Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group, Hilary Term 2026, Fridays 5pm (BST)

Hilary Term 2026 | Fridays 5 pm (unless otherwise stated) 

The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts group is pleased to announce its spring programme of online, hybrid, and Oxford-based events. For questions or to subscribe to our mailing list, write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com | find us on Instagram @medieval.mss.

More information can be found here.

Friday 30 January 2026, 5pm (online): Reading Group | Dissemination                

  • Leah R. Clark, “Dispersal, Exchange and the Culture of Things in Fifteenth-Century Italy” (2018)
  • Richard Sharpe, “Dissolution and Dispersion in Sixteenth-Century England: Understanding the Remains” (2022)
  • Materials will be sent two weeks before the meeting. Write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com to join.

Friday 13 February 2026, 5pm (Sir Howard Stringer Room, Merton College): OMMG Graduate Research Forum

  • Emma J. Nelson | Chetham’s Library, Manchester: “No take-backsies? Gerald of Wales and the Boundaries of Book Donation”
  • Elliot Cobb | Independent Scholar: “Miraculous and Marginal Women in the Metz Psalter-Hours”

Friday 20 February 2026, 3:30pm (History of Science Museum & Weston Library)

Workshop with Laure Miolo: “Observing and Measuring the Heavens: Manuscripts, Instruments, and Astronomical Practice in the Middle Ages.” Limited places. Write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com by 14/02/26

Friday 27 February 2026, 4pm (All Souls College): Library Visit

Tour of the All Souls College library with Peregrine Horden, Fellow Librarian. Limited places. Write to oxfordmedievalmss@gmail.com by 20/02/26

Friday 13 March 2026, 5pm (John Roberts Room, Merton College & online): Lecture

Julian Harrison | Curator, British Library: “Sir Robert Cotton and Oxford”

Murray Seminar: ‘‘Lion Madonnas’ and Nations: Nationalising Late Medieval Art in Early-Twentieth-Century Silesia’ with Robert Maniura, 27 January 2026, Birkbeck, 17:00—18:30 (GMT)

Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, Keynes Library and Online, 17:00 — 18:30 GMT

Silesia was a site of violent contestation and shifting territorial control in the first half of the twentieth century. The eastern part of the region – Upper Silesia – was partitioned between Germany and newly-independent Poland in 1922 in the wake of a series of violent uprisings and a problematic plebiscite. That area was reincorporated into Germany ln 1939, but after 1945 the bulk of the region, including Lower Silesia to the west, was ceded to Poland. Cultural policy was central to efforts to integrate these territories into the competing states. This paper shares some of the issues and initial observations from a project exploring the mobilisation of the visual arts and the writing of their histories in these attempts. I will concentrate on the presentation of items from the collection of sacred art in the Silesian Museum, founded in 1929 in Katowice, the capital of the new Polish Silesian Voivodship, with the stated objective of ‘demonstrating the historical and cultural connections between Silesia and the rest of Poland’. The first director of the museum was an art historian called Tadeusz Dobrowolski whose scholarly work in the 1930s concentrated on the late medieval art in the museum’s collection and the Voivodship. I follow Dobrowolski to explore the tensions in his approach and their implications for the discipline of art history.  

Robert Maniura is Reader in the History of Art at Birkbeck and a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow. He has been a Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow. He is the author of Art and Miracle in Renaissance Tuscany (Cambridge, 2018) and Pilgrimage to Images in the Fifteenth Century: The Origins of the Cult of Our Lady of Częstochowa (Boydell, 2004).

Please Book Here for the In Person

Please Book Here for the Livestream

CFP: ‘Different Differentiations. Logiche e pratiche della differenziazione sociale attraverso i secoli’, deadline 15 February 2026

Università di Genova, May 7 and 8, 2026

More information can be found on the conference website.

