Tag: trinity 26

Harrowing of Hell Cast Call

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24/04/2026

13:22

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The Harrowing of Hell.26 is an experimental and abstract piece inspired by medieval mystery plays. It depicts Christ’s descent into Hell after his crucifixion, where he confronts Satan to free the righteous souls (Adam, Eve, the patriarchs, and the prophets) held captive for millennia. The one Satan believed he had defeated returns to break down the gates of Hell. The characters oscillate between anguish and hope as they await redemption.

About the director: Méryl Vourch is an Oxford Visiting Student at Merton College. She has worked as an assistant director with Laurent Delvert and Denis Podalydès at the Opéra de Lille (Gounod’s Faust, May 2025), and assisted Caroline Staunton (Don Giovanni, Opéra Bastille, 2023) and Mariame Clément (Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival, 2023). As a director, she has staged three productions in Paris: Hamlet, Alice in Wonderland (Théâtre Nicole Loraux, 2024–2025), and Mamma Mia! (MPAA, 2025).

We will be performing our play in week 6 (2 to 6 June) at the Burton Taylor Studio, from 9:30 to 10:30pm and in week 7 (9 to 11 June, tbc) in the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (St Edmund Hall), from 8 to 9pm. We are still missing three roles (Adam, Eve, and a demon; all backgrounds welcome, aged 18+). There were auditions on 25/26 April, but anyone who was unavailable is very welcome to contact the director by email for further information.

Roles Available

  • One demon (one of two): part of a grotesque and comic duo—agents of chaos, both cruel and ridiculous, frustrated by their condition.
  • Adam and Eve: a bourgeois couple frozen in time, marked by long waiting, repetitive gestures, and a certain passivity

All roles include some choreographed scenes (minimal movement required).

Auditions

Please prepare a monologue of your choice (2–5 minutes) and an extract from the audition pack for your chosen role. Contact : meryl.vourch@merton.ox.ac.uk if you are interested or have any questions! If the audition dates have already passed but you are still interested, you are very welcome to contact us.

Workshop on Late Medieval German Drama

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24/04/2026

10:53

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When: 2 May 2026, 11:30-16:45
Where: Taylor Institution Library, Room 2

Organisers: Henrike Lähnemann, Monty Powell, Carlos Rodríguez Otero, Sharang Sharma

A group of Oxford medievalists is currently working on an edition of the liturgical music for the Frankfurt Passion Play which was left unfinished by the late Peter Macardle (Die liturgischen Gesänge der Frankfurter Dirigierrolle und des Frankfurter Passionsspiels, under contract with Open Book Publishers). As part of the launch, planned for autumn 2026, they intent to perform an extract of the Mary Magdalen scenes from the play in a new dramatic English translation. The workshop on 2 May is meant to help prepare this performance by creating an English verse version and testing the musical transcription (with musicologist Margot Fassler as guest of honour).

Everybody is invited to the workshops who is interested in creative dramatic translation, or pre-modern German, or liturgical music, or an intersection of these. Please register your interest with one of the organisers at St Edmund Hall, Henrike Lähnemann or Carlos Rodríguez Otero; free lunch is included.

  • 11.30 – 12.30        First part of the workshop
  • 12.30-1.30            Lunch
  • 2-4pm                   Workshop continues
  • 4-4.15pm              Tea break
  • 4.15-4.45pm         Read-through performance

Play Manuscripts

List of musical sources used for reconstructing the musical chant

  • Frankfurt Sequentiar: Frankfurt UB Barth. 49 (Bartholomäusstift, mid-15th cent.)
  • Anti­pho­nal: Frankfurt UB lat. qu. 48 / Barth. 94 (Bartholomäusstift, mid 15th cent.)
  • Gradual Moguntinum: Frankfurt UB lat. qu. 44 (Bartholomäusstift, 2nd quarter 15th cent.)
  • Gradual Moguntinum: Frankfurt UB Ms. Leonh. 13 (c. 1525 from St Leonhard)
From the presentation for the workshop day Cambridge 25 April 2026 on Liturgical Chant

