CFP: IX Congreso Internacional ‘O Camiño do Medievalista: ‘Ex labore fructus’, Santiago de Compostela, deadline for submission 1 December 2025

Santiago de Compostela, 25-27 March 2026

In the Middle Ages, the vegetal world was constantly associated with learning. Genesis presents the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as something threatening, its fruit causing the downfall of humankind with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. Yet trees did not always bear a negative connotation in medieval thought, where they also acquired symbolic values of wisdom and learning. Thus, nature remained closely linked to education, especially that intended for children, sharing in the interplay between vegetal motifs and the teaching of the first grammatical notions through images and
mnemonic games in manuscripts.

In line with this, the scene recovered from the Heures de Marguerite d’Orléans (15th century), chosen as the image for this new edition, reinforces the message of the title, Ex labore fructus (“From work, fruit”). In imitation of the pair represented in full labour, we seek to promote the gathering of particular fruits: those derived from the cultivation of letters and the harvest of study.

Once again, we are pleased to invite you to take part in this meeting, which aims to be a place of encounter for those who are beginning their research journey into the Middle Ages, where young medievalists join once more in this fruitful tradition. With this ninth edition of the International Congress O Camiño do Medievalista, we intend to create an interdisciplinary space where diverse lines of research converge, in order to gather and
sow knowledge contributed by each field of study on the medieval world.
As in previous editions, we intend to offer a meeting open to all branches of Medieval Studies that we summarize in seven non-exclusive paths, since any other topic will be
Welcome:

1. History: power, society, economy and culture.

2. Art and Iconography.

3. Philology, language and literature.

4. Written culture and archives.

5. Historiography, Innovation and Digital Humanities.

6. Philosophy and Thought.

7. Archaeology

PhD students and PhDs who have read their thesis after January 1, 2022 may apply.
Proposals must be sent by completing the next form: https://forms.gle/pRkMXqAg8QTu9dFq8.

The proposals, which must be original (not previously presented or published), must include a brief CV (150 words) and a summary (between 250 and 500 words) written in one of the accepted languages: Spanish, Galician, English, French, Portuguese or Italian.

Find out more on the International Congress O Camiño do Medievalista website. 

Peter Fergusson PhD Scholarship in English Medieval Architecture, Courtauld, statement of intent deadline 17 November 2025

Peter Fergusson PhD Scholarship in English Medieval Architecture

The Courtauld is delighted to announce a new fully funded PhD scholarship in English medieval architecture, starting in September 2026. Architecture is understood broadly to encompass the built environment, from infrastructure, urban design and domestic buildings to churches, castles and cathedrals, but may also include architectural representation or micro-architecture. Eligible projects should focus on England in the period between the eleventh and early sixteenth centuries. 

The scholarship is made available thanks to a generous bequest by Professor Peter Fergusson (1934-2022), an internationally recognised scholar of medieval architecture. The scholarship includes full home or international tuition fees, as well as an annual stipend of £22,780 to support the costs of living in London. There is also an annual allowance of £1000 to support travel for research purposes, and the possibility of financial support for the scholar to organise a conference in their final year of study.  

The Courtauld is based in central London and has one of the largest communities of postgraduate art historians in the world. The extensive faculty includes several specialists of medieval art and architecture. Further details of research specialisms and contact details are available at https://courtauld.ac.uk/faculty and details of The Courtauld’s PhD programme and its application process can be found at https://courtauld.ac.uk/phd  Candidates are expected to have a strong postgraduate degree in a relevant field and a feasible idea for an original research project. They are encouraged to contact prospective supervisors to discuss their application at the earliest opportunity and must submit a ‘pre-application’ statement of intent by 17 November 2025, in advance of formal submission of their application by 8 January 2026.

Murray Seminar: ‘Imago Dei, Imago Mundi: Matthew Paris’s saints, relics, maps and wonders’ with Paul Binski, Birkbeck, 17 November 2025, 17:00-18:30 (GMT)

17 November 2025, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, Keynes Library and Online, 17:00 — 18:30 GMT

Paul Binski will share his research on ‘Imago Dei, Imago Mundi: Matthew Paris’s saints, relics, maps and wonders’.

This paper will place one aspect of Matthew’s work, his representations of exceptional things, in the context of his unfolding life story. It will discuss his unusual position as a writer and artist, his interest in saints and relics, his map-making and his recording of wonders as part of a single and in many ways coherent view of the World.

