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Medieval Matters TT26, Wk 3

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11/05/2026

09:00

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

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Week 3 is upon us, and it’s jam-packed with medieval events and opportunities. Of particular note is Balliol’s Oliver Smithies Lecture, this Thursday, which sees Elaine Treharne discussing Medieval women scribes.

Looking to the future, we’re hoping to put together a list of Oxford participants in this year’s IMC Leeds. If you are organising or speaking on a panel, please drop me a quick email with the details.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library. If you are interested in joining the group or would like more information, please email the convenor Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar: – 5:00, All Souls College. Round table on Richard Hodges’s The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Towns: A Viking Gift? (London, 2025) with John Blair, Helen Gittos, Helena Hamerow and Rory Naismith.
  • Italian Research Seminar – 5:15, Taylorian, Room 2. Graduate Work-in-Progress. Presentations from DPhil students Silvia Cercarelli (modern/contemporary), Esme Hodson (modern/contemporary), Katherine McKee (medieval), and Victoria White (early modern)

Tuesday

  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2pm, Weston Library. Those who are interested can email the convenor Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:00, Maison Francaise. Adrian Armstrong (Queen Mary University of London) will be speaking on ‘Testopolis: The Testament as Urban Art’ .
  • Medieval Church and Culture Seminar– Tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm, Harris Manchester College. Cris Arama (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Gender embodiment in Old French hagiography:  a textual and iconographical approach’;  Bartholomew Chu (Lincoln) will be speaking on ;The Quandary of Quality:  copying prestige in MS. Bodl. 770′.

Wednesday

  • Methods in Arabic and Islamic Studies Class – 10:30, LMH Library.
  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on Thomasin von Zerklaere – 11:15, Oriel College. If you are interested to be added to the teams group for updates and access to the sources, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • Early Printed Books: A Computer-Aided Collate-A-Thon – 2:00, Taylor Institute Library. To book a place, please sign up here. For information about the project see here or contact Giles Bergel at giles.bergel@eng.ox.ac.uk 
  • Oxford Seminar in the History of Alchemy and Chemistry: Life and Nature in Early Modern Alchemy – 3:00, Maison Française d’Oxford. Oana Matei (Western University of Arad) will be speaking on ‘Can Life Rise from Ashes? Discussions on the Possibility of the Palingenesis of Plants in the Seventeenth Century’; Xinyi Wen (Warburg Institute) will be speaking on ‘Cosmos or Coitus? A Copy Census of Oswald Croll’s Basilica Chymica, 1609–1690′.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5:00, Merton College, Breakfast Room. This term we are reading Völsunga saga. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact one of the group convenors via email Brooklyn Arnot or Zeynep Kirca. 
  • The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online. To join and/or to find out more about this and the possibility of some hands-on experience of cataloguing such documents to develop further your research skills, please contact  Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar, Ioannou Centre. Pawel Nowakowski (Warsaw) will be speaking in ‘New Fragments of the Order (forma generalis) of the Praetorian Prefect of the East, Pusaeus Dionysius, 480 CE, from Stratonikeia in Caria’.
  • Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies Lecture – 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Dr Harry Muntv(University of York) will be speaking on ‘Haram Historiography: Writing the History of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem in the Early Islamic Centuries’.  
  • Oxford Centre of Early Medieval Britain and Ireland: Invisible East – 5:00, online. Nima Asefi (Universität Hamburg) will be speaking on ‘Documents from Turbulent Times: Studying Middle Persian Collections from the Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Periods-Opportunities and Challenges’. Registration essential.  
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5:15, The Schwarzman Centre, room 00.018 . Cathy Shrank (U of Sheffield) will be speaking on ‘Thomas More’s dialogues’.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. All are welcome as we finish Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Bring any edition of the original text! There will be tea and biscuits. For more information or to be added to the mailing list, please email Rebecca Menmuir. 
  • Oxford Environmental History Working Group – 12:30, Schwarzman Centre History Hub Room 20.421. Wallerand Bazin will be speaking on ‘Bracken dissensus: a historical political ecology of tree planting in the English Lake District’.
  • Oliver Smithies Lecture at Balliol College – 5:15, Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College. Elaine Treharne (Stanford University) will be speaking on “Death of a Nun: Medieval Women Scribes and Networks of Piety”. Followed by a Drinks Reception. More information here.
  • Bede Reading Group (or, ‘Bede-ing Group’) – 6:00, Blackfriars. To sign up, email Maura McKeon. Don’t stop Bede-lieving.
  • Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Council webinar on funding – 8:00 online. MAA Special Projects Assistant Jon Dell Isola will discuss what grants are available to graduate students, how to apply, and tips for grant applications. Register here.
  • Compline in the Crypt – 9:30, St Edmund Hall.

