Conference: ‘The Bayeux Tapestry Now’, Swedenborg House, London, 7 November 2026

The Medieval Dress And Textile Society Presents: ‘The Bayeux Tapestry Now’

A one-day Symposium in London with leading experts on the Bayeux Tapestry. From September 2026 to July 2027 the Bayeux Tapestry will be loaned to the British Museum.

Date: 7 November 2026                                                                                    

Time: 9:30 am – 5:30 pm (BST)

Location: Swedenborg House, 20-21 Bloomsbury Way London, WC1A 2TH 

Speakers:

  • David Bates, Emeritus, University of East Anglia
  • Shirley Ann Brown, Emerita, York University, Toronto
  • George Camiller, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Clarisse Chavanne, Musée Curie, Paris
  • Millie Horton-Insch, British Museum
  • Maggie Kneen, Edinburgh University
  • Sylvette Lemagnen, Honorary Chief Curator of the Bayeux Tapestry
  • Alexandra Lester-Makin, Manchester Metropolitan University
  • Michael Lewis, British Museum
  • Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Emerita, The University of Manchester

Book your early-bird ticket now via this link. 

For more information, please visit our website.

Conference: ‘‘Filth and health’: hygiene and sanitation in the Middle Ages’, Great Hall at Barts Hospital, London, Friday 26 Jun 2026

Friday 26th June 2026, 10:30 am – 5.30 pm, Great Hall at Barts Hospital, London

Presented by The BAA, the Friends of Barts Heritage and the Friends of Great St Bartholomew

The British Archaeological Association, the Friends of Barts Heritage and the Friends of Great St Bartholomew are delighted to invite you to this event on Friday, 26 June 2026 in aid of the fundraising campaign for new loos at the church of Great St Bartholomew and in memory of Professor Peter Fergusson.

The conference will begin in the newly restored Great Hall at Bart’s Hospital at 11 a.m. (registration from 10.30 a.m.), and will be followed by a drinks reception (with a paid bar) at 5.30 p.m. in the Cloisters of the church.

The fee is £30. Tea and biscuits will be provided in the afternoon tea break, but delegates should find their own lunch. There are many suitable places in Smithfield. 

Speakers will include Dr Jeremy Ashbee, Dr Alex Buchanan, Professor David Carpenter, Dr David Harrison, Dr Piers Mitchell, Julian Munby, Will Palin and Professor Carole Rawlcliffe.

All funds raised by the event will go towards The Parochial Church Council Of The Ecclesiastical Parish Of Great St Bartholomew’s (charity no. 1163024) 900th appeal. 

Please book here the Great Barts Website.

Find out more about the conference on the BAA website.

CFP: ‘Ruling, Building, and Praying. Secular Authority and Religious Architecture in the Mediterranean between the 12th and 13th Centuries’, deadline 15 June 2026

Between the 12th and 13th centuries the Mediterranean was a space of intense political transformation and cultural interaction. In this context, architecture became one of the most visible expressions of power, identity, and legitimacy. Religious buildings in particular often played a key role in representing the authority of rulers, serving not only as places of worship but also as instruments of political communication and symbolic control.

The conference aims to explore the relationship between secular authority and religious architecture in the Mediterranean world during this crucial period. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which rulers, dynasties, and political elites promoted, transformed, or appropriated religious buildings to assert their power and shape the urban and territorial landscape.

Relevant examples include the architectural policies promoted by figures such as Frederick II, James II of Aragon, and other rulers who used religious architecture as a means of political representation and legitimation. The conference also welcomes studies on episcopal initiatives, monastic foundations, and other forms of patronage connected to the interaction between political authority and sacred architecture.

The conference will encourage interdisciplinary approaches combining history of architecture, art history, archaeology, and medieval studies, with particular attention to case studies, methodological reflections, and comparative perspectives across different regions of the Mediterranean.

Find out more on the conference website.

Proposals may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

  • Patronage and political strategies in the construction or transformation of religious buildings
  • The role of rulers and political elites in shaping sacred architectural landscapes
  • Architectural programs linked to processes of conquest, consolidation, or territorial control
  • Interactions between secular and ecclesiastical authorities in the promotion of religious architecture
  • Symbolic, liturgical, and representational functions of religious spaces connected to political power

Proposals must include:

  • title of the contribution
  • abstract (maximum 300 words)
  • short CV of the author (maximum 150 words)

Proposals must be sent by 15 June 2026 to the email address: mediterraneomedievale@gmail.com

Papers should not exceed 20 minutes, and poster presentations should not exceed 10 minutes.

The Scientific Committee will evaluate the submitted proposals by 30 June and will communicate their acceptance, if any, as a paper or as a poster, inserting them in the session of the Conference deemed most suitable.

