle Ages”.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. Richard Dance (Cambridge) will be speaking on “Mirror Man: Ormm and his Words”.
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Medieval Studies Social – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. All welcome – come and meet your fellow medievalists!
  • James Ford Special Lecture 2025 Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain & Ireland (EMBI) – 5:15, Shulman Auditorium, Queen’s College. Francesca Tinti (University of the Basque Country) will be speaking on “Long-Distance Travel from Early Medieval Britain”.
  • Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter

Wednesday

  • Early Medieval ‘Global Britain’: A Workshop by the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain & Ireland (EMBI) – 9:15, The Memorial Room (Queen’s College). Booking required.
  • John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar, planning meeting – 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, Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
  • Environmental History Working Group – 12:00, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Stephanie Holt (Oxford) will be speaking on “Curious Minds: Gilbert White and Thomas Pennant”.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:00, online. Elisabeth Chatel (CRBC) will be speaking on “The Joseph Loth Dilemma: Scientific Authority and Cultural Identity in Brittany”.
  • Old Norse Welcome Event – 6:00, Gardeners’ Arms (Plantation Road).

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Christina Ostermann and Henrike Lähnemann will speak on the ‘Girl Who Lived in the Library‘, the memoirs of Luisa Hewitt, born in the basement of the Taylorian in the 1880s
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).

Opportunities

The Challenge of Historical Distance: Historicism and Anachronism in the Study of Art

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11/10/2025

14:10

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News

6-7 November 2025
Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut (NIKI), Florence, Italy (In Person and Online)

How can art historians explore, understand, or even ‘feel’ the material evidence of the past? How can we approach the problem of historical distance, of our anachronistic nostalgia and our intellectual desire for pre-modern periods and artefacts? Can we inhabit the time of past artworks, or do artworks constantly re-construct their own times? And what role do contemporary concerns play in our interpretations of the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods?

Numerous recent publications have explored the study of the past through different lenses. They have complicated the idea of ‘historical contexts’ by showing the ability of artworks to simultaneously refer to various time periods. They have also encouraged cross-temporal and sometimes ahistorical interpretations of premodern artefacts in the light of modern theories and concerns. This conference will bridge the ‘historicist’ and ‘anachronist’ camp in an attempt to theorise the thorny issue of time which sits at the core of both history and art history.

The conference is organised in celebration of the scholarship of Prof. Gervase Rosser and in honour of his retirement from the University of Oxford. One aspect of Rosser’s career that we particularly want to celebrate is his prominence as both historian and art historian, and his inspirational interrogation of both disciplines.

Speakers include: Armin Bergmeier (University of Leipzig); Saida Bondini (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz); Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge); Heiko Droste (Stockholm University); Jas Elsner (University of Oxford); Michael Ann Holly (Clark Institute); Maria Loh (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton); Keith Moxey (Barnard College); Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art); Caspar Pearson (The Warburg Institute); Hannah Skoda (University of Oxford); Nancy Thebaut (University of Oxford); Ben Thomas (Trinity College Dublin).

The conference is organised by Costanza Beltrami (Stockholm University), Lia Costiner (Utrecht University), Elena Lichmanova (University of Oxford/British Library) and Michael W. Kwakkelstein (NIKI/Utrecht University).

View the programme here

Click here to register for online attendance via Teams.

Click here to register for in-person attendance at the NIKI, located at Viale Evangelista Torricelli 5 in Florence.

Probatio pennae

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07/10/2025

17:13

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Around Oxford, events, Medieval Matters, News

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Dear Oxford Medievalists, 

Hello from your new Social Medial officer! 

As we prepare for the start of term, I want to encourage anyone and everyone to contribute ideas for content on the Oxford Medieval Studies social media.

We are active anywhere and everywhere — Beacons (this platform),  BlueSky, Instagram, and Threads — and eagerly awaiting your suggestions.

If you want an event, workshop, or seminar advertised, please let me know and I will spread the word! 

If (when!) something exciting happens in your research, we can raise awareness about that too! 

I hope to hear from many of you throughout the year. Wishing everyone a great start to a new term, with a reflection on the weird and wonderful of medieval manuscripts:

Customer: I’d like a letter ‘E’ please.
Scribe: A normal one, or a snail-helmeted warrior with an ostrich leg and plums down his pants?
Customer: The plums one, obviously.

Cheers,
Elizabeth Crabtree
elizabeth.crabtree@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Medieval Matters Week 0 – Draft Booklet

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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)

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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

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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

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14/08/2025

08:38

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Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

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

  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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/
  9. 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.
  10. 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) 
  11. 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!

Introducing our new Social Media Officer

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12/08/2025

21:17

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News

We have a new Social Media Officer! Elizabeth Crabtree is a Junior Research Fellow at Blackfriars. Her research interests lie in the Christian interpretation of the Bible in the Middle Ages, and especially in how recourse to Jewish sources shaped a Christian understanding of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. Her doctoral project explores the biblical exegesis of Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349), interrogating the relationship between the ‘senses of scripture’ the Franciscan employed as a basis for his two commentaries on the book of Esther, alongside the role of Jewish sources in his interpretation. Elizabeth is excited to be the new Social Media Officer for OMS!