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – Friday 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 3:00. Courtauld Gallery (London) Visit.
  • Old Frisian Reading Group – 3:00, Online.
  • Medieval Latin Reading Group – 5:30, Christ Church. This term, we will be reading the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris in the original. For more information, please contact Clara Bykvist or Monty Powell. 

Opportunities (see Medieval Studies booklet for full details)

  • The experimental production of the Harrowing of Hell is still looking for players. More information can be found here.
  • OMS small grants is now open! Grants are normally in the region of £100–250 and can either be for expenses or for administrative and organisational support such as publicity, filming or zoom hosting. Closing date for applications: Friday of Week 5.
  • Publishing with the Journal Manuscript and Text Cultures. Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page.
  • Register for the Anglo-German Research Funding Opportunities Showcase, Wednesday, 13 May  •  2 PM – 5:30 PM | Eventbrite. The Global Engagement team will host representatives from some of the major German and UK funding bodies (DFG, The Royal Society, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Royal Academy of Engineering and more) at Rhodes House; for Early Career People as well as established researchers!
  • CfP – Representations of Women and/as Animals in Literature, Arts, and Other Media. Deadline: 15 July 2026.
  • Sir John Rhŷs Prize for the study of the Celtic languages, literature, history, and antiquities. Entries should be submitted by email, with the subject line “Sir John Rhŷs Prize”, to the English Faculty Office, no later than Monday of Week 8 of Trinity Term (15 June 2026).
  • CfP – 9th International Conference on Myth Criticism. Deadline: 15 May 2026
  • CfP – The Nine Worthies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Deadline: 15 May 2026
  • CfP – Contested Ground: Ownership and Belonging in the Middle Ages. More information here. Deadline: 1 June 2026.
  • CfP – 1027 – 2027 : The World in which William was Born. More information here. Deadline: 1 June 2026.
  • 20th MEMSA Anniversary Conference. More information here. Deadline: 20th June 2026.
  • The Mortimer History Society will once again be offering two Research Bursaries (each of £1000) for the academic year 2026 to 2027, for PhD and MA students whose research includes any aspect of the medieval Welsh Marches or the Mortimers. More information here. Deadline: 30 June 2026.
  • Bodleian Purchasing Opportunity. Do you know of books that would aid your work but are not in the Bodleian? Help us strengthen the university’s collections. You can submit details of suggested books via https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/recommend-a-purchase or by email to medieval@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

Feminaminals

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08/05/2026

12:05

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Around Oxford, Call for Papers, conference

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Call for papers Representations of Women and/as Animals in Literature, Arts, and Other Media

University of Oxford, Oriel College, 14-16 April 2027
Keynote speakers: Prof Chloë Taylor (University of Alberta) and Dr Kaori Nagai (University of Kent)
Roundtable with Queer Kinship Network led by Prof Charlotte Ross (University of Oxford)
Organising committee: Dr Fanny Clemente (University of Oxford), Dr Greta Colombani (independent scholar), Dr Cécile Bishop (University of Oxford)

