Deadline: 30 September 2026

Dates: 19th-21st January 2027

Location: The Danish and Norwegian Institutes in Rome

This interdisciplinary workshop explores the dynamic processes by which traditional Roman public spaces were reimagined, adapted, and transformed to accommodate emerging Christian identities and practices from the 4th to the 8th centuries CE. In this context, the ‘urban sacred’ is understood as a dynamic dimension of urban space, constructed through the interaction of ritual practice, social imaginaries, and material markers. It refers not only to formally consecrated places such as temples, churches, or shrines, but equally to streets, houses, workshops, cemeteries, and other civic arenas, where sacredness was experienced and redefined. Codes and signs, whether permanent, like built monuments, or ephemeral, like gestures, sounds, and ritual performances, inscribed the divine into the city, shaping boundaries between sacred and profane. The ‘urban sacred’ therefore draws attention to how religiousness, understood as both individual and collective, was embedded in the lived city, transforming it into a mosaic of sacred and profane spaces that mediated identity, hierarchy, memory, and power.

Key notes and confirmed speakers:

• Prof. P. Liverani (University of Florence)
• Prof. T. Myrup Kristensen (Aarhus University)
• Prof. B. Ward-Perkins (University of Oxford)
• Prof. C. Machado (University of St. Andrews)
• Prof. S. Malmberg (University of Bergen)
• Dr. C. Videbech (University of Bergen)

Bridging archaeology, epigraphy, art history, the study of religion, history and literary studies, the workshop investigates how these traditionally non-Christian spaces were gradually and sometimes radically converted into spaces fitting for the Christian cityscape. We aim to highlight the complexity of these transformations, focusing not only on imperial, aristocratic, or episcopal initiatives but also on the roles of local communities, pilgrims, and non-elite groups in claiming and shaping public environments.

The workshop encourages contributions that leverage a wide range of evidence: archaeological remains, iconography, inscriptions (especially graffiti), architectural modifications, and written sources to shed new light on how the Christian cityscape emerged from and overlaid the traditional Roman urban fabric. Innovative digital approaches, such as GIS mapping, 3D reconstruction, and digital epigraphy, are especially welcome for their potential to visualize and reinterpret these transitions.

The aim of the workshop is to offer a unique forum for interdisciplinary dialogue on the transformation of Mediterranean cities through Christianization, with special attention to the interplay between elite and popular agency and the creative use of digital methodologies.

We welcome proposals that engage with the following, or related, themes:

• The role of Christian graffiti and inscriptions in appropriating and reconfiguring traditional public spaces.
• Non-elite agency and popular expressions of faith within the urban fabric of cities within the former Roman Empire.
• Interactions between ecclesiastical authorities and popular Christian communities in shaping the city’s sacred topography 
• Transformation of civic and non-Christian buildings for Christian liturgical or communal uses
• Graffiti and epigraphic evidence as markers of Christian presence and appropriation of public spaces
• The interplay between pagan memory and Christian innovation in urban topography
• Pilgrimage and the sacred geography of public spaces in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
• Comparative perspectives on the transformation of public spaces across the Late Antique and Early Medieval Mediterranean
• • Christian and pagan coexistence and interactions in archaeological and textual records
• Everyday Christian practices and the creation of sacred space beyond monumental churches
• Interactions between popular devotion, martyr cults, and urban topography
• Comparative analyses of elite and non-elite roles in Christianization processes

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit a 300-word abstract along with a short academic CV by 30th of September 2026. 

Abstracts should demonstrate how they engage with the workshop themes, with particular attention to interdisciplinary perspectives and/or the use of digital methods. 

We especially encourage submissions from early-career scholars. Selected contributions will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed edited volume or a special journal issue; if you wish to be considered, please indicate this in your proposal. Send proposals to: Christina.videbech@uib.no

Medieval communities were subject to, and themselves produced, forms of surveillance. Among other forms of coercion — corporal punishment, rents and taxation, patriarchal authority, banishment — surveillance reinforced social and political power imbalances and shaped behavior both within and between communities. Social, bureaucratic, and carceral structures facilitating surveillance commonly marked the production of works of art: scribes and illuminators labored in Italian prisons, courts dictated the terms under which artists worked, and late-medieval artisans were legally required to shape their wares before open windows. Art was also often understood to possess its own powers of surveillance: oversize figural monuments presided over marketplaces, badges made legible their bearers’ political allegiances, and multiple miracle stories imagine the eyes of an icon tracking its devotees. 