The PhD conference aims to promote a dialogue between young scholars on the theme of the social differentiation in a diachronic and interdisciplinary perspective. Since the proposed research themes are shared by numerous scopes in the field of the PhD course disciplines, our purpose is to promote reflections and discussions which could lead to the elaboration of new research paths. The “social differentiation” concept refers to the process with which the elements of a collective organism acquire specific autonomy and identity, namely they become reciprocally different. This definition recalls the delineation, into a specific social contest, of areas and communities which distinguish each other by shared traits which assume social significance. It is a process characterizing every human society, regarding, generally, the progressive increase of their complexity which could be analysed through a historical, archaeological and art-historical perspective. This is the meaning of the chosen theme, “different differentiation”, i.e. analysing the transformations of social differentiation processes as the research objects and instruments change. Therefore, we intend to reflect about two main aspects: the first, typological, aims to describe the nature of the observed differentiation (based on ethnicity, gender, juridical status, economic situation etc.); the second, methodological, regarding the sources and the instruments used to analyse the case study. Moreover, it will evenly be important to consider the reasons and dynamics (“logics”) which cause the differentiation, and the modalities with which it manifests (“practices”). The theme enables, furthermore, to consider the relationship between the social differentiation and other related problems, such as the origin of inequality, the outlining of alterities, discrimination cases and social marginalization. Eventually, studying the differentiation implies the possibility to consider its contrary, namely the absence of differentiations and the attenuation of differences that could lead to extreme social homologations.

The aim of the symposium is to explore the theme through a historical, art-historical and archaeological perspective. Proposals concerning the following research areas will be accepted: Prehistoric, Classical and Medieval Archaeology; Medieval, Modern and Contemporary History, including Gender History; Archival Science, Palaeography, Diplomatics and Codicology; Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Art History.

Theoretical or experimental contributions will be welcome, with particular attention to the enhancement of the critical approach, relating to the following (but not restrictive) thematic areas:

  1. Origins and dynamics of (in)differentiation: emergence of élites, persistence,processes of transformation, conflicts and breakdowns of hierarchies;
  2. Materiality of (in)differentiation: objects, prestige goods, practices of production,gestures and rituals;
  3. Representation of (in)differentiation: logics and practices of appropriation, selfdetermination and imitation among social and cultural groups;
  4. Depictions, insignia, censorship and iconoclasm: public or private tools for identity affirmation, self or otherness recognition, social distinction or standardization;
  5. Class, race and (in)differentiation: processes of inclusion, exclusion, and marginalisation on ethnic, religious, and socio-economic grounds;
  6. Gender and (in)differentiation: social roles, identity constructions, feminisms, masculinities, and queer perspectives;
  7. Spaces of belonging and distinction, selection or social segregation: geographies, architecture, monuments, public and private places;
  1. Economies and trade movements: communication routes, supply chains, free-ports and monopolies for the exchange of goods and services;
  2. Craft categories, professions, positions and roles: work hierarchies, guilds, workshops, institutions;
  3. Digital technologies and new methodological implications: accessibility practices, inclusion and uses through AI; diversification of digital tools as a means of creating experiences (tactile, visual, performative);
  4. Differentiations by law: rules, legal texts, political and legislative guidelines on (in)differentiation;
  5. Public memories, cultures and politics of remembrance: processing, reuse, erasure or exaltation of social groups’ memories;
  6. Individual experiences and expressions of (in)differentiation: sources for reconstructing biographical events;
  7. Theoretical and methodological reflections: ways of defining and interpreting difference and/or standardisation.

Submission guidelines

The Call for Papers is open to PhD students and young researchers who have obtained their degree in the last three years. Proposals may be submitted in Italian or English.

Applications must be sent by email to the following address: phd.conference.starch@gmail.com, specifying “Proposta Convegno Dottorale” in the subject line and indicating the relevant field of research.

Applicants are required to send a single PDF file containing a brief scientific CV (maximum one page) and an abstract of approximately 300 words (excluding essential references), a title and five keywords. 

The conference programme will be established in accordance with the chronological, thematic or methodological similarities of the contributions. Keynote speakers affiliated with national and international academic institutions will be invited. The conference will be held in person, and each participant will have a maximum of 20 minutes for their presentation.