FEMINANIMALS is a three-day international conference investigating representations of women as non-human animals and of the relationship between women and non-human animals in literature, arts, and other media across languages, from medieval to contemporary times. The last decades have witnessed an explosion of theoretical discourses directed towards a critique of humanism and a re-evaluation of humans’ interactions with the non-human world and wider ecosystem. Since the 1970s such a focus has found a privileged expression in ecofeminist theories, which have started to interrogate and deconstruct the history-long, negatively connoted association of women with non-human animals and to denounce the fundamental links between the oppression of women and that of non- human nature simultaneously perpetrated by the patriarchal system. From the ecofeminist manifestos of the 1990s (Gaard 1993, Gruen 1993, Plumwood 1993, Adams and Donovan 1995), the field of inquiry examing the deleterious intersections of anthropocentric and androcentric attitudes has been prolifically expanded and enriched by a notable array of theoretical standpoints adopting diverse disciplinary perspectives and an increasingly intersectional approach, that is, bringing to the fore of the analysis other categories of oppression that ought to be necessarily considered alongside gender and species, such as race, sexuality, class, physical abilities. Recent contributions to the field include Alaimo and Hekman 2008, Decka 2012, Adams and Gruen 2014, Gaard 2017, Vakoch and Mickey 2017, Braidotti 2022, and Taylor 2024. Theoretical discourses on the intersected nature of different systems of oppressions have been productively applied to the study of literature and other arts. Some of the above-mentioned works already include references to or analysis of literary and artistic sources (Taylor 2024); other contributions directly postulate, for instance, the benefits of intertwining ecofeminism and literary criticism (Gaard and Murphy 1998, Vakoch and Mickey 2019, and Vakoch 2023). Increasingly moving away from a privileged Anglo-American-centred perspective, moreover, scholarship is embracing more comprehensive assessments of literary and artistic portrays of nature, non-human animals, and humans’ relationship with them. Following in the footsteps of such recent contributions, dialoguing with different theoretical approaches and exploring different media, FEMINANIMALS seeks to enrich and foster ongoing discussions around the connections and intersections between our changing constructions of womanhood and animality by looking at representations of women as non-human animals and of the relationship between women and non-human animals, from medieval to contemporary times, assessing the significance and implications of those representations against the backdrop of diverse historical and cultural contexts. Across time and space, literature, arts, and other media have been pervaded by portrayals of women as/and animals, from the moralistic, religiously informed intertwining of gender and species in medieval bestiaries, exempla such as the cuento XXXV “La mujer brava” in Don Juan Manuel’s El Conde Lucanor or works like Boccaccio’s Il Corbaccio (ca. 1365) describing women as an “animale imperfetto” to the countless retellings and translations of the legend of the half-human half-snake Melusine in widely circulating texts like Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine (ca. 1393) and its adaptations in the following centuries, from the woman-animal erotic unions and shapeshifting in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century supernatural tales Liaozhai zhiyi by Pu Songling to the numerous poems dedicated to wild, exploited, or domesticated animals by Romantic and Victorian women authors such as Anna Letitita Barbauld’s “A Mouse’s Petition” (1773) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “To Flush, My Dog” (1843), from Odette’s transformation into a swan in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake (1877) to visual depictions of woman-animal entanglements like Oskar Kokoschka’s painting Mädchenakt auf galoppierendem Schimmel in Weiherlandschaft (1905) and the surrealist works of Leonora Carrington who herself identified as a “female human animal”. The manifold associations between women and non-human animals continue to be prominent in recent times, enriched by new media and perspectives, with meaningful examples including Clarice Lispector’s novel A paixão segundo G.H (1964) centring on the unsettling encounter of the female protagonist with a cockroach, Marie Darrieussecq’s satirical tale of a woman’s metamorphosis into a female pig in Truismes (1996), the Africanfuturist speculative fiction of Nnedi Okorafor who endows the heroine of Who Fears Death (2010) with the magical ability to turn into a vulture and dedicated her novella Binti (2015) to a jellyfish, and the central place that the porous borders between women and animals occupy in Athina Rachel Tsangari’s cinema, particularly in Attenberg (2010) and her short film The Capsule (2012). What can these pervasive representations of women as/and animals in different cultures and historical periods tell us about the complexities and intersections of shifting notions of gender and species, the fraught line between humanity and animality, and the entwined practices of domination and othering to which women and animals have been subjected? How can we look at such a variety of literary and artistic sources with the benefit of decades of theoretical perspectives that have tackled the historical, philosophical, social, cultural, and political implications of the multifaceted association of women and non-human animals? In what crucial ways can an interdisciplinary, comparative, and temporally wide approach help us think about and rethink this fundamental pairing today, as we continue to navigate, experience, suffer, and/or reclaim it against the backdrop of a dramatic environmental crisis, a deterioration of our relationship with nature and other living creatures, and a new rising tide of sexism that is infiltrating the virtual and real-life world? The conference aims to foster new conversations around these questions by inviting scholars to examine representations of women as/and animals across languages and cultures, from medieval times to the present day. We encourage proposals considering works belonging to different media and genres, focusing on canonical as well as non-canonical authors and artists, and dialoguing with diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, such as human-animal studies, posthumanist studies, new materialism studies, ecofeminist studies, animal studies, critical animal studies, animality studies, gender studies, critical race and postcolonial studies, queer studies, psychoanalytic and post-structural studies, affect theory, and other relevant fields of inquiry.