The contributions presented at the Conference will be published as a monographic volume within the series “Architettura Medievale” (edited by Silvia Beltramo and Carlo Tosco), published by All’Insegna del Giglio. Posters admitted to the dedicated session will also be granted adequate space in the publication.

The languages of the Conference are: Italian, English, French, and Spanish.

The Conference organization will provide participants and grant recipients with lunches on 2 and 3 October, dinners on 1 and 2 October, and coffee breaks.

Grants For Early-Career Researchers

Three scholarships are available for PhD candidates in History of Architecture, History of Art, and Archaeology. The grants will cover accommodation and meals, while travel expenses will be borne by the participants. During the days of the Conference, grant recipients will collaborate with the organizing committee in the management of activities. Applicants are required to submit an updated curriculum vitae and a letter of motivation to the email address mediterraneomedievale@gmail.com no later than 31 May 2026.

The selection will be carried out by the Scientific Committee, and the results will be communicated by 30 June 2026.

Funding for the scholarships is guaranteed by the contribution of the Fundació Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic and the Parco Archeologico delle Isole Eolie.

Important Dates

  • Deadline for submission of proposals: 15 June 2026
  • Deadline for submission of scholarship applications: 31 May 2026
  • Notification of acceptance of proposals and scholarship applications: 30 June 2026
  • Conference dates: 1–2–3 October 2026

Scientific Secretariat: Fabio Linguanti

Organizing Secretariat And Information: Arianna Carannante, Fabio Linguanti

Info And Communications: mediterraneomedievale@gmail.com

Murray Seminar: ‘The Weaver as Polymath: A Mamluk Artist in Renaissance Ferrara’ with Robert Brennan, Birkbeck and online, 19 May 2026, 17:00—18:30 (BST)

Birkbeck, Clore Management Centre (CLO B01) and Onlin)

Around 1490, an Egyptian artist known as ‘Sabadino’ migrated to Ferrara, Italy, and set up a workshop under the patronage of the ruling Este family. Sabadino produced carpets of a distinctive type that seems to have emerged in Mamluk Egypt around the middle of the century, and was already highly prized across the Mediterranean. Although the general outlines of his career in Ferrara were made known through archival research in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Sabadino has received little sustained scholarly attention. This talk provides an overview of Sabadino’s activity in Ferrara, focusing in particular on how his work came to be interpreted in light of canonical themes of Renaissance art theory, such as the rebirth of antiquity, the social status of the artist, and the figure of the polymath. The aim is both to contribute to scholarship on this understudied artist, and to reevaluate the implications of artistic migration for wider understandings of the relationship between Italian and Islamic art in this period.

Robert Brennan joined the Courtauld Institute of Art in January 2025 as Lecturer in Italian Art, c. 1300-1500. His first monograph, Painting as a Modern Art in Early Renaissance Italy, was published by Harvey Miller in 2019. His articles have appeared in journals such as The Art Bulletin, Oxford Art Journal, and I Tatti Studies.

Book Here for the In-Person Seminar*

Book Here for the Livestream

*Please note that due to ongoing work at 43 Gordon Square, this seminar will be held just around the corner in the Clore Management Centre (room CLO B01), not the Keynes Library.

Seminar: ‘Inventing Animals – Inventing Humans’, An interdisciplinary seminar with Pierre-Olivier Dittmar, UCL, London, 1 June 2026, 13:45–17:00 (BST)

Animals did not exist at the start of the Middle Ages. Pigs, birds, cattle, bears, weasels, and rabbits did.  Inventing the idea of ‘the animal’ happened over the later Middle Ages. It did not simply create a fracture between humans and the rest of the world. It also created a second split, less visible and more intimate, which gave every individual an ‘animal side’. Inventing animals meant inventing humans too.

Pierre-Olivier Dittmar’s L’invention de l’animal. Essai d’anthropologie médiévale (Gallimard, 2026) charts these important European developments through history, religion, art history, archaeology and anthropology. This interdisciplinary seminar will explore this with a range of UCL experts from different fields. The seminar will be in English.

 Pierre-Olivier will present the project as a whole, but we will be primarily discussing section III ‘Dévorations’ for those who would like to read it in advance. 

File

Dévorations – Pierre-Olivier Dittmar

Speakers: Pierre-Olivier Dittmar (EHESS) Jane Gilbert (UCL SELCS-CMII), Mariam Motamedi-Fraser (UCL Geography), Bob Mills (UCL History of Art), Sophie Page (UCL History), John Sabapathy (UCL History)

Details: 1 June, 13:45–17:00, Moot Court, Bentham House. To attend please contact John Sabapathy (j.sabapathy@ucl.ac.uk)

Find out more about this event on the UCL website.

