The deadline for proposal submissions is 15 February 2026.
29 May 2026, German Historical Institute in London Organised by the German Historical Institute London and the German History Society
This one-day workshop on the history of medieval Germany (broadly defined) offers an opportunity for researchers from Europe and the wider English-speaking world to meet at the German Historical Institute in London. Participants will be able to discuss their work in a relaxed and friendly setting and to learn more about each other’s research.
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 present work in progress, highlight research questions and approaches, and point to yet unresolved challenges of their projects. Presentations will be followed by a discussion.
Participation is free of charge and includes lunch and dinner. The GHIL and the GHS will also provide a contribution towards travel expenses. Accommodation costs cannot be reimbursed. Support is available for postgraduate and early career researchers: up to £150 for travel within the UK (excluding London) and up to 300€ for an economy round trip from Europe. Please indicate your interest in travel support in your application.
We look forward to reading your proposals. Please send your submission—which must include a title, an abstract of c.2000 words, and a biographical note of no more than c.1000 words—to Thomas Kaal: t.kaal@ghil.ac.uk. Questions about all aspects of the workshop can also be sent to Marcus Meer: m.meer@ucl.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 Kim König: k.koenig@ghil.ac.uk.
There will be two plenary speakers as respondents, one of them Henrike Lähnemann who recently gave the annual GHIL lecture:
Join leading pre-modernists and technologists from around the world at Ars Inquirendi, 4th-7th December 2025 (online / St Edmund Hall, Oxford ), to explore how Large Multimodal Models like Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini – massive, humanly conversant assimilations of learning – are transforming pre-modern studies, and how to use them in your own research.
Format: the first three days are entirely online. Presentations will be pre-released in late November via the Oxford Medieval Studies website, with the live sessions devoted to discussion, and held in the UK afternoon to maximize participation from around the world. The hybrid workshops on Days 3 & 4 are live.
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Day 1 (Thursday, 4th December) – A New Age of Pre-Modern Inquiry. In his opening keynote, Maurizio Forte unfolds how AI is transforming the conditions of archaeological knowledge, enabling archaeologists to rethink, reconstruct and even simulate the pre-modern world. From the evolution of ancient societies to the relations of minds and artifacts, humans and environments, he surveys emerging techniques such as agent-based reconstruction of cultural transitions, and neuroaesthetic analyses of gaze and visual attention. The following panel, Creating Research Machines with LMMs, gathers varied technologists and humanists to compare how they are already building working research systems using LMMs – and how even modest inputs can yield disproportionately large results.
12.30pm GMT
(we will be replaying the day’s pre-recorded presentations on the conference zoom channel)
2.30pm GMT Stephen Pink, Henrike Lähnemann and Anthony J. Lappin
Opening Keynote (live): Rethinking the Past: An AI Perspective in Archaeology
Abstract: Archaeology, traditionally reliant on material traces and contextual interpretation, is now engaging AI to simulate the evolution and transformation of ancient societies, to generate new scenarios, and to study the relationships between minds and artifacts, humans and environments. This keynote offers a methodological overview of emerging research questions and applications across different periods, from agent-based reconstructions of cultural transitions to machine learning and neuroaesthetics applied to the analysis of gaze, attention, and affordances in art and architecture. Together, these approaches demonstrate that AI is not only a technical instrument but also a new epistemic partner. By integrating computation with contextual interpretation, AI enables us to rethink both the past itself and the conditions of archaeological knowledge in the twenty-first century.
Roundtable. Creating Research Machines with LMMs, I All participants above, with Laura Morreale (Harvard), Achim Rabus (Freiburg)
End c. 7pm GMT
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Day 2 (Friday, 5th December) – LMMs and / as the Archive. Our first panel exposes the unprecedented opportunities and challenges for using the technology with archival materials and records – how can one document and trust LMM records in the same fashion as those generated by people? The second panel asks what it means for LMMs themselves to be the archive. Almost automatically, such models infer a pre-modern Graphosphere: the Old World’s totality of scratched, daubed, written, and otherwise inscribed artifacts, extant and destroyed. Yet only a fraction of what survives is imaged, let alone readable by LMMs —and that survival itself is only a fraction of what once existed. How can an LMM usefully know the pre-modern? From there, we turn to what a realised Graphosphere might enable by mapping what exists and is missing: from guiding the allocation of scant human and financial resources, and correcting long-term historical biases; to opening wholly new fields of scholarship.