Papers may explore topics including, but not limited to:

  • women-animals metamorphoses
  • women-animals hybrids
  • women, animals, and the body
  • women, animals, and sexuality
  • women, animals, and gender
  • women, animals, and race
  • women, animals, and class
  • women, animals, and motherhood
  • metaphors of women as animals
  • women, animals, and language
  • kinship between women and animals
  • women, animals, and ethics and aesthetics of care
  • women, animals, and the environmental crisis
  • women, animals, and science
  • women, animals, and spirituality
  • women, animals, and folklore
  • women writers/artists and animals
  • trans women and animals
  • women, animals, and the male gaze

The conference is part of a wider project including a cultural programme of public events that will take place at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in April 2027 and will consist in:

  • a writers roundtable with authors Naomi Booth, Chịkọdịlị Emelụmadụ, Helen Jukes, and Helen Macdonald;
  • a screening of H is for Hawk (2025) preceded by conversation with director Philippa Lowthorpe.

More information on the cultural programme, confirmed dates, and how to register will follow. All conference participants are very welcome to extend their stay in Oxford to attend the events. Please note that the conference will take place in person in Oxford with no possibility for hybrid participation. There will be no conference fee. All presentations should be in English and last no longer than 20 minutes. Proposals, including title, abstract (250 words max), and short bio (150 words max), must be submitted via email in a single Word document to Dr Fanny Clemente and Dr Greta Colombani by 15 July 2026. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 30 July 2026. Please feel free to contact the organisers Dr Fanny Clemente and Dr Greta Colombani at any point for inquiries and further information. 

Image: The siren from the Merton Bestiary https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Serena

Medieval Matters MT24, Week 4

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03/11/2024

11:12

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events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

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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 Room, Exeter 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

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

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25/10/2024

15:58

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Call for Papers, opportunities, Uncategorized

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We are delighted to announce the finalised programme (and opening of advance registration for online attendance) for the Oxford University Byzantine Society’s 27th Annual International Graduate Conference entitled ‘Byzantium and its environment’, taking place on the 1st-2nd March, 2025, at the Faculty of History, George Street, OX1 2BE. The programme and abstracts of papers can be found on our website here. The costs for attendance are as follows:
In person attendance: £15 for OUBS members / £20 for non-members
Online attendance: £5

Papers will be delivered in-person, with the proceedings broadcast on a Zoom link which will circulate via email to those purchasing online attendance tickets via Eventbrite. Advance registration for in person attendance is not necessary. If you plan on attending online, please purchase a ticket via Eventbrite here.

We are grateful for the generous support of The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR), The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, and The Faculty of History of the University of Oxford, as well as the many others who have helped with the conference’s facilitation.

We look forward to welcoming you to Oxford. Best wishes, the Conference Organisers:
OUBS President Alexander Johnston
OUBS Secretary Sophia Miller
OUBS Treasurer Duncan Antich

Schedule of Papers

Session 1: Saturday, 11.30–13.00

Panel 1a: The Water Cycle (Chair – Duncan Antich)

‘Exploring Monastic Water Systems: A Preliminary Study from the Kyrenia Range’ – Mehmetcan Soyluoğlu (The Cyprus Institute)

‘Sacred Waters: Fish, Fishermen, and the Baptism of Christ in Cretan Churches’ – Nicolyna Enriquez (University of California, Los Angeles)

‘Mollusk Materiality: Maritime Encounters at the Euphrasian Basilica in Poreč, Croatia’ – Zoe Appleby (Case Western Reserve University)

Panel 1b: Nature in Verse and Liturgy (Chair – Tarah Rosendahl)

‘St. Demetrius and the Enduring Earthquake’ – John Elliott Clark (Kellogg College, University of Oxford)

‘Wolves, Waves and Thunderstorms: Nature and Suffering in Nikolaos Mouzalon’s poem’ – Kyriakos Costa (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)

‘“Rise, oh Nile!”: Ritualization of the Flooding of the Nile in medieval Melkite Egyptian euchologia’ – Achraf Brahim (University of Vienna)

Session 2: Saturday, 14.00–15.30

Panel 2a: Transition – Climatic shifts from the 4th-9th centuries (Chair: Marcus Wells)

‘Seasonal Patterns in the Archaeological, Palaeoclimatological, and Historic Records of Hunnic Mobility within the Byzantine Empire in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries’ – Mel G. Smith (University of Cambridge)