Forgotten Libraries

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21/04/2026

12:14

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Lost, dispersed, and marginalised manuscript collections

Provisional programme – for updates refer to the blog of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures. For more information: clement.salah@queens.ox.ac.uk or shaahin.pishbin@queens.ox.ac.uk

Day 1: Tuesday 16 June: The Making and Unmaking of Libraries

Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford

9:00 Welcome
9:15–9:30 Shaahin Pishbin & Clément Salah, “Introduction to Forgotten Libraries”
Session 1: Reconstructing Dispersed Libraries
9:30–10:00 Henrike Lähnemann, “Superfluous precious objects: Reconstructing the
manuscript production of the Medingen nuns”
10:00–10:30 Nour Obeid, “Writers’ Libraries as Houses of Trouble: Fragmentation and
Reconstruction in the Arab Region”
10:30–11:00 James White, “The Hyperlinked Manuscript: Reading and Bibliography in
Seventeenth-Century Iran”
11:00–11:30 Coffee Break
Session 2: Endowment, Community, and the Formation of Libraries
11:30–12:00 Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, “Endowment practices and the formation of Jewish
libraries in the Islamicate world”
12:00–12:30 Ronny Vollandt, “Karaite library in Jerusalem”
12:30–14:00 Lunch
Session 3: Displacement, Empire, and Reconfigured Collections
14:00–14:30 Hallie Swanson, “Between Royal Collection and Oriental Repository: The
Forgotten Library of Fort William College”
14:30–15:00 Gulguncha Lalbekova, “Imperial Legacies and Displaced Heritage: The Case
Study of Badakhshani Ismaili Manuscripts in Russian State Archives”
15:00–15:30 Coffee Break
Session 4: Marginalised Traditions and Hidden Repositories
15:30–16:00 Balasubramanyam Chandramohan, “Forgotten Manuscripts: Lost, Dispersed
and Marginalised Manuscripts- a case study of Tamil and Telugu Palm leaf
Manuscripts”
16:00–16:30 Udaya Cabral, “Hidden Knowledge Hubs: Recovering the Neglected Palm-Leaf
Manuscript Collections of Sri Lankan Monastic Libraries”
19:00 Dinner at Queen’s

Day 2: Wednesday 17 June: Tracing and Reconstructing Forgotten Collections

Taylorian Room 2, Taylor Institution, Oxford

Session 5: Tracing Lost Collections Through Fragments and Objects
9:00–9:30 Zoe Screti, “Finding Life in Fragments: The Obfuscation of Autograph Albums
in Archive Catalogues”
9:30–10:00 Holly Smith, “The Fragile Fates of Medieval Music Manuscripts – A Story of
Preservation and Loss”
10:00–10:30 Ana Dias & Julia Smith, “‘The chest of anonymous relics’: Reconstructing the
earliest relic collection of Sens cathedral (France)”
10:30–11:00 Coffee Break
Session 6: Catalogues, Data, and the Production of Invisibility
11:00–11:30 Matt Lampitt, “(Un)Mapping the March: Lost Books, Ghost Data”
11:30–12:00 Sian Witherden, “Defining ‘Rejected’ and ‘Unidentified’ provenance in
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain”
12:00–12:30 Maeve Hagerty, “Valued at nothing’: Unsettling the (Post)Colonial Archival
History of the Danson Erotica Collection”
12:30–14:00 Lunch
Session 7: Libraries Without Shelves: Singular Objects and Dispersed Worlds
14:00–14:30 Elisian Ralli, “A lost library by design: ‘Bibliophilie créatrice’ and the
reinvention of the modern manuscript”
14:30–15:00 Thea Gomelauri, “Forced Migration of Rustaveli’s Epic Poem: Bodleian
Library MS. Wardrop d.27”
15:00–15:30 Coffee Break
15:30–16:30 Roundtable: What is a Library When It Disappears?
17:00–18:00 Drink reception at Queen’s

Nigel F. Palmer Travel Fund Launch

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21/04/2026

11:09

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The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature warmly invites OMS community members to a wine reception to launch the Nigel F. Palmer Travel Fund, to be held at 18:00 on Monday 11 May in the Hinrich Reemtsma Auditorium of the Warburg Institute (Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB).

