Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 1

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13/10/2025

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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