‘Nobody Wants to be Here, and Nobody Wants to Leave: Climate and Resilience in the 6th Century’ – Andrew McNey (Reuben College, University of Oxford)

‘Non-Elite Earthquake Responses in Lechaion Basilica, Corinthia (6th to 9th c.CE)’ – James Razumoff (University of Virginia)

Panel 2b: The Literary climate (Chair: Gabriel Clisham)

‘Cassiodorus’ natural digressions and their role in Ostrogothic politics’ – Ethan Chilcott (Pembroke College, University of Oxford)

‘Fearful Heights, Helpful Thieves, and Wild Honey. Representations of Mountains and Mountain Peoples in Late Byzantine Epistolography’ – Guillaume Bidaut (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

‘Reconsidering the Bulgarian Revolt of 1040: Environmental Perspectives’ – Findlay Willis (Pembroke College, University of Oxford)

Session 3: Saturday, 16.00–17.30

Panel 3a: Paradise (Chair: Sophia Miller)  

‘Ephrem’s Eternal Landscape: Natural Imagery in the Hymns on Paradise’ – Katherine Painter (Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford)

‘Arboreal Analogues: Trees as Spiritual Participants in a North African Baptismal Font’ – Luke Hester (Case Western Reserve University)

‘Fruitful Trees, Lush Vegetation, and Unified Weather Conditions: Depicting Nature in Byzantine Art of Crete Under Venetian Rule’ – Polymnia Synodinou (University of Crete)

Panel 3b: Practicality (Chair: Alexander Johnston)

‘Illuminating the Byzantine Frontier: A Geospatial Study of Environmental Considerations in the Ninth Century Fire Beacon Network’ – Annalise Whalen (University of Central Florida)

‘The Impact of Natural and Environmental Factors on Defense Structures: The Walls of Bursa’ – Egemen Deniz (Bursa Uludağ University)

‘In the Making of the Water Heritage: Picturing the Valens Aqueduct in Early Modern Constantinople’ – Fatma Sarıkaya-Işık (Middle East Technical University)

Session 4: Sunday, 11.30–12.30

Panel 4a: Landuse and Landscape (Chair: Eleanore Debs)            

‘Modeling Mobility in the Chora: Rural Christianity and Sacred Landscape in Late Antique Aphrodisias’ – Elizabeth R. Davis (Brown University)

‘Use of Marginal Land: The Expansion of Settlements and Use of the Environment in the Upper Western Galilee in Late Antiquity’ – Matthew Peters (Keble College, University of Oxford)

Panel 4b: The Late Antique Little Ice Age (Chair: Findlay Willis)

‘Examining the Late Antique Little Ice Age’s Impact on Negev Viticulture Through 19th Century European Analogues’ – Molly A. Stevens (Independent Scholar)

‘‘The Ister is foreign to you’: climate and warfare behind and beyond the Danube at the end of Late Antiquity’ – Carlo Alberto Rebottini (University of San Marino)

Session 5: Sunday, 13.30–14.30

Panel 5a: Nature and Art between two faiths (Chair: Michael Hughes)

‘Crosses in early Islam’ – Gabriel Fowden (Independent Scholar)

‘Mosaics as Micro-Cosmos: Nature and Identity in Christian and Islamic Mosaics of the Seventh-and Eighth-Century Levant’ – Madeleine Duperouzel (Hertford College, University of Oxford)

Panel 5b: Grapes and Bees (Chair: Ethan Chilcott)

‘Teeming the Divine: Art and Architecture of Sacred Spaces as Environmental Amplifications in 9th-10th century Cappadocia’ Maria Shevelkina (Stanford University)

‘Bees and Wasps in Byzantine Hagiography’ – Ayşenur Mulla-Topcan (University of Silesia in Katowice)

From the Archive: The Call for Papers

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.

Header image: © Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Photography by Neil Greentree

Call for Papers – ‘Epiros: The Other Western Rome’

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30/07/2024

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Around Oxford, Call for Papers

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Friday 8th – Saturday 9th November 2024, Virtual Workshop

For close to two and a half centuries, the state of Epiros represented a crucial node for an alternative socio-political network of the Balkans. Founded by the illegitimate son of the union of three imperial Byzantine dynasties, at its largest extent Epiros assumed the title of ‘Empire of the Romans’ and campaigned to the very walls of Constantinople. Defeated but not destroyed in 1230, Epiros persisted in its autonomy through the strength of its ties. Bound by either marriages or confession to Italians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Vlachs and Albanians, and more, Epiros continued to exist as an alternate, moved Byzantium that understood its reunification of the former provinces of the Byzantine Balkans to be a retaking and preservation of ‘the West’, a term with which it also self-identified. Transitioning in the fourteenth century to Albanian and later Italian rule, Epiros’ role as a centre of multi-ethnic exchange and independence created a legacy that exists today.