Proceedings will be considered for publication.

The deadline for submitting applications is February 15, 2026. Selection results will be notified by March 6, 2026.

There are no registration fees or refunds. For further information, please write to: phd.conference.starch@gmail.com.

More information can be found on the conference website.

Scientific committee

Professors:

  • Gianluca Ameri, Denise Bezzina, Matteo Caponi, Maria Elena Cortese, Antonino Facella, Marco Folin, Fabio Negrino, Valentina Ruzzin, Daniele Sanguineti, Guri Schwarz, Paola Valenti, Stefania Ventra

PhD students:

  • Morella Alpa, Lucrezia Boiani, Clotilde Brandone, Enrico Cipollina, Anna Contro, Chiara Dodero, Paola Gargiulo, Monica Gestro, Kevin Imbimbo, Vittoria Magnoler, Bianca Romano, Chiara Tramontana, Matteo Trotta, Mattia Viti

Organising committee:

  • Morella Alpa, Lucrezia Boiani, Clotilde Brandone, Chiara Dodero, Paola Gargiulo, Monica Gestro, Kevin Imbimbo, Leila Leoni, Vittoria Magnoler, Bianca Romano, Matteo Trotta, Arianna Vallarino, Mattia Viti

Talk: ‘Sainthood & Gender Variance in the Middle Ages’, with Roland Betancourt at The Met Cloisters, 14 January 2026, 6-7 pm (EST)

Wednesday, January 14, 2026, 6–7 pm (EST), The Met Cloisters, Romanesque Hall

Roland Betancourt, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art and Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Art History, University of California, Irvine.

Join scholar Roland Betancourt for a talk on how depictions of holy persons in medieval art complicate ideas of gender across both the western European world and the Byzantine Empire. Discover how works of religious art reflect the ways in which medieval thinkers explored gender in their writings to contemplate both spiritual matters and lived realities.

Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages.

Free, though advance registration is required. Please note: Space is limited; first come, first served.

Find out more about the event on the MET website. 

Call for Applications: Mary Jaharis Center Grants 2026–2027, deadline 1 February 2026

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce its 2026–2027 grant competition.

Mary Jaharis Center Co-Funding Grants promote Byzantine studies in North America. These grants provide co-funding to organize scholarly gatherings (e.g., workshops, seminars, small conferences) in North America that advance scholarship in Byzantine studies broadly conceived. We are particularly interested in supporting convenings that build diverse professional networks that cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines, propose creative approaches to fundamental topics in Byzantine studies, or explore new areas of research or methodologies.

Mary Jaharis Center Dissertation Grants are awarded to advanced graduate students working on Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. These grants are meant to help defray the costs of research-related expenses, e.g., travel, photography/digital images, microfilm.

Mary Jaharis Center Publication Grants support book-length publications or major articles in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. Grants are aimed at early career academics. Preference will be given to postdocs and assistant professors, though applications from non-tenure track faculty and associate and full professors will be considered. We encourage the submission of first-book projects.

Mary Jaharis Center Project Grants support discrete and highly focused professional projects aimed at the conservation, preservation, and documentation of Byzantine archaeological sites and monuments dated from 300 CE to 1500 CE primarily in Greece and Turkey. Projects may be small stand-alone projects or discrete components of larger projects. Eligible projects might include archeological investigation, excavation, or survey; documentation, recovery, and analysis of at risk materials (e.g., architecture, mosaics, paintings in situ); and preservation (i.e., preventive measures, e.g., shelters, fences, walkways, water management) or conservation (i.e., physical hands-on treatments) of sites, buildings, or objects.

The application deadline for all grants is February 1, 2026. For further information, please visit the Mary Jaharis Center website: https://maryjahariscenter.org/grants.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center, with any questions.

Student scholarships: British Archaeological Association’s Toulouse Romanesque Conference, deadline 31 January 2026

The British Archaeological Association are excited to announce that they have a number of Student scholarships for those wishing to attend the ninth biennial International Romanesque Conference.