12.30pm GMT
(we will be replaying the day’s pre-recorded presentations on the conference zoom channel)
2.30pm Chair: Stephen Pink
Response and Questions on the following talks (pre-released on 28th November):
Madeline Rose (TCD) (Re-) Structuring the Catalogue: Limitations and Design Strategy for Applying LLMs to Medieval Manuscript Catalogues
Imagine a pre-modern graphosphere: an LMM-inferred reconstruction of the totality of the Old World’s scratched, daubed, written, and otherwise inscribed artifacts – extant and destroyed – before the dominance of movable type. LMMs are already, almost automatically, inferring such a thing. Yet its likely centrality to future research also exposes the profound inadequacy of the current pre-modern LMM archive – that is, of the material on which these models train. This “archive” differs radically from an LMM’s usual training data. It is not the totality of printed matter (excluded by our definition of the pre-modern), nor of born-digital texts and images to which LMMs typically enjoy unfettered access. Instead it consists of the tiny fraction of extant pre-modern materials that have been transcribed or even just imaged – although most writing remains untranscribable by machine – in every case mediated by twenty-first-century technology and data forms. And the extant archive is only a fraction of what once existed. The first part of the panel examines this predicament: how the structure of digital availability shapes what AI can usefully “know” of the pre-modern world, and how technologies such as machine transcription are working to improve that structure. The second part turns to the opportunities even at this foundational phase: how LMMs can help map what exists and what is missing, guide digitisation priorities for funders, correct long-term biases in the historical record, and lay the ground for new insights, such as tracing the evolution – or polygenesis – of ideas and cultures across regions of the Old World and beyond.
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Day 3 (Saturday, 6th December)– Emergent Properties. We explore the unpredictable behaviours that appear as LMMs become more complex – above all, their apparent intellectual and aesthetic creativity. In his keynote, Roger Martínez-Dávila presents an AI-powered simulation of a fifteenth-century Castilian city, Plasencia, which resolved a civic dispute through an unforeseen strategy—one unattested in the sources yet historically plausible. The following panel broadens the discussion to ask what these behaviours mean for history, interpretation, and knowledge itself.
Workshop (live: online / Doctorow Hall, St Edmund Hall). Explore MapReader, a powerful toolkit for analysing historical maps – ideal for anyone interested in spatial humanities, cartography, or visual datasets.
1.45pm GMT . Tour of St Edmund Hall led by Henrike Lähnemann
The rest of the day’s programme is entirely online
1.45pm GMT
(we will be replaying the day’s pre-recorded presentations on the conference zoom channel)
Roger Martinez-Dávila (University of Colorado) Keynote. When Players Rewrite History: Gameworlds, LMMs, and Alternative Medieval Scenarios
Abstract: In this keynote I’ll present Virtual Plasencia v4.0: The Medieval Vines of Three Religions, an AI-powered simulation of a fifteenth-century Castilian city, modeling its social, religious, and economic networks. In a course test run, a student team resolved a dispute involving a senorial lord, civic council, and bishop in an unforeseen way—one not attested in primary sources—yet arrived at the same result. Their novel strategy hints at a plausible but unrecorded historical pathway. I’ll analyse this surprise and propose that AI simulations like Virtual Plasencia v4.0 function not as rigid reconstructions, but as speculative spaces where LMM-driven agents can explore trajectories beyond the constraints of archival silence.
3.30pm GMT Respondent: Anthony J. Lappin
Response and Questions to Keynote and Following Talks (pre-released 28th November)
Anthony Harris (Cambridge) Using Generative AI for Medieval Studies Research (I)
Day 4 (Sunday, 7th December)– Workshops. A hands-on continuation of Day 1’s theme, hybrid online / in-person workshops at St Edmund Hall, Oxford invite all participants to begin building and experimenting directly in their browsers. From promptotyping to map-based AI exploration and automated manuscript transcription, tutors guide attendees through the practicalities of integrating LMMs into their research.