This panel asks how surveillance shaped the making of medieval art and how objects and images attest to, enact, or even expose medieval modes of surveillance. Attending to such intersections of the visual and the carceral, this panel seeks contributions that interrogate the liberatory assumptions that often underwrite the equation of art with

community.

Topics might include:

• Medieval “surveillance technologies”
• Coercive patronage
• Guilds and licensing organizations
• Medieval theories of privacy
• Works depicting surveillance
• Architecture and control
• Theories of optics and perception in their social contexts
• Mobility and its restrictions
• Strategies of occlusion
• Connections between medieval visual culture and contemporary activist artists

We are seeking proposals for papers 15 – 20 minutes in length. Please send an abstract (max. 300 words) and current CV to Luke Fidler (lfidler@usc.edu) and C.B.Boxer (c.boxer@bucknell.edu) by 23 September 2026.

AVISTA is pleased to invite submissions to its sponsored hybrid session, Unfinished, Damaged, Reimagined: Rethinking the Fragment, at the 2027 International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI, 13–15 May 2027)

Rarely do material traces of the premodern world survive without damage or alteration. In response, the fragment has emerged in recent years as a productive theoretical framework for understanding the present condition of medieval objects, buildings, and archives. AVISTA’s emphasis has long been on the intersection of medieval art, craft, and technology. In line with this focus, this session seeks papers which present new case studies of the fragment. This includes medieval objects or buildings which have either been reconstructed or, in their current state, are incomplete or damaged. We also seek to broaden discussion of the medieval fragment to include works abandoned in process, or those which were not finished following their original plan. While this concept has gained traction in manuscript studies, the notion of the unfinished has been less discussed in architecture, even though there are many prominent examples (the cathedrals of Beauvais, Narbonne, and Siena to name a few). We invite interdisciplinary papers, representing all disciplines and geographies, to take up unfinished, damaged, or reimagined medieval objects.

Speakers may discuss, for example, repaired or transformed objects, architecture that was never completed or has since been lost, as well as medieval and modern efforts to complete the fragment. Objects, topics, and methodologies may include but are not limited to:

– Digital twins and reconstructions of lost objects and buildings

– Repair techniques and materials (such as lead, mortar, etc.)

– Abandoned or incomplete building campaigns

– Objects which incorporate found material, such as cameos, gems, or crystals

– Relics or their traces, such as relic labels or scraps of textile

– Manuscript fragmentology

– Case studies of building damage caused by fire, natural disasters, or structural collapse

– Spolia or other objects removed from their original context

– Examination of polychromy

– Reuse of building materials, such as stone, timber, or lead

– Broken and/or repaired sculpture

– Archeological finds including pieces of textile, metalwork, or ceramic

For additional information, including selected bibliography, please see the AVISTA website. All abstracts must be submitted by September 15, 2027 through the ICMS Confex portal: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8645. Interested presenters should email the organizers, Tori Schmitt (torischmitt@ucla.edu) and Gabriela Chitwood (gabriela.chitwood@gmail.com), if questions arise.

More information can be found on this website.

October 23rd and 24th, 2026. Sá da Bandeira Theatre, Santarém, Portugal

The Art History Institute at NOVA FCSH, in partnership with the Municipality of Santarém and the Diocesan Museum of Santarém, is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the International Conference Claustrum: Medieval Art, Iconography and Spirituality in Franciscan Convents, to be held in a hybrid format on 23–24 October 2026.

The conference is organised within the framework of the IHA seed-project Claustrum. Convent of St Francis, which examines the cloister of the Franciscan Convent of Santarém as an experimental research laboratory, bringing together different scholarly disciplines to investigate the construction, decoration and lived experience of one of the oldest medieval Franciscan convents in Portugal.

Held during the eighth centenary of the death of St Francis, this conference aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussion, bringing together Art History, History, Spirituality, Ecology (Environmental History and Ecotheology), Epigraphy and Heraldry, with a chronological focus spanning the 13th to the 15th centuries. Its purpose is to explore how Franciscan thought and religious practice shaped medieval European visual culture, while also laying the historical foundations for a sensitivity towards, and respect for, the natural world that continues to resonate today.