CFP: BAA Post-Graduate Conference, deadline 31st July 2026

The British Archaeological Association is excited to be hosting the 8th BAA postgraduate conference online this year! The BAA invites proposals by postgraduate and early career researchers in the field of medieval art history, architecture and archaeology. Papers can be on any aspect of the medieval period, from antiquity to the Later Middle Ages, across all geographical regions.

Proposals of around 250 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a CV, should be sent by 31 July 2026 to postgradconf@thebaa.org.

The conference will take place online on Thursday, 26 November 2026.

The BAA postgraduate conference offers an opportunity for postgraduate students and early career researchers at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present and discuss their research, and exchange ideas.

Find out more on the BAA website.

Online Lecture: ‘Painting in the Margins: Intervisuality (and Intertextuality) in Byzantine Manuscripts, 9th-12th Century’ with Leslie Brubaker, 8 May 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM (EDT) / 5:00 PM (BST)

We are pleased to highlight an upcoming event in the Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Architecture lecture series, hosted by the Institute of Sacred Music (ISM) at Yale University.

This series, organised in collaboration with the Yale Departments of Classics and History of Art, continues its tradition of bringing world-class scholarship to a global audience via Zoom.

The Lecture: Painting in the Margins: Intervisuality (and Intertextuality) in Byzantine Manuscripts, 9th-12th Century

  • Speaker: Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham, emerita)
  • Respondent: Magdalene Breidenthal (Fordham University)

Professor Brubaker is a leading authority on the visual culture of Byzantium. This session will explore the complex relationships between text and image within the borders of Byzantine manuscripts, examining how “marginal” paintings functioned not merely as decoration, but as sophisticated tools for intervisuality and intertextuality during the middle Byzantine period.

Registration

Advance registration is required to attend. Please note that registering for this event grants you access to the entire Late Antique and Byzantine Art and Architecture lecture series for the year.

Book your place here

About the Series

The series is organised by a distinguished committee including Robert S. Nelson (History of Art, emeritus), Felicity Harley (Yale Divinity School/ISM), Justin Willson (History of Art), and Vasileios Marinis (Yale Divinity School/ISM). For further inquiries regarding the event, please contact Katya Vetrov.

Conference Programme: ‘Dancing Women, Performing Bodies. Sensual Culture, Experience and Images (10th–17th Centuries)’, Campus Condorcet, Paris, 5-7 May 2026

École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Centre de Recherches Historiques (CNRS-EHESS), International Research Project MUDANZA

An international conference to be held in Paris (Campus Condorcet, Aubervilliers) on 5–7 May 2026 will explore the cultural and visual significance of dance in the medieval and early modern periods, with a particular focus on the female body.

Organised within the MuDanza research project (CNRS–EHESS), the event examines representations of dance in images and texts as key entry points into the study of social practices, rituals, and sensory experience. Special attention will be given to the role of women as central figures in both sacred and secular contexts, and to the ways in which dance reflects broader conceptions of the body, gender, and emotion between the 10th and the 17th centuries.

View more information about this conference on the conference website.

Tuesday 5 May, 2026

14h00 – Welcome Coffee

15h00: Opening Statements 

15h30-18h30: Performance

Chair, Elizabeth Claire 

  • Barbara Crostini “Regaining Women’s Real Presence: Personifications and Allegories of Victories and Virtues as Legitimization for Female Performers” 
  • Lynneth Renberg “Mapping Sámi Movement: Gender, Race, and Dance in Premodern Scandinavia”
  • Lindsey Drury “The bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells. Dance and a clangoring tale of terror” 
  • Sara Petrella “Quand les objets parlent et les femmes agissent. Danser les Amériques, des représentations coloniales à la culture matérielle autochtone” 

20h00 – Welcome Dinner For Speakers

Wednesday 6 May, 2026

8h30 – Welcome Coffee

9h30-12h30: Senses 

Chair, Alessandro Arcangeli 

  • Carla Maria Bino “Saltare di gioia. Alcuni appunti sulla semantica psicofisica di gioia e danza tra Antico e Nuovo Testamento”
  • Sari Katajala Peltomaa “Modelling experience, dancing and penance in the 15th century pastoralia of Vadstena Abbey”
  • Martine Clouzot “Folies dansantes dans les images médiévales (XIIIe -XVe s.). Des corps performants et sensoriels de tous les genres, ou sans genre ?”
  • Isabella Gagliardi “Più forte della morte è la danza: donne che ballano nei cimiteri medievali” [video-conference]