This workshop seeks to gather leading research across multiple fields to discuss the places and peoples which were either part of or engaged with this Epirote Western Rome. Following two successful panels at Kalamazoo and Leeds International Medieval Congresses, supported by the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, this hybrid workshop calls upon scholars to present from multiple specialisms. One of the reasons Epiros and its neighbours in the period of the Principality, Empire, and Despotate have remained so poorly studied has been the reliance upon century-old editions and a reluctance to publish in translation. Therefore, we envision not only a proceedings volume from this workshop but additionally the creation of a ‘sourcebook’ for Epirote Western Rome and its surrounding states which presents both papers and the key materials for its study in English translation with critical edition as necessary.

Potential topics for study include but are not limited to: History, Archaeology, Epistolography, Art History, Ethnic/Identity Studies, Spatial and Topography Studies, Numismatics, Network Studies, Sigillography, Ecclesiastical Studies, Manuscript Studies, Environmental History, Philology and Vernacular Studies. Papers should be twenty minutes long, allowing ten minutes for questions, and shall be delivered in English. Please email abstracts of 300 words to Nathan Websdale by Saturday 17th August 2024.

Organisers: Nathan Websdale (Oxford), Evangelos Zarkadas (Rhode Island).

Header image: Michael I Komnenos Doukas Angelos. Silver Aspron Trachy (3.54 g), ca. 1210. Mint of Arta. Nimbate bust of Christ Emmanuel facing, raising hand in benediction and holding Gospels. Reverse: + MIXAHΛ ΔECΠE, Michael standing facing, holding scepter and akakia; above to right, manus Dei. DOC 1; SB 2227 Extremely rare.

In association with the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR) and Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH).

CFP: Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024: Exchanging Words

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13/02/2024

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Call for Papers

The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group is delighted to announce the date and the theme for their 2024 conference: The conference will be held in person on June 18th 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library.

The aim of this conference is to explore the concept of exchange, whether it be textual or material, to, for and between women in the global Middle Ages. As a research group based upon the concept of exchanging ideas, we wish to explore medieval women’s own networks of exchange and transmission, and the influence of this upon both the literature and culture of the period as well as the present day.

We therefore welcome papers exploring any aspect of connections, correspondence and communication in the field of medieval women’s writing, from any discipline, be it literary, historical or otherwise. There are no limitations on geographical or language focus, as long as the topic falls within the medieval period.  

Examples of areas of interest may include, but are not limited to:

  • Letters to, from, between and about women
  • Female epistolary networks
  • The epistolary genre, rhetoric, and ars dictaminis
  • Manuscripts, manuscript networks and transmission
  • Gifts between women
  • Female patronage of the arts and architecture 
  • Knowledge exchange by women
  • Applying theoretical approaches (e.g. feminist or queer theory) to medieval texts
  • The material culture of women’s writing

Papers should aim to be 20 minutes, to be delivered in English.

Please submit your abstracts (250-300 words) along with a brief bio (max. 100 words) to Katherine Smith (katherine.smith@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) and Marlene Schilling (marlene.schilling@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk). The deadline for the submission is March 31st 2024 and notifications will be made in mid April 2024. The final program will be published by the end of April 2024.

Please direct any questions to any of the conference organizers Katherine Smith, Marlene Schilling, Carolin Gluchowski or Santhia Velasco Kittlaus

The research group and the conference are generously funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their “Critical-Thinking Communities” Initiative. 

CFP: The Fifteenth Century Conference

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20/11/2023

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Call for Papers

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St John’s College, Oxford, 5th-7th September 2024

Proposals are now invited for The Fifteenth Century Conference 2024. This annual meeting brings together established scholars and new researchers in the field, acting as a showcase for current research and a forum for encouraging new directions of enquiry. We invite proposals for research papers on any subject relating to the history of the long fifteenth century in the British Isles, Ireland, or in the French territories of the English monarchy. Proposals on all kinds of history are welcome, as are interdisciplinary ones.