This conference focuses on Transmission, Reception, and Imitation in Romanesque art and architecture and will be held at the Hôtel d’Assézat in Toulouse from 13-15 April 2026. This is followed by a two-day programme of visits to sites such as Moissac and monuments in Toulouse on 16-17 April 2026.

Scholarships will only be awarded to those who can attend the conference in its entirety. The scholarship covers lectures and site visits, accommodation for two nights, entrance fees and all included meals, refreshments and receptions. Travel to the conference is not included. 

Scholarships are given to those studying at postgraduate level and those who have been awarded research degrees in these areas within the last two years. The scholarships are funded by the generosity of those attending and the number awarded varies according to the funds available. Successful applicants are expected to join the BAA if not already members. For up-to-date details about the conference, keep an eye on the conference webpage.

How to apply

Send the following to rplant62@hotmail.com by 31st January 2026:

  • A short CV
  • Brief statement on the reasons for wanting to attend the conference and how it might relate to your own research
  • Either:
    • Academic reference
    • Or the name and contact details of one referee (they must submit references by the deadline)

Please note that it is the applicant’s responsibility to either include the academic reference with the application or ensure their nominated referee sends it in. The BAA will not chase references.

Successful applicants will be informed by 14th February 2026. 

Murray Seminar: ‘Like himself and no other: The Story of Morgante Nano at the Florentine Court of Cosimo I de’ Medici’ with Sarah McBryde, 9 December 2025, Birkbeck, 17:00—18:30 (GMT)

Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, Keynes Library and Online, 17:00 — 18:30 GMT

People with dwarfism were frequently employed as attendants in courts across Europe from the Medieval period until the eighteenth century and their presence is recorded in contemporary artworks and written sources. Despite their popularity, traditional academic approaches tended to marginalise court dwarfs and, until recently, little consideration was given to the possibility that they could have made any significant contribution to court life. This seminar takes a fresh look at the court dwarf tradition in sixteenth-century Florence by investigating the pictorial and archival evidence regarding Morgante, a notable figure in the ducal household of Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Spanish-Neapolitan consort Eleonora di Toledo. Morgante is the most famous of the Medici’s dwarf attendants due to his prominence in the historical record. He was the subject of numerous portraits by the pre-eminent court artists of the time, including Agnolo Bronzino, Valerio Cioli and Giambologna, and was also immortalised by the Florentine academician Antonfrancesco Grazzini in two satirical poems. The seminar assesses biographical information from archival and other written sources, along with analyses of Morgante’s surviving portraits, in order to provide new perspectives on his life, both inside and outside the court, and examine his role as jester-entertainer to the Medici grand dukes.

Dr Sarah McBryde is an Independent Scholar. She completed her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London in 2022, further to a master’s degree and graduate certificate, also at Birkbeck. She currently serves as Assistant Editor for the monograph series Elements in the Renaissance, published by Cambridge University Press. McBryde’s publications include ‘“Per mano della Maria Nana”: A Female Dwarf in the Retinue of Eleonora di Toledo’, in Giants and Dwarfs in European Art and Culture, ca. 1350–1750: Real, Imagined, Metaphorical (Amsterdam University Press, 2024), and ‘Rethinking the Life of Court Dwarfs in Early Modern Florence: The Case of Pietro Barbino at the Medici Court’, Renaissance Studies (online, Oct 2024; vol. 39.5, Nov 2025). Her research on Morgante will be included in the forthcoming conference proceedings volume Playing Fools, published by Brepols in association with the recent Louvre exhibition Figures du Fou, Du Moyen Âge aux Romantiques (2024–25).

Book your place. Find out more on the Murray Seminar website.

Online Lecture: ‘Learning Late Antiquity: The Quarry Church at Deir al-Ganadla and the Lost Timber Nave’, with Mikael Muehlbauer, 9 December 2025, 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

December 9, 2025 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

The Quarry Church at Deir al-Ganadla (Asyut, Middle Egypt) and the Lost Timber Nave
Mikael Muehlbauer, Columbia University

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the next lecture in the 2025–2026 East of Byzantium lecture series.