1pm GMT Anthony Harris (Cambridge) Using Generative AI for Medieval Studies Research (II)
In this self-guided hands-on workshop attendees will have an opportunity to try out some of the things discussed by Dr Harris in the Saturday session – ask questions, get feedback on problems with suggested solutions, and look at problem areas such as avoiding hallucinations, keeping research data confidential from the general model, and more advanced prompt engineering. Note, it is very important that delegates attending the session: i. have a paid version of either ChatGPT (EDU is OK but the full version is preferred), Copilot for Office 365, Google Gemini, Claude or Perplexity. ii. should have already logged into one or more of these Generative AI Sessions and have entered the prompt ‘Give me a list of ten rhyming words of three syllables that do not end with Y’.
3.45pm GMT Ben Kiessling (Université Paris Sciences et Lettres) Unpacking Large Language Models: Design, Limitations, and Solutions for Humanities Research
Although LLMs have transformed text analysis, they remain optimised for the modern, leaving the pre-modern underserved. Learn how LLMs are constructed, and how the chosen parameters intersect, and often conflict, with common scholarly practice. The session concludes with practical strategies for overcoming such limitations.
New directions in the study of written artefacts from Antiquity to the late Middle Ages. Organised by the Crafting Documents project (AHRC-DFG) and co-sponsored by the Centre for Manuscripts and Text Cultures, University of Oxford. 13-14 NOVEMBER 2025, SHULMAN AUDITORIUM. THE QUEEN’S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Register for free here
9:30 Arrival and registration (coffee and tea available for all attendees) 9:45 Welcome Julia M. H. Smith (Crafting Documents co-PI, All Souls College, University of Oxford) Martin Kauffman (Head of early and rare collections, Special Collections, Bodleian Library) Dirk Meyer (Director of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, The Queen’s College, Oxford) 10:00 Brent Seales (University of Kentucky): UnLost: uncovering lost knowledge from the ancient library of Herculaneum 10:50 Richard Gameson (Durham University): The Hereford palimpsest psalter 11:40 Jess Hodgkinson (University of Leicester) Insular manuscripts and their readers: using photometric stereo imaging to study drypoint writing 12:30 Lunch Break TECHNOLOGIES TO RETRIEVE WRITING (Chair Lesley Smith, Harris Manchester College, Oxford) INKS AND PARCHMENT (Chair Martin Kauffman, Bodleian Library) 2:30 Kristine Rose-Beers (University Library Cambridge) Early Islamic manuscripts on parchment: surface preparation and practice-based research 3:20 Andy Beeby (Durham University) On the variation in the density of writing as seen by multi and hyper-spectral imaging: looking over the scribe’s shoulder 4:10 Coffee and tea break 5:00 Ira Rabin (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) Ana de Oliveira Dias (University of Oxford) Ink analysis of early medieval relic labels Wine reception sponsored by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, The Queen’s College, Oxford (6:00 – 7:00)DAY 2 MATERIAL SCIENCE AND HERITAGE RESEARCH 9:30 Alberto Campagnolo (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven) Approaches to heritage science for manuscripts in the Digital Humanities 10:20 Michael Marx, Institut für Studien der Kultur und Religion des Islam Goethe-Universität Frankfurt / Institute of Advanced Studies Jerusalem Results of carbondating of early Qurʾānic manuscript and their implications for our understanding of the history of the Qurʾān 11:10 Coffee and tea break 11:40 Matthew Collins (University of Copenhagen/University of Cambridge) Proteomics analysis of parchment samples 12:30 Colloquium pause (Chair Dirk Meyer, The Queen’s College, Oxford) 4:00 Coffee and tea 4:30 Tessa Webber (Trinity College, University of Cambridge) Early medieval written artefacts: a palaeographical perspective 5:00 Round table discussion BROADER PERSPECTIVES (Chair Julia Smith, All Souls College, University of Oxford)
The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference (OMGC) is one of the highlights of the graduate academic calendar every year. Over two days, this interdisciplinary conference brings together graduate students from the UK and around the world to present their research on a wide variety of topics from across the Middle Ages. Read a review of the 2025 conference. If you think you might be interested in becoming a committee member and gaining experience organizing conferences, please send an expression of interest to oxgradconf@gmail.com. The committee is also excited to announce that the theme for the 2026 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference will be Sounds and Silence! Until then, keep an eye on the OMGC website and social media (Bluesky / Twitter) for updates on this year’s conference.