Please Book Here for the In Person

Please Book Here for the Livestream

About the speaker

Paul Binski is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and was Slade Professor, Oxford University, 2006-7.  A leading international authority on Gothic art and architecture, and medieval culture more widely, his publications include Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (1995), Becket’s Crown. Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (2004), Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style 1290-1350 (2014). He published Gothic Sculpture in 2019 and Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages in 2024. He now writes widely on general issues of aesthetics, ethics, affectivity and form in the Middle Ages, and is also a guest curator at the National Gallery, London.

Online lecture: ‘Mediating Touch: Ivory Pyxides and the Eucharist’, with Evan Freeman, 17 November 2025, 12–1:30 pm (EST, UTC -5)

The Mary Jaharis Center is pleased to announce the next lecture in our 2025–2026 lecture series: ‘Mediating Touch: Ivory Pyxides and the Eucharist.’

In this lecture, Evan Freeman, Simon Fraser University, will consider the use of ivory pyxides for receiving Communion in church. A large body of these round ivory boxes survive from late antiquity. Several boxes display motifs associated with the Eucharist.

Find out more here.

This talk offers a close examination of ivory pyxides that may have been used for receiving Communion in church as described by canon 101 of the Quinisext Council. It argues that these boxes and their iconographic motifs were designed to appeal to the senses of sight and touch. If they were used for receiving Communion as described by the Quinisext Council, such boxes would have mediated physical contact with the Eucharist, warned and protected against the dangers of faithless and unworthy touch, and offered biblical models for worshippers to imitate as they sought salvation in the celebration of the Eucharist

A large body of round ivory boxes, also known as pyxides, survive from late antiquity. Each pyxis was cut from a section of elephant tusk and decorated with carvings. Most were likely produced around the Eastern Mediterranean between the fifth and seventh centuries CE, but the precise origins and functions of these objects are difficult to pinpoint. Several boxes display motifs associated with the Eucharist, leading scholars to speculate that they may have been used to bring the Eucharist home, on journeys, or to those who could not come to church. More recently, it has been suggested that ivory pyxides were used by worshippers who felt unworthy to receive Communion directly in their hands, as prohibited by canon 101 of the Quinisext Council held in Constantinople in 691/692. This talk offers a close examination of ivory pyxides that may have been used for receiving Communion in church as described by this canon. It argues that these boxes and their iconographic motifs were designed to appeal to the senses of sight and touch. If they were used for receiving Communion as described by the Quinisext Council, such boxes would have mediated physical contact with the Eucharist, warned and protected against the dangers of faithless and unworthy touch, and offered biblical models for worshippers to imitate as they sought salvation in the celebration of the Eucharist.

This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question-and-answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link.

TIME ZONE CONVERTER

About the speaker

Evan Freeman, Simon Fraser University

Evan Freeman is Assistant Professor and Hellenic Canadian Congress of British Columbia Chair in Hellenic Studies in the Department of Global Humanities and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. He researches art and ritual in the Byzantine world, recently co-editing the volume Byzantine Materiality (2024) with Roland Betancourt. He is also Contributing Editor for Byzantine art at Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, where he co-edited Smarthistory Guide to Byzantine Art (2021) with Anne McClanan.

Lecture: ‘A Spectrum of Desires: Queering Medieval Art at The Met Cloisters’, with Nancy Thebaut, 17 Dec 2025, 17:30-19:00 (GMT), Courtauld Institute of Art

Date and time: 17 Dec 2025, 17:30 – 19:00

Location: Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2. This event takes place at our Vernon Square campus (WC1X 9EW).

Register and find out more on the Courtauld Website.

On view from October 17, 2025 to March 29, 2026 at The Met Cloisters, New York, Spectrum of Desire explores the diverse and sometimes surprising ways that medieval people thought about love, sex, and gender in the medieval past. In this talk, Nancy will offer an overview of the exhibition, which she co-curated with Melanie Holcomb (Metropolitan Museum of Art) as well as share new research on one of the objects featured in the show, namely a tapestry of the Queen of Sheba posing riddles to Solomon. Her study of the tapestry, which was made in late 15th-century Strasbourg, aims to shed light on the ways that medieval people were thinking about the relationship between gender, nature, and art making itself.