Researchers, established scholars and doctoral candidates working in these fields are invited to submit proposals addressing one of the following thematic strands:

Theme 1: Medieval Art History and Iconography

• Artistic representations of St Francis and the Franciscan Order.
• Architecture, urbanism and the built heritage of Franciscan convents.
• Manuscript illumination, painting, sculpture and the decorative arts within the Franciscan tradition.

Theme 2: Medieval Spirituality, History and Written Sources

• The study of written sources, chronicles, hagiographies and theological texts.
• The expansion of the Order of Friars Minor throughout medieval Europe, and the dynamics of patronage and artistic commissions within Franciscan convents.
• Franciscan mysticism, poverty and theology from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, and their relationship to the artistic culture of the Order’s convents.

Theme 3: St Francis and Ecology: Historical, Artistic and Philosophical Perspectives

• The Canticle of the Creatures and the emergence of a new understanding of the natural world.
• The representation of nature and the natural world in medieval Franciscan iconography and its dissemination.
• Environmental History, Ecotheology, and the continuing relevance of Franciscan thought in the face of contemporary environmental and climate challenges.

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should be submitted in Word or PDF format by email to claustrum2026@gmail.com and must include the following:

1. Anonymous Cover Page

• Title of the paper (clear and concise);
• Abstract (maximum 300 words);
• Up to five keywords;
• Indication of the thematic strand under which the proposal is submitted.

2. Author Information (submitted as a separate document)

• Full name(s) of the author(s);
• Institutional affiliation (University and/or Research Centre);
• Short biographical note (maximum 100 words);
• Contact / e-mail address.

Official Languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English.

Presentation Format: Each paper will be allocated 20 minutes for presentation.

Key Dates

• Deadline for abstract submission: 4 September 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 12 September 2026
• Publication of the provisional programme: 25 September 2026
• Conference dates: 23–24 October 2026

Review Process

All submitted abstracts will undergo peer review by members of the Scientific and Organising Committee:

• Carla Varela Fernandes (IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
• João Luís Fontes (IEM – NOVA FCSH)
• Luís Urbano Afonso (ARTIS – FLUL)
• Paulo Almeida Fernandes (IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)
• Pedro Almeida Flor (UAb, IHA – NOVA FCSH / IN2PAST)

Contact Information

For further information, please contact the Organising Committee at claustrum2026@gmail.com or visit our website https://claustrum.godaddysites.com/

The Route des Normands Association invites proposals for a series of linked sessions to be submitted for the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 5–8 July 2027. The sessions will examine the material consequences of mobility across the Norman worlds, with particular attention to architecture, artistic production, manuscripts, liturgy, cult, burial, and commemoration.

The mobility of Norman communities was one of the historical phenomena that most profoundly shaped medieval Europe. The sessions aim to reconstruct its material consequences by examining monuments and objects within a transregional and transnational framework and by identifying networks of patronage, religious devotion, production, and exchange. Through an interdisciplinary approach, they seek to reconsider the interconnected sites, forms of artistic and artisanal production, landscapes, and cultural practices that are essential to a fuller understanding of the establishment and development of Norman communities across Europe, from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.

The sessions will focus on historically identifiable itineraries and networks, including court itineraries, monastic and episcopal connections, pilgrimage circuits, maritime routes, commercial exchanges, and diplomatic contacts. They will explore how these connections shaped architectural patronage, artistic production, manuscript culture, liturgical and funerary practices, and the diffusion of transregional cults.

The sessions do not seek to define a homogeneous “Norman style” or to reconstruct a linear diffusion of forms from Normandy. Rather, they will examine how buildings, monumental complexes, manuscripts, liturgical furnishings, tombs, and portable objects were produced within specific local contexts while also responding to the circulation of patrons, ecclesiastical personnel, craftsmen, materials, texts, relics, rites, and technical knowledge. This approach builds on recent research into the agents and mechanisms of cultural transfer, as well as the political, ritual, and social functions of material culture in the Norman worlds.

In keeping with the IMC theme of “Communities,” the sessions will examine networks of patronage associated with Norman communities and their role in the production, use, and circulation of material culture.