Illustration: Cristabel and her baby are cast out to sea; from Eglamour of Artois, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Douce 261, fol. 39v. Creative commons licence: CC-BY-NC 4.0
Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia And online via Zoom
On September 12, 2025, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania will host a day-long symposium commemorating Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown’s extraordinary legacy in the field of Medieval Studies. The event will also mark the official launch of the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ archive, a new initiative at Penn Libraries to collect the professional papers of scholars of the Middle Ages and of associated professional organizations. The goal of the symposium is to honor Peggy’s legacy and gift by celebrating research on her area of specialty, namely Medieval France.
The symposium will consist of three panels of short papers devoted to subjects featured in Peggy’s work: Source and Archive; Politics and Kingship; and Liturgy and Sacred Image.
The day will also include an introduction to the research possibilities and historical interest of the medievalists’ archive at Penn, presented by the inaugural Elizabeth A.R. Brown Archivist, an endowed position in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The day will conclude with reminiscences by friends, students, and mentees, and a reception for all attendees.
Co-organized by Nicholas Herman (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Penn) and Ada Kuskowski (Department of History, Penn). Closing reception generously sponsored by the New York Medieval Society.
See here for event details, program, and abstracts. For Registration, click here. Donations to the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ Archivist Fund can be made here. Public messages honoring Peggy Brown’s contributions to the field of medieval studies can be left here.
In association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, convened by Anna Wilmore, Taro Kobayashi, and Katerina Levinson on 24 March 2025 in St Hugh’s College
9:15-10:15am – Panel 1: Textual and Visual Devotion
Susanne de Jong (Leiden): Praying with Compassion: The Devotion of Mary’s Sorrows in Middle Dutch Books of Hours
Fiammetta Campagnoli (Sorbonne): A “Devotional Mirror”: Following Mary’s Footsteps through Her Sorrow and Meditations
10:35-11:35am – Panel 2: Sacred and Secular
Joana Balsa de Pinho (Lisbon): Piety and welfare: the Sorrowful Virgin in the context of the Portuguese Confraternities of Mercy
Serena Cuomo (Santiago de Compostela): Mother of all mothers – Affective Piety and Maternal Grief in the Roman de Troie
11:35am-12:35pm – Panel 3: Emotion and Trauma
Costas Gavriel (Oxford): ‘You know my pain’: Trauma, Self-Narrative and Marian Devotion in the Memorias of Leonor López de Córdoba
Ana Vitoria Lopes (Sao Paulo): Crying Women in Devotional Panels: A Study through the Lens of the History of Emotions
2-3pm – Manuscript workshop at the Weston Library. Handout.
Presented by Anna Wilmore and Susanne de Jong, with manuscripts being shown by Bodleian curator Matthew Holford
Private Devotions: – MS Douce 264: early 16th century book of private prayers and devotions (Latin and French) printed for a member of the family of Scepeaux – MS Lat Liturg .e .36: Italian collection of prayers written for a nun, 14th /15th century
Latin and Vernacular: – MS Douce 1: A tiny prayer book c. 1460 England, containing prayers in Latin and Middle English
Middle Dutch Books of Hours – MS Douce 243: Dutch; 3rd quarter 15th Century – MS Buchanan f. 1: These are both Dutch Books of Hours using the translation of Geert Grote.
3:45-5pm – Montgomery Powell (Oxford): Myn kynt unde ok myn god: Sorrowful Participation in the Bordesholmer Marienklage, followed by performance and discussion of Marian laments. Handout
5pm-6pm – Keynote by Prof. Lesley Twomey (Northumbria): The Sorrows of the Virgin Mary at the Foot of the Cross in vernacular Vitae Christi in Medieval France, England and Spain.
The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin from The Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, approx 1525-35, Simon Benning, Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 19 (83.ML.115), fol. 251v
The Oxford/Groningen 2025 Old Frisian Summer School (OFSS25) will take place in Groningen (Netherlands), 7th-11th July. This will be a fun way to learn Old Frisian in a week, to view original Old Frisian manuscripts and to see the world heritage landscape of old Frisian ‘terps’ or dwelling mounds.