The Fund will support graduate students whose research in medieval languages and literature necessitates travel, and its launch comes at a point when funding for graduate students across the arts and humanities is becoming increasingly restricted. Its specified aim is to enable students to visit libraries and archives to consult manuscripts or other archival material, and to visit archaeological sites and/or monuments of direct relevance to their research. The Fund is named in honour of Nigel F. Palmer, executive editor of the Society’s journal Medium Ævum, and its responsible editor for German, Latin and all historical disciplines for well over thirty years from 1990 until his death in 2022. Our Society’s intention with the Fund is to take forward Nigel’s work, undertaken through the Society and widely beyond, in encouraging young scholars, by supporting graduate students in medieval studies to travel and pursue research on original materials.

Please email the Society’s Executive Officers at ssmll@history.ox.ac.uk to confirm your attendance by 1 May. If you are unable to join us on 11 May, I would be delighted if you would consider a donation towards the endowment of the Fund. You can donate to the fund via this link: Donate

A Multilingual Moses Play

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12/04/2026

20:08

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Moses. The ‘Exagoge’ of Ezekiel. ‘Moses and the Shepherd’ by Rumi

Friday, May 8, 2026 – 18:30: Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles
Sunday, May 10 – 12noon: Iffley Church Hall
Monday, May 11 – 6pm: Wolfson College Buttery

David Wiles directs a production of the extant fragments of a tragedy written in Alexandria in the second century BC.  Drawn from the Book of Exodus, the story tells of the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt.  The play was written by a Jew, and is the first extant dramatization of a biblical text. 

The performance will mostly be given in ancient Greek, with the opening scene played in English.  The project follows on from Hrosvita’s Martyrdom of the Three Virgins performed in Latin in 2025, and prior to that Seneca’s Octavia in a Renaissance translation.  

The cast are a mix of students and seniors. The production style will be choral, using movement to illustrate narrative passages such as the burning bush and the crossing of the Red Sea – so fluent knowledge of ancient Greek will not be required.  

The first performance is in the Classics Centre in St Giles at 6.30 on Friday May 8, sponsored by the APGRD https://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events.  The second is in Iffley Church Hall at 12 noon on Sunday, May 10.  The third is in Wolfson College Buttery at 6.00 on Monday, May 11, sponsored by the Ancient World Research Cluster.  The performance should last for about 35 minutes, and we will have a brief Q&A afterwards. The APGRD and AWRC are both kindly providing wine.

Medieval Germany Workshop

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16/03/2026

10:25

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29 May 2026, German Historical Institute in London
Organised by the German Historical Institute London and the German History Society

Programme

Commentators: Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford) & Christian Jaser (Kassel)
Convenors: Thomas Kaal (GHIL) and Marcus Meer (UCL)

9.30 Session 1 (Chair: Thomas Kaal)

  • Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford): The Nuns’ Letters – Work-in-Progress
  • Temitope Fagunwa (Lüneburg): From ‘‘Moors Are Not Blacks’’ to Mohr Muss Weg: Identity and Misrepresentation in Europe
  • Erik Pauls (Berlin), The Typus of the ‘Heretic’ and its Function in Historical Thinking

11.00 Coffee & Tea

11.30 Session 2 (Chair: Marcus Meer)

  • Christian Jaser (Kassel): Digital Edition of Medieval Accounting Records (Examples from Munich and Vienna in the Early 15th Century)
  • Thomas Billard (Paris/Konstanz) Accountability: Critical Study of the recording of Accounting Documents in Urban Areas of the Southern Empire (Basel, Nördlingen, Nuremberg, 14th–15th centuries)
  • Arik Solomon (Be’er- Sheva): Beyond the City Walls: Persistence and Permeability in the Expulsion of Jews from Merseburg