Papers should be 40-45 minutes in length, to be followed by 15-20 minutes of questions and discussion. They should therefore be based on original research and be suitable for working up for submission to The Fifteenth Century, an edited series closely associated with the Conference. (Please note: there is no obligation to publish and submissions to this series undergo a separate peer-review process. For details see: https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-fifteenth-century/)

Proposals from postgraduates at the later stages of doctoral work and from early-career researchers are particularly encouraged. All speakers will be expected to deliver their papers in person and to pay the standard registration and other fees. This cost-sharing helps to make the conference as affordable as possible for everyone. However, there are two £250 bursaries for postgraduate speakers at the conference offered by the Richard III Society.

Please send proposals for papers to Laura Flannigan (laura.flannigan@sjc.ox.ac.uk) and Rowena Archer (rowena.archer@history.ox.ac.uk) by 31 January 2024. Proposals should include a title and an abstract of the paper totalling no more than 300 words, outlining the research basis, methodology, and significance for the field. Please also provide a short biography including any institutional affiliations and, in the case of postgraduate students, the name of your PhD supervisor. All proposals will be reviewed by the Fifteenth Century Conference advisory board.

CfP: Transgression in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

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27/10/2023

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26th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society:
Transgression in Late Antiquity and Byzantium

24th-25th February 2024, Oxford

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 26th Annual Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference on the 24th – 25th February, 2024. Papers are invited to approach the theme of ‘Transgression’ within 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.

‘Seduced by love for you, I went mad, Aquilina … she, smouldering, not any less love-struck than me, would wander throughout the house … love alone became her heart’s obsession … Her tutor chased me. Her grim mother guarded her … they scrutinised our eyes and nods, and colouring that tends to signal thoughts … soon both of us began to seek out times and places to converse with eyebrows and our eyes, to dupe the guards, to put a foot down gingerly, and in the night to run without a sound. Our fiery hearts ignite a doubled frenzied passion, and so an anguish mixed with love rages … Boethius, offering aid, pacifies her parents’ hearts with “gifts” and lures soft touches to my goal with cash. Blind love of money overcomes parental love; they both begin to love their daughter’s guilt. They give us room for secret sins … yet wickedness, when permitted, becomes worthless, and lust for the deed languishes … so a sanctioned license stole my zeal for sinning, and even longing for such things departed. The two of us split up, miserable and dissatisfied in equal measure …’

Maximianus, Elegies, 3 (adapted tr. Juster)

The Late Antique and Byzantine world was a medley of various modes of transgression: orthodoxy and heresy; borders and breakthroughs; laws and outlaws; taxes and tax evaders; praise and polemic; sacred and profane; idealism and pragmatism; rule and riot. Whether amidst the ‘purple’, the pulpits, or the populace, transgression formed an almost unavoidable aspect of daily life for individuals across the empire and its neighbouring regions. The framework of ‘Transgression’ then is very widely applicable, with novel and imaginative approaches to the notion being strongly encouraged. In tandem with seeking as broad a range of relevant papers as possible within Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, some suggestions by the Oxford University Byzantine Society for how this topic might be treated include:

·      The Literary – deviance from established genres, styles or tropes; bold exploration of new artistic territory; penned subversiveness against higher authorities (whether discreetly or openly broadcasted); dissemination of literature beyond expected limits.

·      The Political – usurpers, revolts, breakaway regions, court intrigue, plots and coups; contravention of aristocratic or political hierarchies and their expectations; royal ceremonial and its changes, or imperial self-promotion and propaganda seeking to rupture or distort the truth.

·      The Geopolitical – stepping beyond or breaking through boundaries and borders, including invasions, expeditions, trade (whether in commodities or ideas), movements of peoples and tribes, or even the establishment of settlements and colonies.

·      The Religious and Spiritual – ‘Heresy’, sectarianism, paganism, esotericism, magic, and more; and, in reverse, all discussion of ‘Orthodoxy’, which so defined itself in opposition to that which it considered transgressive; monastic orders and practices (anchoritic and coenobitic) and their associated canons, themselves intertwined and explicative of what was deemed prohibited; holy fools and other individuals perceived as deviant from typical holy men.

·      The Social and Sartorial – gender-based expectations in public and private; the contravention (or enforcement) of status or class boundaries; proscribed or vagrant habits of dress, jewellery, fabrics, etc.

·      The Linguistic – transmission of language elements across regional borders or cultures, including loan words, dialectic and stylistic influences, as well as other topics concerning lingual crossover and interaction.