Nancy Thebaut is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Oxford and a tutorial fellow at St Catherine’s College. She earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2019, a museum studies diploma from the Ecole du Louvre in 2011, an MA in the History of Art from the Courtauld in 2009, and her BA from Agnes Scott College in 2008. She is co-curator of Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages with Melanie Holcomb, and she is also co-author of the accompanying exhibition catalogue, published by the Metropolitan Museum and Yale University Press. In addition to her curatorial work, Nancy is also completing a book on Carolingian and Ottonian liturgical images, entitled Lessons in Looking: Difficult Images of Christ ca. 850-1050.

Organised by Dr Jessica Barker, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art History, The Courtauld, as part of the Medieval Work-in-Progress Series. This series is generously supported by Sam Fogg.

CFP: ‘Memory and Medieval Material Culture’, Courtauld Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium, deadline 14 December 2025

Courtauld Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium (Friday 6 March 2026, London, UK)

Deadline for submissions 14th December 2025.

In our digital age, memory is both permanent and fleeting: forever enshrined on the internet, and yet easily forgotten amid the endless scroll of new information. In the Middle Ages, however, memory was more consciously articulated by medieval makers, patrons and viewers, and was appropriated to serve carefully crafted political, devotional and cultural agendas. Far from being passive repositories of remembrance, medieval artworks, buildings and objects played active roles in constructing, shaping and transmitting memory, whether personal, collective or institutional. This colloquium invites papers that explore the complex and dynamic relationship between memory and the material culture of the Middle Ages. It seeks to consider how images from medieval Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world engaged with the processes of remembering and forgetting, and how they mediated the relationship between the past and the present.

We invite submissions for 20-minute papers that investigate the relationships between memory, objects and buildings, as well as those involved in making, commissioning and viewing them. Respondents might consider themes including but by no means limited to:

  • The role of images in preserving, rewriting or reframing the past, and in creating, re-creating and reinforcing memory
  • Agendas of patronage and the politics of remembering and forgetting in the construction of memory
  • Death, commemoration and the visual cultures of remembrance
  • Genealogy, dynastic representation and strategies of commemoration
  • Architecture, monuments and urban spaces as sites of shared or contested memory
  • The staging and restaging of memory in rituals and processions
  • The transmission of memory across geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries
  • The afterlives of medieval images and their role in shaping modern memory of the Middle Ages

We invite PhD candidates to submit an up to 250-word paper proposal and title, a short CV, together with their complete contact details (full name, email, and institutional affiliation) by 14 December 2025. Please send these to Sophia Dumoulin (sophia.dumoulin@courtauld.ac.uk).

There may be some limited funding to support travel and accommodation costs for those without institutional support. If you would require funding support, please include a brief budget alongside your abstract.

Find out more information on the Courtauld’s website.

Online Lecture: ‘Creating Christian Sacred Spaces: The Armenian Case (4th–7th Centuries)’, with Nazénie Garibia, 4 November 2025, 12:00 PM (EST, UTC -5)

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

Nazénie Garibian, Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts Matenadaran & State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia

This lecture offers a case study on the creation of Christian sacred spaces in Armenia, from its official conversion at the beginning of the 4th century to the definitive establishment of Arab rule at the end of the 7th century, a complex and turbulent transitional period for all of Christendom, during which the gradual transformation of the religious landscape is carried out through the marking of both physical grounds and human minds, conceived as a single space of the Church. The lecture is structured around three main themes: the foundation of Armenian ecclesiastical institutions connected with the earliest Christian sanctuaries, the adoption in Armenia of sacred models originating from the Holy Land, particularly Jerusalem, and the development of major ecclesiastical complexes from the 4th to the 7th centuries, which served as the household and see of the Catholicoi of Armenia. Three selected examples – Ashtishat, Dvin, and Zvartnots – will be analyzed within the framework of a new urban concept: the ‘church-city’.

Nazénie Garibian is head of the Medieval Art Studies Department at the Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts Matenadaran and Professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts of Armenia. Dr. Garibian specializes in the early Christian and early modern periods of Armenian and Caucasian history, art, and culture. Her research focuses primarily on the comparative analysis of written sources and the material heritage of architectural monuments and works of art, considered within the broader political, cultural, and religious context of their time. She has two books forthcoming in 2025 and 2026: one dedicated to the construction of Christian identity in Armenia, and the other, a collective monograph, devoted to the history and architecture of the seventh-century ecclesiastical complex of Zvartnots.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

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

Conference: ‘Zooming In and Out: Reconsidering Hans Memling’, Musea Brugge, Bruges, 20-21 November 2025

The conference will take place in the auditorium of BRUSK, Musea Brugge, Bruges. Registration is now open, via the Musea Brugge website.

