Medieval Matters MT24, Week 8

Week 8 is finally upon us, and a final round of events. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here. Keep an eye on your inboxes over the vac – I will be sending out an email asking for contributions to next term’s booklet.

Have a lovely Christmas.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology. Stephen Rippon (University of Exeter) will be speaking on ‘Excavations at Ipplepen’.
  • OMS Tea Talks – 4.30 in New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and biscuits provided.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Alicia Smith (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Harlot/Saint: Tracking the Figure of Thais Meretrix in Medieval Manuscript Compilations.’
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30pm in the English Faculty Graduate Common Room.

Tuesday

  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Poetry Reading Group – 4.30pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radliffe Humanities Building.
  • Medieval Church and Culture – tea from 5.00pm (talk starts at 5.15) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Phil Booth (St Peter’s) will be speaking on ‘Egypt from the Ancient Mediterranean to the Middle Medieval East: A Seventh-century Chronicle Between Worlds’.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is Violence against Jews and Jewish Violence.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Medieval Women’s Writing – Chat with an Expert – 1pm in the VHH Seminar Room, Lincoln College. Rachel Delman (Heritage Partnerships Coordinator) will be talking about ‘Medieval Women’s Stories in Heritage & Community Settings’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Inaugural Dorothy Whitelock Lecture – 5pm in in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building . Gale Owen-Crocker will be speaking on ‘Social History and False Friends: From Anglo-Saxon Wills to the Bayeux Tapestry via Material Culture’
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Zdenka Stahuljak (UCLA) will be speaking on ‘Methodologies of Commensuration: Poetry, History, and Knowledge’.

Thursday

  • Italian Late Medieval and Early Modern Palaeography Course (1400-1800) – 10pm in the Chough Room, Teddy Hall.
  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon RoomExeter Collge. The text this week is Alexander (Plutarch, Life of Alexander 7–8, 62–65).
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm in the Arumugam Building, St Catz. Ben Tilghman (Maryland, USA) will speak on ‘What Art Does When It’s Doing Nothing: Stillness, Perdurance, and Agency in Medieval Art’
  • Medieval and Renaissance Music Seminar – 5pm online (register here). Michael Scott Asato Cuthbert (Independent scholar) will be speaking on ‘A.I., Similarity, and Search in Medieval Music: New Methodologies and Source Identifications’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • The Germanic Reading Group – 4pm online. This week, the focus will be on Old English: Extracts from the Life of St Chad (Nelson leading).

OPPORTUNITIES 

  •  CHASE-DTP funded PhD opportunity between MEMS Kent and Westminster Abbey to investigate medieval manuscript fragments in the Abbey’s archives, application deadline 17 February 2025. More info here.
  • Head of Performance sought for Medieval Mystery Plays to pull the strings for the 2025 performance of the Medieval Mystery Plays. Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors, are looking for an enthusiastic, creative and, above all, well-organised graduate student or postdoc. There will be a reward of £300. See here the advertisement.
  • 4-year funded Collaborative Doctoral Award(CDA), co-supervised between the University of Nottingham and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford:  ‘Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage’. Deadline 13 January 2025: more information here.
  • The Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee seeks new committee members for the 2025-2027 term. Submit self-nomination forms here.
  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

-TKA

Bayeux Tapestry, Panel 58 (with a few additions…): Available online Discover the Bayeux Tapestry online/)

Medieval Matter MT24, Week 7

Much like Bob Dylan, we have all spent the last week Blowin’ in the Wind: here are this week’s medieval events to help you through. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here.

A reminder that this Friday – 5pm at St Edmund Hall – there will be an event for those interested in this year’s Medieval Mystery Plays. All are welcome, even (/ especially) if you are unsure how to get involved.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College.  Fouzia Farooq Ahmed (All Souls / Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad) will be speaking on ‘Gender Ventriloquism in Medieval India: the Writings of Amir Khusro’. Drinks to follow.