·      The Artistic and Architectural – the practice of spolia; the spread and mix of architectural styles from differing regions and cultures; cross-confessionalism evident from the layout or architecture of religious edifices; variant depictions of Christ and other holy figures; iconoclasm.

·      The Legal – whether it be examination of imperial law codes and their effectiveness or more localised disputes testified to by preserved papyri, all discussion concerning legal affairs naturally involves assessing transgressive behaviour and how it was viewed and handled.

·      It could even be that your paper’s relevance to ‘Transgression’ consists in its breaking out from scholarly consensus in a notable way!

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 Monday 27th November 2023. 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 for a remote audience. Accepted speakers should expect to participate in person.

CFP: Conflicts, Connections and Communities in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

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20/10/2023

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Call for Papers, opportunities

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23 November 2023 [Australian Central Daylight Time]
Online via Microsoft Teams


Keynote speakers: Prof. Daniel Anlezark (University of Sydney) and Dr Courtnay Konshuh (University of Calgary)


The complex series of interrelated Old English annals known as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC) constitutes one of the richest surviving examples of historical writing from early medieval England. Compiled in several extant manuscripts at different centres of monastic, episcopal, and royal activity, these annals shed crucial light on changing dynamics of power, on important cultural developments, on linguistic evolution, and on the crystallisation of communal identities in England between the late ninth and mid-twelfth centuries. In recent decades, increased linguistic, palaeographical, historical, and literary scrutiny of the annals has laid secure foundations for fine-grained work on the ASC as cultural artefacts that were reworked, redeployed, and reinterpreted in many different contexts throughout the middle ages (and beyond).
This online symposium, hosted by researchers at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, seeks to build on this scholarship by foregrounding new approaches to the ASC. In particular, we invite scholars from various disciplines and different career stages to submit proposals for 20-minute papers (to be presented in English) relating in some way to themes of conflict, connection, and/or community in the ASC and their wider context.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Representations of war and/or violence in the ASC
  • Discrepancies within and/or between separate versions of the ASC
  • Cross-cultural encounters and interactions in the ASC
  • Relationships between manuscripts of the ASC and related texts
  • Representations of particular communities and/or their relationships in the ASC
  • The creation and use of copies of the ASC within specific communities in early medieval England
  • The dissemination of the ASC and related texts

Please send paper proposals, including a title, 150–200-word abstract, and short biography, to Dr James Kane (james.kane@flinders.edu.au) and A/Prof. Erin Sebo (erin.sebo@flinders.edu.au).

Medieval Germany Workshop 2024, German Historical Institute London

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26/09/2023

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Call for Papers

Organised by the German Historical Institute London in co-operation with the German Historical Institute Washington and the German History Society, to be held in London.

This one-day workshop on the history of medieval Germany (broadly defined) will provide an opportunity for researchers in the field from the UK, continental Europe, and the USA to meet in a relaxed and friendly setting and to learn more about each other’s work. Proposals for short papers of 10–15 minutes are invited from researchers at all career stages with an interest in any aspect of the history of medieval Germany. Participants are encouraged to concentrate on presenting work in progress, highlighting research questions and approaches, and pointing to yet unresolved challenges of their projects. Presentations will be followed by a discussion.
Attendance is free, which includes lunch, but costs for travel and accommodation cannot be reimbursed. Doctoral students from North America (USA and Canada) who wish to present at the workshop, however, can apply for two travel grants provided by the German Historical Institute Washington. Please express your interest in this grant in your application. Support for postgraduate and early career researchers from the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland is available on a competitive basis, subject to eligibility requirements: postgraduate members of the German History Society currently registered for a higher degree at a university in the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland, and those who have completed a PhD within two years of the deadline for application but who have no other institutional sources of funding may apply for up to £150 for travel and accommodation.
Please see the GHS website for further information and application deadlines.
Please send your proposal, which must include a title, an abstract of c.200 words, and a biographical note of no more than c.100 words, to Marcus Meer: m.meer@ghil.ac.uk. Questions about all aspects of the workshop can also be sent to Len Scales: l.e.scales@durham.ac.uk

Students and researchers interested in medieval German history are also very welcome to attend and listen to the presentations. There is no charge for attendance, but pre-booking is essential. If you would like to attend as a guest, please contact Julian Triandafyllou: j.triandafyllou@ghil.ac.uk
The deadline for proposal submissions is 20 December 2023.