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Session 3 (Chair: Thomas Kaal)

  • Anna Wilmore (Oxford): ‘Ich bin din gespile’: Play as Paradigm in Mechthild of Magdeburg
  • Tina Druckmüller (Cologne): From Another Perspective: Hildegard of Bingen on the Origin of the Soul

15.00 Session 4 (Chair: Gabriele Passabi)

  • Carolin Victoria König (Oxford): The Interrelation of Image and Text and the Popularity of Sebastian Brant’s ‘The Ship of Fools’
  • Hila Manor (Jerusalem): Measured Marvels: Ingenuity and Artistic Exchange in Nuremberg around 1500

16.00 Coffee & Tea

16.30 Session 5 (Chair: Marcus Meer)

  • Ole Bunte (Bielefeld): Narrating War: A Cultural History of War in 15th Century East Central Europe
  • Laura Potzuweit (Kiel), The Baltic Sea as a Room of Diplomacy? The Kalmar Union, the Teutonic Order, and other Key Players as a Late Medieval Communication Network

17:30 End

19:00 Conference Dinner

Students and researchers interested in medieval German history are very welcome to attend and listen to the presentations. There is no charge for attendance, but pre-booking is essential due to limited capacity. If you would like to attend as a guest, please contact Kim König.

The Call for Papers

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.

Borders, Boundaries and Barriers: Real and Imagined in the Middle Ages

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28/02/2026

07:21

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20 and 21 April 2026 in Oxford

Lineup_Borders_Boundaries_BarriersDownload
Panels_Borders_Boundaries_BarriersDownload

From the Call for Papers

Borders, Boundaries, and Barriers have become increasingly prominent themes in historical scholarship. Over the last decade, these concepts have been the focus of sustained scholarly interest, drawing especially upon theoretical frameworks and (trans-)national contexts. There is, therefore, a pressing need to examine how these constructs have shaped the lived experiences of historically marginalised groups, as well as how they were perceived, defined, and engaged with by those groups.

This conference seeks to reorient discussions around borders, boundaries, and barriers by foregrounding the experiences and perspectives of marginalised groups and considering how these divisions were perceived fromthe peripheries of societies. Rather than treating these concepts as abstract or solely geopolitical, we will explore the ways in which they have operated — both historically and historiographically — as tools of exclusion and differentiation.

Organised by Natasha Jenman (University of Oxford), Naomi Reiter (QMUL), and Dean A. Irwin (University of Lincoln/OCHJS), the conference will focus on individuals, religious groups, social groups, societal constructions, and natural phenomena. Participants are invited to explore the role played by evolving borders, boundaries, and barriers in the medieval world as part of group identities; and how groups used them to their advantage. Likewise, it will consider the extent to which borders, boundaries and barriers have been imposed upon the medieval world by modern scholars. Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:

  • Legal jurisdictions
  • The natural and the supernatural worlds
  • Socio-economic strata
  • Ritual and religion
  • Space, time, and the environment
  • Gender and sexuality
  • Disability
  • Transgression, delinquency, and the grey middle space

This conference adopts a broad chronological and geographical approach with submissions from all historically-related disciplines being welcome. The conference will take place on 20 and 21 April 2026 in Oxford. To submit, please send a title, abstract (c. 250 words), and a bio (c. 100 words) to: bordersboundariesbarriers@gmail.com. Any questions should be directed to the same e-mail address.
The organisers hope to be able to offer a limited number of bursaries for students and those on low income. Please indicate in your proposal whether you would like to be considered for
one of these if this becomes possible.

Image ref: Latin Psalter (13th-15th C), f.9 – BL Add MS 28681,