To celebrate its opening in 2025, BRON Research Centre (Musea Brugge), in collaboration with the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA, Brussels), is organising a two-day conference on new and ongoing research on the oeuvre of Early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling.

In 2023 the first phase of the research project Closer to Memling commenced. Closer to Memling is a project initiated by Musea Brugge in collaboration with other institutions to thoroughly examine the 9 works by Hans Memling in its collection. The aim of this project and conference is to contextualise previous studies and stimulate new research on the painter in an interdisciplinary exchange between leading and new scholars in the field.

Conference programme

Thursday 20 November 2025

09.00 – 09.30 Registration and coffee

09.30 – 09.50 Welcome

09.30 – 09.50 Word of welcome – Anne van Oosterwijk (Musea Brugge)

09.50 – 11.20 Session 1 – moderator: Jan Dumolyn (Ghent University)

  • Anna Koopstra (Musea Brugge), To Memling or not to Memling—past, present and future of Memling studies
  • Joannes van den Maagdenberg (Fondation Périer-d’Ieteren/Université Libre de Bruxelles/Ghent University), The Bruges commissioners of Hans Memling
  • Hendrik Callewier (KULeuven/State Archives Bruges), Context of the portrait of Gilles Joye
  • Discussion

11.20 – 11.50 Coffee break

11.50 – 13.20 Session 2 – moderator: Bernhard Ridderbos (Independent scholar)

  • Till-Holger Borchert (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen), Unpredictable ambitions: Memling’s last judgment in perspective
  • Fabio Marcelli (University of Perugia), The draft commission of the triptych for the “Badia Fiesolana” in the light of the historical and humanistic events of Florence
  • Oskar Rojewski (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, Madrid), Fragment of the Chain Reaction: What Michel Sittow Learned in Memling’s Workshop
  • Discussion

13.20 – 15.00 Lunch break

15.00 – 16.30 Session 3 – moderator: Bart Fransen (KIK-IRPA, Brussels)

  • Sandra Hindriks (Universität Wien), Window and Mirror in Hans Memling’s Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove
  • Miyuki Yamagata (Kyoto University), Hans Memling’s Artistic Inspirations from Germany: Diversity of Media and Vernacular Devotional Practices
  • Jeffrey Taylor (Kaunas University of Applied Sciences), The Memling Carpet: Controversy at the Foundation of Carpet History
  • Discussion

16.30 – 18.30 Visit to Museum St. John’s Hospital

18.30 – 21.00 Walking dinner/reception at BRUSK

Friday 21 November 2025

09.30 – 10.00 Registration and coffee

10.00 – 11.30 Session 4 – moderator: Ingrid Falque (UCLouvain)

  • Martin Hanβen (Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena), Leaving no trace behind? Hans Memling in Cologne
  • Erik Eising (Gemäldegalerie – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Artistic Crossroads: Unraveling the Parallels Between Hans Memling and Hugo van der Goes
  • Cameron Hurst (University of Melbourne), New Analysis of the Melbourne Man of Sorrows

11.15 – 11.30 Discussion

11.30 – 13.30 Lunch break + free visit to Groeningemuseum

13.30 – 15.30 Session 5 – moderator: Christina Currie (KIK-IRPA, Brussels)

  • Marie Postec (KIK-IRPA, Brussels), From Van Eyck to Memling – the expressive power of oil paint
  • Melis Avkiran (KIK-IRPA, Brussels, Hans Memling’s Ursula Shrine: New Insights from the IOHANNES Project 
  • Carol Pottasch and Jan Bustin (Mauritshuis, The Hague and Independent, Memling’s Manoeuvres: Ins and Outs of the Blue
  • Sofia Hennen and Joyce Klein Koerkamp (Musea Brugge), New technical analysis of the Portrait of a Young Woman
  • Discussion

15.30 – 15.50 General discussion and closing remarks by Anna Koopstra (Musea Brugge) and Melis Avkiran (KIK-IRPA, Brussels)