Tuesday

  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Edward Shawe-Taylor (St Cross) will be speaking on ‘The Qur’an of Mūsā b. Bughā: Reassembling a Lost Egyptian Manuscript’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5.15pm at the Maison Française d’Oxford. The theme this week is ‘Otherworld Objects between [REF] and [FIC]’.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is: Eating and Sharing Meals with the Religious Other.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Alberto Rigolio (Durham) will be speaking on ‘The Rise of the Memrā in Syriac Literature’.
  • Prof Dr Hermann Parzinger, President of the Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz, lecture at 17.15. at the Weston Library on the history of the Prussian Heritage Foundation along with the importance of sustainability and the contemporary, post-colonial responsibilities and challenges faced by the heritage sector. A drinks reception will follow. The sign up is here.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Online Conference – 12.20pm online. Register here.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon RoomExeter Collge. The text this week is ‘on writing Lives’ (Tacitus, Annals 4.34).
  • Torch Talk: ‘Locating Silences: The Status and Agency of Women in the Delhi Sultanate’ – 4pm in St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5.15pm at Jesus College and online. Tanguy Solliec (LACITO, CNRS, Paris) will be speaking on ‘Breton Dialect Variation: An Opportunity to Reflect on the Emergence and Formation of a Language’.
  • Compline in the Crypt (in English) – 9.30pm in the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (!), the library church of St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee provided.
  • LGBTQ+ Hackathon – 2pm in the History Faculty.
  • An Introduction to Greek Manuscript Culture – 2pm in the Horton Room, Weston Library. First come, first served: email almut.fries@classics.ox.ac.uk for more info.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • Medieval Mystery Plays Meeting of the Minds Workshop – 5pm at St Edmund Hall. More information here.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 5pm in the Mure Room, Merton College. Eleanor Jackson (British Library, Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts) will be speaking on ‘Medieval Women in Their Own Words: Curating the British Library Exhibition’.
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College. For more information, please contact Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org).

OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)

  • CHASE-DTP funded PhD opportunity between MEMS Kent and Westminster Abbey to investigate medieval manuscript fragments in the Abbey’s archives, application deadline 17 February 2025. More info here.
  • Head of Performance sought for Medieval Mystery Plays to pull the strings for the 2025 performance of the Medieval Mystery Plays. Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors, are looking for an enthusiastic, creative and, above all, well-organised graduate student or postdoc. There will be a reward of £300. See here the advertisement.
  • 4-year funded Collaborative Doctoral Award(CDA), co-supervised between the University of Nottingham and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford:  ‘Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage’. Deadline 13 January 2025: more information here.
  • The Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee seeks new committee members for the 2025-2027 term. Submit self-nomination forms here.
  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

-TKA

The English flee after the defeat at Hastings. Bayeux Tapestry, Panel 58 (Available online Discover the Bayeux Tapestry online/).

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 6

Monday morning can mean but one thing: Medieval Matters is here to grace your inboxes once again. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here.