OFSS25 : Old Frisian : A Gem within the OId Germanic Languages.
The OFSS25 should be of special interest to students (UG and PG) and Early Career Researchers of Old English, Old Norse, Old High German or Gothic who are interested in learning Old Frisian. You will be taught grammar and practice translation in hands-on workshops. Invited speakers will give lectures by on the Old Frisian text corpus and history to provide historical and cultural context. Library visits to view the manuscripts are on the programme and a tour around the ‘terps’ will be organised on 12th July.
Questions?? Attend as a taster session a lecture by Johanneke Sytsema (as part of Henrike Lähnemann’s lecture series ‘Topics in Historical Linguistics’) on Strong Verbs Across English, Frisian, Dutch, Low German, High German, an introduction to the crucial place of Frisian in the history of Germanic Languages. Watch the recording from the Taylor Library, room 2, Friday week 5 (21 Feb), 2–3pm, on Panopto or below as part of the Paper IV youtube series
On Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November, the online workshop Epiros: The Other Western Rome was held, platforming twenty-one papers from sixteen universities. As the second phase of a new international project, the workshop investigated the Byzantine successor-state of Epiros (1204–1444). Formed from the Fourth Crusade, this Balkan state existed as an alternative narrative and third Byzantine-Roman context, encompassing a vast variety of peoples of the former empire.
Originally envisioned as a one-day workshop, the programme was expanded to two days to accommodate so many excellent submissions. As a result, we were able to offer panels on, The ‘Post-Komnenian System’, ‘Epiros and Bulgaria’, ‘Epiros and its other Neighbours’, ‘Network Analysis,’ ‘Hybrid Material Culture,’ and more. The workshop’s convenors are hugely grateful for the participation of speakers and attendees, as well as the support of both The Oxford Centre Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR).
An edited volume of papers is planned, and a selection of images below.
The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024 will be held on 18th June 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library both in person (presenters/attendees) and online (attendees).
Tuesday 18 June 2024, 9am – 5pm Online and In-person, Room 2, Taylor Institution Library, Saint Giles’, Oxford OX1 3NA Free but registration required Register here for in-person attendance – Sold out Register here to join the conference online Online registration closes 15 minutes before the start of the event. You will be sent the joining link within 48 hours of the event, on the day and once again 10 minutes before the event starts.
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 are delighted to present the programme for the day:
9:00-9:30 Registration 9:30-9:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks 9:45-11:15 Session 1 “Scholarly Networks” Katrin Janz-Wenig (SUB Hamburg) & Lenka Panušková (The Czech Academy of Sciences) | Communication Strategies Through Change: Translations, Compilations and Ekphrasis Ved Prabha Sharma (Independent Researcher) | Women Scholars and Knowledge Exchange in Medieval Indian shāstrārth Tradition Tatiana Barkovskiy (University of Cambridge) | A Beguinian Learning Network, or How to Approach ‘Medieval Women Mystics’ as Philosophers 11:15-11:45 Break with Refreshments 11:45-13:15 Session 2 “Relationships With and Between Women” Costas Gavriel (University of Oxford) | Gaining the Queen’s Confidence: The Relationship Between Leonor López de Córdoba and Catherine of Lancaster, Queen of Castile Lucia Akard (University of Oxford) | Talking About Rape and Exchanging Knowledge in Medieval Dijon Meg Greenough (Independent Researcher) | The Wilton Matrix: Mothering in Goscelin of Saint Betin’s Liber Confortatorius 13:15-14:30 Lunch Break Exploring the Taylorian’s Treasures, with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford) 14:30-15:45 Keynote Address Professor Diane Watt (University of Surrey) | Medieval Women Writers: Troubling a Feminist History of British Women’s Writing 15:45-16:15 Break with Refreshments 16:15-17:45 Session 3 “Nuns’ Words” Francesca Maria Villani (University of Bari) | Eloise’s Psalmody: Body and Voice Through the Epistles Jane Bliss (Independent Researcher) | The Nun Changes her Library Book Hilary Pearson (Independent Researcher) | Teresa de Cartagena’s Models of Female Authority 17:45 Closing Remarks 18:00 End of Conference
The research group and the conference are generously funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their “Critical-Thinking Communities” Initiative.
