The OMS Booklet is linked here, and is available on the OMS website throughout the term. The 2026 OMS Lecture will take place on Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm in the Old Dining Hall of St Edmund Hall. Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow) will be speaking on ‘Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church‘. Drinks to follow. More information and register for dinner. Also: OMS sends condolences to our colleague Anna Abulafia (former Professor of Abrahamic Religions) for the death of her husband, Prof. David Abulafia FBA
Events
Monday
- French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library
- Medieval History Seminar – 5:00, All Souls College. Anna Molnár (Reading) will be speaking on “Nuns’ Financial Literacy and the Private Banking Activities of Female Religious Organisations in the Later Middle Ages”
Tuesday
- Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Room 00.079 (Humanities Centre). Joe Stadolnik (University of Chicago) will be speaking on ‘Bad books in medieval Bristol: alchemy, liturgy and Thomas Norton’s ordinals’.
- Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar – 2:00, New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tom Johnson, Oxford will be speaking on ‘‘He hath payd his part’: The Political Economy of Fishing Doles in Late-Medieval England’
- Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
- Medieval Church and Culture, theme: TRANSLATION(S) – tea and coffee from 5:00, Harris Manchester College. Eugenia Vorobeva (St Anne’s) will be speaking on ‘Devil’s Laughter, Language, and Sin in the Old Norse-Icelandic ‘Passio Domini’ Homily’
- Medieval French Research Seminar – 5:15, Maison Française d’Oxford. Cat Watts (St Anne’s College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘”Nothing Of Thine Own”: Fandom, Devilry, and Rewriting Holy Tales’ .
- Old English Hagiography Reading Group – 5:15, Jesus College Memorial Room. The first text is the anonymous Life of Saint Giles – email Luisa Ostacchini for a copy.
- Church Historian Pub Night – 6:00 at the Chequers Inn. Contact Rachel Cresswell
Wednesday
- Medieval German Graduate Seminar – 11:15, Old Library, St Edmund Hall. The topic for this term is the ‘Liederbuch der Clara Hätzlerin’.
- History and Materiality of the Book Seminar series – 2:15, Weston Library. Martin Kauffmann will be discussing Decoration
- The Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
- Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. laudia Rapp (Vienna) and Michael Whitby (Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘Mark the Deacon: The Life of Porphyrius of Gaza (in collaboration with Translated Texts for Historians and LUP)’
- Islamic Studies Seminar- 5:00, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. James McDougall (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Worlds of Islam: A Global History’.
Thursday
- Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 11:00, Lincoln College, Beckington Room. All are welcome as we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: bring any edition of the original text.
- Environmental History Working Group – 12:30–2:00pm, Humanities Centre History Hub Room 20.421. Louis James Henry (PhD Medieval Environmental History, University of Stavanger, Visiting Student at KCL) will be speaking on “Timely Courts and Immediate Responses: Waste Management as a Temporal Issue in Late Medieval England”
- Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5:00, St Catherine’s College. Millie Horton-Insch (British Museum & Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on “Technologies of Reproduction and Sonderauftrag Bayeux: Re-Creating the Bayeux Tapestry for the Third Reich”
- Celtic Seminar – 5:15, Room 20.306 (Humanities Centre and Online). Rhiannon Marks (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘Envisaging the end: the representation of language decline in contemporary Welsh writing’
- Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15. Email Harriet Carter for location.
- The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5:15, The Khalili Research Centre. Maria Judith Feliciano (CSIC, Madrid) will be speaking on ‘the silk core, or lessons from medieval Iberian textile studies’
- Guild of Medievalist Makers, Making Space Session – 5:30, online. Optional theme: birds.
- 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.
- The History of the Bible: From Manuscripts to Print – 12:00, Visiting Scholars Centre at the Weston Library. The theme this week is ‘The New Testament’ Places are limited. To register interest and secure a place, please contact the lecturer at Péter Tóth
- Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room). Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo.
Opportunities and Reminders
- OMS Small Grants Now Open.
- Are you interested in submitting to the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures? Please review the About the Journal page for the journal’s section policies.
- Doctoral studentship on Carolingian Latin poetry (Toronto-Melbourne).
- CfP: Medieval German History (GHIL) – Deadline: 15 February
- ‘Describing the British Library’s Illustrated and Illuminated Incunabula’ PhD placement opportunity at the British Library. Deadline: 27th Feb.
- CfP: 20th Annual MEMSA Conference: Connection, Conversation, Contention: Encounters in the Medieval and Early Modern World – deadline 9 March 2026
- CfP: Gender and Medieval Studies conference 2026: Gender and Creativity. The conference will take place at University College, Oxford, 8-10 September. Deadline 13 April.
- Call for submissions for a special issue of Public Humanities journal on the topic ‘Creating the Medieval Now.’ Edited by Laura Varnam and Eleanor Barraclough. Short essays of 2,000-3,000 words, due 1 May 2026, by medievalists who are also creative practitioners.