Rumbling in the distance, early work begins on the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2025. At 5pm on Friday 29 November 2024, at St Edmund Hall, there will be an event to bring together actors, directors, musicians and those interested in texts and props. All are welcome, especially those who are unsure how to get involved. Tea and cake provided. More information about the event, and the Cycle in general, can be found on the blog post here which also advertises the exciting (and paid) role of ‘Head of Performance’ for a current graduate student – see below under ‘opportunities’.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology. Rebecca Tyson, U. of Bristol will be speaking on ‘Navigating the Norman invasion of England in 1066: A Maritime Environmental Perspective’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Moreed Arbabzedah (Jesus Oxford) will be speaking on ‘New Perspectives on Gerald of Wales’.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30pm in the English Faculty Graduate Common Room.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Nicholas Watson (Harvard) will be speaking on ‘Vernacular Theology in Thirteenth-Century Oxford: Robert Grosseteste and his Circle’.
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Poetry Reading Group – 4.30pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radliffe Humanities Building. The theme this week is Light without Sun or Moon: The Poetry of Kabīr.
  • Medieval Church and Culture – tea from 5.00pm (talk starts at 5.15) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Conrad Leyser (Worcester) will be speaking on ‘The Rule of Augustine Revisited’.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is Late Roman Legislative Codices and Jews.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Lucia Orlandi (Paris/Rome) will be speaking on ‘Recent Research on Baptism and Baptisteries in Late Antiquity’.
  • History of Art Research Seminar – 5pm in the History Faculty Lecture Theatre. Nancy Thebaut (Oxford) will be speaking on “Queering Medieval Art at The Met Cloisters”.
  • Michaelmas Term 2024 Lecture of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures – 5.15pm in the
    Memorial Room, The Queen’s College. Christopher Whittick will be speaking on ‘“I Found it in a Skip” – Provenance and Priorities in British Archives’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Italian Late Medieval and Early Modern Palaeography Course – 10am in the Chough Room, Teddy Hall.
  • Medieval Anglo-Jewish Texts and Histories – 2pm-5.30pm in the Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute. This group convenes once a term to read together unpublished Hebrew and Latin documents from Medieval England as sources for the history of the Jews before the expulsion of 1290.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon RoomExeter Collge. The text this week is Theseus and Romulus (Plutarch, Lives).
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5pm online. Marion Löffler (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘“Desert wilds of India Africa”: Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Eisteddfod competitions and Empire, 1834–1853’.
  • The Politics of Memory: The Reimagination of Medieval India (Panel Discussion) – 5pm in St Luke’s Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm in the Arumugam Building, St Catz. Alixe Bovey (The Courtauld Institute of Art) will be speaking on ‘Visual Storytelling in 14th-century London: Subtexts, Pretexts, Contexts’.
  • Medieval and Renaissance Music Seminar – 5pm online (register here). Lucia Marchi (University of Trento) will be speaking on ‘The Long Life of the Trecento Repertory’.
  • David Patterson Lectures – 6pm in the Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute. Dr Dean Irwin (University of Lincoln) will be speaking on ‘Jews and Christians as Neighbours in Medieval English Towns’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
  • Crafting the Book Lecture – 1pm in the Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre at the Weston Library. Sara Charles and Eleanor Baker will be speaking. For more information, see here.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Crafting the Book Practical Workship – 2.15pm and 4pm in the Bodleian Bibliographical Press (FULLY BOOKED).
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • The Germanic Reading Group – 4pm online. This week, the focus will be on Gothic extracts of Nehemia, led by Morgan. Contact Howard Jones if you would like the zoom link and handout.

UPCOMING

  • The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.

OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)

  •  Head of Performance sought for Medieval Mystery Plays to pull the strings for the 2025 performance of the Medieval Mystery Plays. Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors, are looking for an enthusiastic, creative and, above all, well-organised graduate student or postdoc. There will be a reward of £300. See here the advertisement.
  • CfP for a thematic session at NAPS 2025 titled ‘Scripture and the Arts in Clement of Alexandria‘. Deadline for abstract submissions is November 18th: use this form.
  • 4-year funded Collaborative Doctoral Award(CDA), co-supervised between the University of Nottingham and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford:  ‘Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage’. Deadline 13 January 2025: more information here.
  • The Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee seeks new committee members for the 2025-2027 term. Submit self-nomination forms here.
  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

-TKA

Bayeux Tapestry, Panel 13 (Available online Discover the Bayeux Tapestry online/)

Medieval Mystery Cycle 2025 Update

We are advertising for a Head of Performance and announcing a speed dating / workshop meeting!

1. Medieval Mystery Plays Meeting of the Minds Workshop

Friday 29 November 2024 (Week 7), 5–6.30pm, at St Edmund Hall, Doctorow Hall

Join this speed dating workshop for matching up actors, directors, musicians, texts, and props for the upcoming Medieval Mystery Cycle on 26 April 2025! Whether you are interested but still unsure how to put together a play, which play to choose, or how to act, all are welcome! The focus of the workshop will be on how to produce a medieval play script in an accessible version (of up to 20 minutes), but there will also be an opportunity to match actors and directors and to discuss any other practical questions you might have on site at St Edmund Hall – and to enjoy tea and cake!