14h30-17h30: Dancing Women

Chair, Licia Buttà 

  • Alessandro Campeggiani “Le spectacle des corps des danseuses entre expérience mondaine et mystique. Un cas d’étude sur l’œuvre de Jacques de Vitry et les marginalia du Psautier rouge (XIIIe siècle) 
  • Maria Victoria Curto “Women who dwelt in non-duality: rupture, integration and transcendence through dance” 
  • Francesc Massip “La femme qui danse: chorégraphie en féminin à l’automne médiéval. La cour, la rue et l’église” 
  • Kathryn Dickason “Deca-dance in Motion: La Danse macabre des femmes and Twentieth Century Ballet” [video-conference]

Thursday 7 May, 2026

8h00 – Welcome Coffee

9h00-13h30: Images

Chair, Licia Buttà 

  • Eduardo Carrero Santamaria, “Singing and dancing the Cantigas de Santa Maria: Sources and Hypotheses”
  • Adrien Belgrano, “Activer les sens et susciter les émotions. La carole de la Chatelaine de Vergy, du texte à l’image” Giulia DI PIERRO “Rejoicing Through Sinful Dance: The Death of the Witnesses in the Anglo-Norman Apocalypses (13th-14th C.)” 
  • Marina Nordera, “Troubles dans les plans du récit: vies de femmes dans La danse de sainte Marie Madeleine de Lucas de Leyde (1519)” 

Closing Remarks: Alessandro Arcangeli, Licia Buttà, Elizabeth Claire

ICMA Annual Lecture: ‘Judgments in Nuremberg: The 1950s Trade in Medieval Christian and Jewish Manuscripts in the “Most German of All German Cities”’, with Professor William J. Diebold, Courtauld Institute of Art, 20 May 2026, 17:30-19:00 (BST)

In the early 1950s, a number of public and ecclesiastical institutions in Nuremberg, West Germany bought, sold, and exchanged medieval illuminated manuscripts. A museum acquired a Christian gospel book but sold two haggadot from its collection; a church gave away a mass book made for it four hundred years earlier; the city library sold a Hebrew liturgical manuscript it had held for centuries. These transactions were fraught for a variety of reasons. Not only were monetarily and culturally valuable objects changing hands, but, just a few years after the Shoah, Jewish cultural artifacts were leaving German public collections. And all of this was taking place in the “most German of all German cities,” a Nazi-era sobriquet for Nuremberg that had been given a new twist when the city that had hosted the annual Nazi party rallies became the site of the trial of the leading Nazi war criminals.

This lecture, drawing on extensive archival research, attempts to answer such questions as: What did it mean in the early 1950s for a German museum to acquire a spectacular Ottonian gospel book? For a church to give an American donor a liturgical manuscript that had been made for it? For German public institutions to sell Hebrew illuminated manuscripts to an émigré German Jew living in Israel? These transactions are placed in their political and social context. Germany, accused of the worst crimes in the history of mankind, was struggling to reestablish itself. One of the ways it tried to do this was by reshaping the relationship of its medieval past to its modern present.

Organised by Dr Jessica Barker, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art History at the Courtauld. This event is kindly supported by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), and the drinks reception sponsored by Sam Fogg. 

Speaker:

William J. Diebold is the Jane Neuberger Goodsell Professor of Art History and Humanities (emeritus) at Reed College. He was educated at Yale and Johns Hopkins and has published extensively on early medieval topics, including his book Word and Image: An Introduction to Early Medieval Art and articles on Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts, ivories, and medieval texts about art. More recently, his research has been on the modern reception of the Middle Ages, especially in twentieth-century Germany, and has led to such publications as “The Nazi Middle Ages,” “Medievalism,” and, most recently, Medieval Art, Modern Politics (co-edited with Brigitte Buettner).

To register and find out more about this talk, head to the Courtauld website.

Conference: ‘Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis’, British Library, 19 June 2026

The British Library recently undertook a new multispectral digitisation campaign of the Cotton Genesis (British Library, Cotton MS Otho B VI), one of the greatest works of manuscript art to survive from late Antiquity and one of the most tragic casualties of the Cotton Library fire of 1731. The new imagery made visible parts of the manuscript unseen since the fire. Pages that look black to the naked eye now reveal portions of readable texts; illuminations that look like blocks of colour now show layers of paint, brush strokes, and fold outlines. This opens exciting opportunities for new research on this manuscript, which is a significant witness both of an influential late-antique visual tradition and of the text of the Septuagint.

 The British Library will celebrate the launch of the multispectral images of the Cotton Genesis on its website with an interdisciplinary conference fully dedicated to the manuscript: Multispectral Gaze: New Approaches to the Cotton Genesis.

View the full programme and register here.

Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections (AMARC).

Thanks to support from AMARC, five free student tickets are available. To apply, please contact  elena.lichmanova@bl.uk and e.zingg@hist.uzh.ch.