New Publication: ‘The Social Lives of Medieval Rings’, edited by Jitske Jasperse

The essays in The Social Lives of Medieval Rings focus on rings as small objects that have touched upon people, places, and events; rings have also featured in scholastic debates and form our modern museum collections. Contributors collectively argue that a closer look at these diminutive artifacts—both precious and mundane—alongside an assessment of their place within the visual, archaeological, and written record, and in museum contexts tells us more nuanced stories about how and why these small and sensory items were crafted and created connections between people and institutions. Their focus on the social aspects of medieval finger rings unites the contributions of nine scholars with backgrounds in art history, history, archaeology, museum studies, and collecting. Together their essays cover material roughly ranging from 1100 to 1500 in Iberia, France, England, Germany, Rus, and Byzantium.

Find out more about this book on the Arc Humanities website.

Table of contents

Introduction. “Some Reflections on the Social Lives of Rings,” by Jitske Jasperse

Chapter 1. “Haptic Histories: The Social Life of Rings in French Late Medieval Inventories and Testaments,” by Mariah Proctor-Tiffany

Chapter 2. “Archaeological Evidence of Later Medieval and Early Modern Finger-Rings in Britain: Rings, Experiences, and Emotions,” by Eleanor R. Standley

Chapter 3. “Changing Hands: On the Uses, Meaning, and Circulation of Rings Amongst the Iberian Nobility from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century,” by Inés Calderón Medina

Chapter 4. “A Sign of Women’s Power: Signet Rings in Medieval Rus,” by Christian Raffensperger

Chapter 5. “The Social Use of Rings Among the Muslims of al-Andalus,” by Ana Labarta

Chapter 6. “As a Seal or a Sign: Bishops’ Rings and their Metaphors,” by Juliette Calvarin

Chapter 7. “Authenticating the Rings of the ‘Nine Holy Bishops’: Santo Estevo de Ribas de Sil, from Modern to Medieval Contexts,” by Therese Martin

Chapter 8. “’Certainly a Very Fine Object’: Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss, Collectors of Jewellery and Wealth in the Twentieth Century,” by Elizabeth McCord

Epilogue. “Inside the Vitrine: Rings in Museums Today,” by Sandra Hindman

In-person/online conference: ‘The Challenge of Historical Distance Historicism and Anachronism in the Study of Art’, 6-7 November 2025

International Conference | 6-7 November 2025
Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut (NIKI), Florence, Italy

Please follow this link to view the full programme and register in person or online.

How can art historians explore, understand, or even ‘feel’ the material evidence of the past? How can we approach the problem of historical distance, of our anachronistic nostalgia and our intellectual desire for pre-modern periods and artefacts? Can we inhabit the time of past artworks, or do artworks constantly re-construct their own times? And what role do contemporary concerns play in our interpretations of the ancient, medieval, and early modern periods?

Numerous recent publications have explored the study of the past through different lenses. They have complicated the idea of ‘historical contexts’ by showing the ability of artworks to simultaneously refer to various time periods. They have also encouraged cross-temporal and sometimes ahistorical interpretations of premodern artefacts in the light of modern theories and concerns. This conference will bridge the ‘historicist’ and ‘anachronist’ camp in an attempt to theorise the thorny issue of time which sits at the core of both history and art history.

The conference is organised in celebration of the scholarship of Prof. Gervase Rosser and in honour of his retirement from the University of Oxford. One aspect of Rosser’s career that we particularly want to celebrate is his prominence as both historian and art historian, and his inspirational interrogation of both disciplines.

View the programme here.

Speakers include: 

  • Armin Bergmeier (University of Leipzig)
  • Saida Bondini (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz)
  • Donal Cooper (University of Cambridge)
  • Heiko Droste (Stockholm University)
  • Jas Elsner (University of Oxford)
  • Michael Ann Holly (Clark Institute)
  • Maria Loh (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
  • Keith Moxey (Barnard College)
  • Susie Nash (The Courtauld Institute of Art); Caspar Pearson (The Warburg Institute)
  • Hannah Skoda (University of Oxford)
  • Nancy Thebaut (University of Oxford)
  • Ben Thomas (Trinity College Dublin).

Find out more on the Nederlands Interuniversitair Kunsthistorisch Instituut website.