Meanwhile, we’re still looking for groups to join the Medieval Mystery Cycle: have a look at the original blog post!

Let us know if you’re interested in joining by emailing Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors. Also contact us if you are a graduate student or postdoc interested in this opportunity:

2. Head of Performance sought for Medieval Mystery Plays

Are you interested in pulling the strings for a successful run of the 2025 performance of the Medieval Mystery Plays? We are looking for an enthusiastic, creative and, above all, well-organised graduate student or postdoc to

  • liaise with the directors, volunteers, and groups taking part
  • plan the logistics of the performance
  • run the operations on the actual performance date
  • coordinate the publicity
  • write and / or edit the programme
  • facilitate the documentation
  • head the stewarding team

There will be a reward of £300 plus the opportunity of networking closely across the medievalist and performance people of Oxford and beyond. Please apply by Monday, 25 November 2025, with a short statement of interest and your CV by emailing Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors.

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 5

Four weeks have passed: four weeks remain. In the words of Elton John: ‘I guess that’s why they call it the blues’. To cheer our ailing souls, this week’s Medieval Matters is brimming with upcoming events and a particular concentration of new opportunities. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Gregory Lippiatt (University of Exeter) will be speaking on ‘Bogomils or Bogeymen?: Heresy between East and West in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’. NB. this week, the talk takes place in the Hovendon Room (All Souls).

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Jenyth Evans (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘”Enucleator venio, non pugnator”: The Uneven Authority of Pseudohistories in Gerald of Wales’.
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Old Norse Research Seminar – 5pm in Seminar Room L, English Faculty. Alison Finlay (Birkbeck) will be speaking on ‘From Iceland to the World: Translating Flateyjarbók’: all welcome, drinks to follow.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Eunice Yu (Wolfson) will be speaking on ‘Harmonising Paradox in Early Modern Venice: Collecting and Constructing National Identity in Print’.
  • The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures: ‘Work in Progress’ Colloquium – 5.15pm in the Memorial Room, Queen’s College. Julia Lorenz (Merton College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Konrad of Würzburg’s “Herzmaere”: An Instruction on How (Not) to Love’, and Dr Alan Darmawan (SOAS, London) will be speaking on ‘Mapping Sumatra’s Manuscript Cultures’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5.15pm at the Maison Française d’Oxford. The theme this week is ‘Researchers at Work: Serendipity and Surprise’

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is – The Emperor and the Jews
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Book at Lunchtime, 1-2pm: Henrike Lähnemann in conversation with Lyndal Roper and Nancy Thebaut will present ‘The Life of Nuns’ as part of the TORCH series. You can join the waiting list for the live event at the Radcliffe Humanities Building or watch it live streamed. Register here.
  • Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries: An Introduction to Collections and Catalogues – 2pm in the Horton Room, Weston Library. An introduction to the medieval European manuscript collections at the Bodleian Library and the print and online catalogues in which they have been described from the 17th century onwards.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Max Lau (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Rebirth of Byzantine Anatolia in the Twelfth Century’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon RoomExeter Collge. The text this week is Claudius (Tacitus, Annals 13.3).
  • Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group – 1pm online. Aafreen Rashid (South Asian University, New Dehli) will be speaking on ‘Framing Feminist Strategic Discourse: Begum Jahanara and the Exchange of Letters During the War of Succession in Mughal India (1657-59)’. Sign up here.
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5.15pm at Jesus College and online. Elisa Cozzi (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘From Dánta Grá to Dante: Irish–Italian genealogies, 1350–1850’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College. For more information, please contact Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org).

UPCOMING

  • To register for the ‘Crafting the Book’ one-day workshop, held on 22 November at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, please follow this link.
  • The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.

OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)

  •  CfP for a thematic session at NAPS 2025 titled ‘Scripture and the Arts in Clement of Alexandria‘. Deadline for abstract submissions is November 18th: use this form.
  • 4-year funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA), co-supervised between the University of Nottingham and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford:  ‘Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage’. Deadline 13 January 2025: more information here.
  • The Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic 2025 is now open to abstract submissions from current postgraduates or those who have recently completed postgraduate study. The theme is ‘Sickness and Health’. More information here.
  • The Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee seeks new committee members for the 2025-2027 term. Submit self-nomination forms here.
  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

TKA

Medievalists in their natural habitat. Bayeux Tapestry, Panel 3 (Available online Discover the Bayeux Tapestry online/).

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 4

The days are getting colder and the nights are drawing in: fear not, for the medieval events roll ever on and on. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here, and do check the Oxford Medieval Studies blog for reports of recent medieval events; also worthwhile checking out is the History of the Book blog with a report e.g. last week on a palaeography class with Laure Miolo and Alison Ray (including a “bat book”!). Do send in your own suggestions for blog posts to Miles Pattenden!

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology. Lyn Blackmore (Museum of London Archaeology) will be speaking on ‘The Seventh-Century Bed Burial at Harpole: Aspects of Recent work’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Teresa Barucci (Magdalen) will be speaking on ‘Identity and Geographical Origin at the Late Medieval University of Paris: An Analysis of Manuscript Decoration’.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30pm in the English Faculty Graduate Common Room.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Francis Leneghan (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘A Perilous Task? The Making of the Old English Heptateuch (Bodleian Library MS. Laud Misc. 509)’
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • The Germanic Reading Group – 4pm online. This week, the focus will be on extracts from Physiologus, the elephant. Contact Howard Jones if you would like the zoom link and handout.
  • Medieval Poetry Reading Group – 4.30pm in the Colin Matthew Room, Radliffe Humanities Building. The theme this week is Light without Sun or Moon: The Poetry of Kabīr.
  • Early Modern Graduate Forum – 5.15pm in Seminar Room B at the English Faculty. Jacob Ridley (DPhil candidate, Univ) will be talking on the topic of  ‘Androcracy and Personification from Everyman to Spenser’. Wine and soft drinks provided.
  • Medieval Church and Culture – 5.00pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Helen Flatley (Somerville) will be speaking on ‘Ties that Bind: Partnership, Surety and Social Bonds between Christians, Muslims and Jews in Toledo, 1085-c.1300’.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is Angelology and Demonology.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Arkadiy Avdokhin (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Gone with the Wind: Ambition, Scatology, and Violence in Acclamations for Albinos at Aphrodisias’.
  • VRF in the Creative Arts: Inks & Paints of the Abbasids – 5.15pm in the Eliot Theatre, Merton College. This talk will take us through the pigments and dyes that made up the Islamic scribe’s colour palette. Joumana Medlej will describe their preparation and behaviour from a practitioner’s perspective, and share process photos from her re-creation of ink recipes from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, along with insights into inkmaking practices gleaned from these texts. 

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon RoomExeter Collge. The text this week is Caesar (Plutarch, Life of Caesar 63–66).
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5pm online. Elizabeth Boyle (Maynooth) will be speaking on ‘Psychology and the Individual in Medieval Ireland’.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm in the Arumugam Building, St Catz. Elena Lichmanova (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Religious Storytelling and the Rise of Marginalia’.

Friday

  • Oxford Medieval Society ‘Shut Up and Write’ – 9.30 to 12 in Blackwell’s Cafe.
  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • Inaugural Lecture of the Gad Rausing Associate Professor of Viking-Age Archaeology, held at St Cross College at 3pm on Friday 8th November. Dr Jane Kershaw will be speaking on ‘The Viking Diaspora: Causes, Networks and Cultural Identity’. Tickets are available here.

Saturday

  • Reading in the Woods: A Day of Learning About Wood in the Library. 11am at the Weston Library and online. More info here.