SESSION I: Architecture, Patronage, and Networks of Construction

This session will examine how political authority, ecclesiastical organisation, pilgrimage, and economic exchange shaped the foundation, transformation, and use of buildings and monumental complexes. Possible topics include: 

• royal, aristocratic, episcopal, and monastic patronage;
• court itineraries and the geography of architectural commissions;
• the movement of builders, craftsmen, materials, and technical knowledge;
• construction sites and the organisation of labour;
• the relationship between land routes, maritime routes, shrines, settlements, and monumental foundations;
• the adaptation or reuse of Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Anglo-Saxon, Lombard, and other local structures;
• the impact of political and economic networks on architectural production.

SESSION II: Images, Manuscripts, and Material Exchange

This session will investigate the circulation, adaptation, and local reworking of artistic and technical knowledge in sculpture, painting, manuscript production, monumental decoration, and the decorative arts. Possible topics include:

• architectural sculpture, mural painting, mosaics, pavements, and stained glass;
• illuminated manuscripts, liturgical books, cartularies, chronicles, and Exultet rolls;
• relationships between monumental decoration, manuscript illumination, and portable objects;
• the movement of scribes, illuminators, sculptors, painters, mosaicists, and specialised craftsmen;
• workshops, communities of practice, and the transmission of techniques;
• textiles, ivory carving, metalwork, reliquaries, seals, coins, and liturgical furnishings;
• artistic commissions prompted by diplomacy, dynastic marriage, trade, gift exchange, warfare, or the translation of relics;
• the movement and availability of stone, marble, timber, metals, pigments, parchment, and luxury materials.

SESSION III: Sacred Routes, Liturgy, Cult, and Monumental Memory

This session will consider how the movement of clergy, books, relics, rites, and devotional practices shaped religious buildings and the material organisation of worship, burial, and commemoration. Possible topics include:

• relationships between liturgical practice and the architectural arrangement of churches;
• altars, choirs, crypts, chapels, screens, ambulatories, and processional spaces;
• the circulation of liturgical books, chants, calendars, ceremonial practices, and monastic customs;
• episcopal and monastic networks as channels for the transmission of ritual and architectural practices;
• pilgrimage routes, relic translations, shrines, and transregional saints’ cults;
• the material consequences of devotion to saints such as Michael, Nicholas, Thomas Becket, and Catherine of Alexandria;
• royal, aristocratic, episcopal, and monastic burial practices;
• monumental tombs, mausolea, burial chapels, inscriptions, and funerary imagery;
• dynastic memoria, anniversaries, necrologies, commemorative foundations, and the liturgy of the dead.

THE ROUTE DES NORMANDS ASSOCIATION

The Route des Normands Association, founded at the initiative of the Normandy Region, is a French non-profit association governed by the Law of 1 July 1901, formally declared to the French prefectural authorities in mars 2026 and headquartered at the Abbaye-aux-Dames in Caen. Its founding members are the Normandy Region, the British Council, Ireland’s National Monuments Service, Jersey Heritage Trust, and Guernsey Museums. Building on Millennium 2027 – European Year of the Normans, the Association is establishing the historical, scientific, and institutional foundations of the Route des Normands, with a view to its certification as a Cultural Route of the Council of Europe. The initiative also benefits from the support and prospective involvement of regions in southern Italy, whose historical and cultural heritage forms an essential component of the wider Norman world. Its Scientific Committee brings together university professors with recognised expertise in Norman studies and related fields, drawn from participating institutions across France, England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Italy.

The sessions will contribute to the historical and scholarly foundations of the Route des Normands as a network of interconnected sites, collections, sacred landscapes, and cultural practices.

Submission of Proposals

Proposals are invited from scholars working on the history, material culture, and religious life of the Norman worlds. Papers may focus on a building, work of art, manuscript, patron, institution, burial site, or cult, provided that the case study is situated within a clearly defined itinerary or network, or linked to a historically plausible mechanism of transmission.

Submissions should include a title, an abstract of no more than 350 words, a short biography of no more than 100 words, institutional affiliation, contact details, and four or five keywords.

Papers will be either 15 or 20 minutes long. Selected proposals will be organised into linked 90-minute sessions and submitted to the IMC Programming Committee.

Please send proposals by 14 September 2026 to: Giacomo D’Andrea, Session Organiser (Route des Normands Association, Normandy Region): giacomo.dandrea@normandie.fr

For more information, head to this website.