This presentation presents the little-known Quarry church of Mary at Deir al-Ganadla (near Asyut) as a tool for students of Late Antiquity to visualize lost timber-roofed basilicas in Egypt as well as the Mediterranean more broadly. The church’s value lies in its mural program, which orders the Pharaonic mine from which it was consecrated into a fictive freestanding basilica. These paintings depict painted timber ephemera from circa 500 that are largely lost to us. By fully documenting this largely unknown church and its decorative schema we may reconstruct elements of freestanding basilicas in Egypt and the wider Mediterranean which lack extant naves. Although modest, Ganadla’s import should not be understated, as it is the most in-tact Late Antique church in Egypt known.

Mikael Muehlbauer is a Lecturer in the Discipline of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. He is a specialist in the architecture of Medieval Ethiopia, Egypt and the textile arts of the Western Indian Ocean world.

Advance registration required. Register on the East of Byzantium website. 


Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Online Lecture: ‘Worshipping the Mother Goddess: An Underground Cult Complex in Late Antique Aphrodisias’ with Ine Jacobs, 2 December 2025, 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)

December 2, 2025 | Zoom | 12:00–1:30 pm (Eastern Standard Time, UTC -5)
Worshipping the Mother Goddess: An Underground Cult Complex in Late Antique Aphrodisias, Ine Jacobs, University of Oxford

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in their 2025–2026 lecture series.

Excavations in a suburban neighborhood of Aphrodisias have revealed a remarkably well-preserved underground cult complex dedicated to the Anatolian mother goddess Kybele. Concealed within the basement level of a large late antique private mansion—strategically positioned between the residence’s public quarters and an east–west street—the complex consists of a spacious central cult chamber, several smaller subsidiary rooms, a long subterranean corridor, and a lightwell that, in its final phase, was sealed and adapted for communal dining. To date, the sanctuary has been traced over an area of 26 by 15 meters, though it almost certainly extended further.

Originally established in the imperial period, the complex underwent several renovations in Late Antiquity, including a near-total rebuilding in the later 5th century. The sanctuary in this form remained active into the early 7th century, until the mansion that housed it was abruptly destroyed by fire in 617. Excavations have yielded a rich assemblage of cult equipment, including four statuettes of Kybele, effigies of other deities, three enigmatic “mountain busts,” amulets, numerous ceramic incense burners, ceramic and copper-alloy lamps, and copper-alloy tableware.

This presentation examines the architectural setting of the complex, structural features, cultic imagery, associated material culture, and the broader social and religious conditions at Aphrodisias that allowed pagan worship to endure into the 7th century.

Ine Jacobs is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture at the University of Oxford.

Advance registration required. Register on the Mary Jaharis Center website. Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Lecture: ‘The Many Lives of the Asante Ewer’ with Lloyd de Beer, British Archaeological Association, 3 December 2025, online and Society of Antiquaries, 5.30pm (GMT) 

The British Museum’s medieval curator – Charles Hercules Read – was responsible for acquiring the Asante Ewer in the late 19th century. Read was the principal curator for ethnography, and was also responsible for acquiring and writing the first catalogue of the Benin Bronzes. This lecture will consider the Asante ewer, its 1896 looting from Kumasi, its subsequent acquisition and display history at the British Museum, and how that intersects with the broader theme of 19th/20th Century scholars’ approach to the global Middle Ages, refracted through a colonial/Imperial lens.

Location: The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, London

Time: Tea is served from 5 p.m. and the Chair is taken at 5.30 p.m. 

Watch this lecture live on YouTube.

Find out more on the British Archaeological Association website. 

Following this lecture, the British Archaeological Association warmly invites members and guests to a celebratory drinks reception following December’s Annual Lecture to mark the publication of a major new volume: From Miniature to Monumental: Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture, a Festschrift in honour of Professor Sandy Heslop.

Find out more about the book launch here.