UPCOMING

  • To register for the ‘Crafting the Book’ one-day workshop, held on 22 November at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, please follow this link.
  • 700 Years of the Thames at The National Archives – The National Archives (London), Thursday November 7 – drop in between 15:00 and 19:00. Tickets here.
  • Tickets are available here for the Society of Medieval Archaeology Student Colloquium (4th-6th November 2024).
  • The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.

OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)

  • Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
  • The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

T.K.A

Bodleian Library MS. Arch. Selden. B. 10, fol 5r

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP

The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference Committee is delighted to announce this year’s Call for Papers. We look forward to receiving submissions for 20 minute papers from graduate students on ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’. 

The conference will be held in person on the 24th and 25th of April, 2025. Submissions are welcome from all disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives. There are no limitations on geographical focus or time period, so long as the topic pertains to the medieval period.

Topics could include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • religious ceremonies and traditions
  • familial or domestic traditions
  • ceremonial dress and material culture
  • practical uses of ritual and ceremony
  • political ritual, ceremony, or processions
  • means of recording ritual or performance
  • rites of passage
  • practices of magic or alchemy
  • counterculture or subversion

Presentations will take place in person only but will be streamed for remote attendees. Papers should be max. 20 minutes. A limited number of bursaries are available to help with travel costs, and we welcome applications from graduate students at any university.

Please send abstracts of 250 words to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 6th of December 2024.

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 3

Time flies when you’re trapped inside a poorly-lit library basement: Week 3 is upon us! Please find included a list of this week’s events and opportunities. As always, a PDF version copy of the booklet can be found here. Read on.

EVENTS THIS WEEK

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Sarah Hamilton (University of Exeter) will be speaking on ‘Writing History in the Tenth Century’.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Denis Renevey (Lausanne) will be speaking on ‘Discovering and Re-Fashioning the Self: The Apophatic and Encyclopaedic Journeys of Andrew Boorde (c. 1490–1549)’.
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies Seminar Series – 2.30pm in Basement Teaching Room No. 1, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Pusey Lane. Peter Tóth (Bodleian Libraries) will be speaking on ‘A Tale of Three Continents: Reuniting a Copto-Greek Ostracon’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm at the Maison Française d’Oxford. This week’s presentation is on ‘Researchers at Work: Collaboration and Encounter’.
  • Medieval Church and Culture – 5.30pm in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Peter Tóth (Bodleian Library) will be speaking on ‘Virgin Mary visits Hell: Identifying a Medieval Latin Apocryphal Text’. NB. the later start time this week.

Wednesday

  • Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is Magic and Religious Boundaries.
  • Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Geoffrey Greatrex (Ottawa) will be speaking on ‘What Sort of Late Antiquity? Reflections on P. Brown, Journeys of the Mind’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon Room, Exeter Collge. The text this week is Nero (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars 6.5).
  • Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5pm at Jesus College and online. Nina Cnockaert-Guillou (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) will be speaking on ‘From Acallam na Senórach to Agallamh na Seanórach: Structuring Narratives and Recycling Texts in (Early) Modern Ireland’.
  • Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5pm online. A. Zayaruznaya (Yale University) and Andrew Wathey (The National Archives and Northumbria University) will be speaking on ‘Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361)’. Please register using this form.
  • Compline in the Crypt (in German for Reformationstag) – 9.30pm in the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (!), the library church of St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. This week will see the presentation of Hans Sachs’s Dialogues in German and a Tudor Translation, followed by a chance to print a keepsake at the Bibliographic Press in the Old Schools Quad. All welcome.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group, Work-in-Progress Meeting – 5pm in the Hawkins Room,  Merton College. There will be two speakers: Tom McAuliffe (‘Membra mutilata: Reading a Twelfth-century Rochester Manuscript in its Intended Order’) and Ana Dias (‘Writing and Devotion in Early Medieval Chelles: The Production of Relic Labels’).
  • Hans Sachs New Edition Launch Day5pm in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library.
  • Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar – 5pm in Lincoln College. Joanna Augustyn will be speaking ong ‘Embroidery as Alternative Writing: Philomela’s Tongue’.
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College. For more information, please contact Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org).

Saturday

  • Middle High German Study Day – 2pm in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library. Please register by Wednesday with the following form; only a couple of spaces left!
  • The Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland is organizing a trip to the Brixworth Annual Lecture, taking place at 5pm. Tickets are £8.00 for students and £12.00 for adults. If you are interested in travelling down from Oxford, please email Robert Klapper.

UPCOMING

  • Tickets are available here for the Society of Medieval Archaeology Student Colloquium.
  • Tickets are available here for the inaugural lecture of the Gad Rausing Associate Professor of Viking-Age Archaeology, held at St Cross College at 3pm on Friday 8th November. Dr Jane Kershaw will be speaking on ‘The Viking Diaspora: Causes, Networks and Cultural Identity’.
  • The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.

OPPORTUNITIES

  • A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
  • The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
  • University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
  • An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
  • OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
  • The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
  • The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
  • Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
  • Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.

T.K.A

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 11, fol. 3.

Medium Aevum Essay Prize Prize 2025

The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. The Prize is open to post-graduates and those recently graduated with a higher degree. The value of the prize is £500 , while entry declared proxime accessit will be awarded £100. The winning essay and other entries of sufficient quality and promise may be considered for publication in Medium Ævum.

Please submit an essay of no more than 8,000 words, on a topic in the range of interests of Medium Ævum, by 12:00 midday (GMT) Monday 2nd of December, 2024.

For more information, visit https://aevum.space/essayprize/rules.

Byzantium and its Environment – 27th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 27th Annual Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference on the 1st-2nd March 2025. Papers are invited to tackle the ‘environment’ of the Late Antique and Byzantine world (very broadly defined). For the call for papers, and for details on how to submit an abstract for consideration for the conference, please see below.

In recent decades, the global community has taken more and more of an active and serious interest in the environment and climate system in which we live. Scholars of Byzantium and Late Antiquity have likewise begun to apply environmental lenses to their research, and have come away with a number of new and exciting perspectives. From scientific analysis of the climatic shifts that occurred throughout the period on both macro and micro scales, to revisionist views of already well-trodden events, these new perspectives are greatly contributing to our field.

The framework of ‘the environment’ here can be applied very broadly, touching on any aspect of the natural world, with novel and imaginative approaches to the notion being strongly encouraged. Some suggestions by the Oxford University Byzantine Society for how this topic might be treated include:

  • The Analytical – Pollen analysis, dendrochronology, ice cores, and everything in-between; the historical significance of this data and what it can tell us
  • The Political and Economic – Climate’s impact on internal and external politics, adaptions in trade and policy, effects on particular military campaigns
  • The Cultural – Changes in attitudes and output as a result of shifting climates, nature’s representation and role in literature
  • The Societal – Movement of people and changes to the social order as a result of climatic change; variations in the impact of climate change depending on class or occupation, regional adaptations to specific micro-climates
  • The Religious – Responses to unusual weather events and interpretations of changing climates by different religious communities; religious attitudes towards nature and man’s place in it
  • The Artistic and Architectural – Environmentally-focused artwork and its uses; the use of landscapes both natural and man-made; changes in design or materials in response to changing climates
  • The Archaeological – Changing use of the land during periods of climatic shift; abandonment and re-settlement due to changing weather or specific events
  • The Historiographical – How environmental factors have evolved over time in scholarship

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, with a short academic biography written in the third person, to the Oxford University Byzantine Society at byzantine.society@gmail.com by Friday 29th November 2024.

Papers should be twenty minutes in length and may be delivered in English or French. As with previous conferences, selected papers will be published in an edited volume, peer-reviewed by specialists in the field. Submissions should aim to be as close to the theme as possible in their abstract and paper, especially if they wish to be considered for inclusion in the edited volume. Nevertheless, all submissions are warmly invited.

The conference will have a hybrid format, with papers delivered at the Oxford University History Faculty and livestreamed online for a remote audience. Accepted speakers should expect and plan to participate in person.

(Photo Credit: © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Photography by Neil Greentree.)