PhD Funding: PhD Candidate (in the Field of Medieval Art), ZRC SAZU Ljubljana, Slovenia, deadline 29 June 2021

The France Stele Institute of Art History is a part of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) based in Ljubljana. The Institute is the central scientific research institution in the field of art history in Slovenia. We are currently looking for a junior researcher who wishes to write a PhD thesis in the field of medieval art. The public call with all the relevant information and application forms is available here.

For the purpose of attaining a doctorate, the ZRC SAZU will conclude a fixed-term employment contract with the chosen candidate for the financing period from 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2025.

Junior researcher candidates who have completed their studies abroad must have all the necessary documentation for employment in the Republic of Slovenia until 26 August 2021. If junior researcher candidates have not completed a first-cycle study programme, a second-cycle study programme, or a master’s study programme in the Republic of Slovenia, they must obtain a decision from the higher education institution on the recognition of the foreign education in question to study in the Republic of Slovenia.

Deadline to apply is 29 June 2021. For complete information, visit the job posting.

CFP: British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Conference (27 November 2021), deadline 31 July 2021

The BAA invites proposals by postgraduates and early career researchers in the field of medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology.

Papers can be on any aspect of the medieval period, from antiquity to the later Middle Ages, across all geographical regions.

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.

Proposals of around 250 words for a 20-minute paper, along with a CV, should be sent by 31st July 2021 to postgradconf@thebaa.org

CFP: (Re-)Constructing Late Antique Armenia (2nd-8th Centuries CE): Historiography, Material culture, Immaterial heritage (Masaryk University, Czech Republic, 21-22 February 2022), deadline 30 June 2021

What is the place of Armenian arts and culture within the Late Antique Mediterranean space? Since the eighteenth century, scholars have attempted to provide answers to this thorny question. In doing so, researchers from Western Europe and Russia have often approached Armenia from a colonial or orientalist perspective, marginalizing or neglecting elements of its material and literary cultures. Armenia was thus presented, amongst others, as a bridge between the “Persian East” and the “Byzantine West”. Conversely, Armenian scholars have defended the uniqueness and originality of what became their “national” heritage. Both perspectives, ultimately, contributed to the isolation of Armenian arts and culture.

Recent investigations, however, highlight the necessity of re-considering Armenian material and literary cultures within broader Mediterranean area and emphasize the Late Antique cultural exchanges and interactions rather than specific cultures. Furthermore, the continuous contacts with other cultures of Western Asia cannot be neglected either.

The present conference aims to tackle these issues in two distinctive ways: on the one hand, by recontextualizing of the historiographical frameworks from the nineteenth to the twentieth century; on the other hand, by introducing new perspectives that examine the place of Armenia within the Late Antique world through the analysis of its material, visual, literary, and immaterial heritage. Our aim is to bring together scholars from different fields of
studies, including, but not limited to, art history, history, archaeology, religious
studies, as well as philology.

Papers proposing a transdisciplinary approach – including collaborative contributions – are warmly welcome. At the same time, we are interested in contributions exploring a larger framework.

The conference is sponsored by the Center for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, which will provide partial or complete funding of travel expenses as well as full accommodation.

The conference is organized as part of the project Cultural Interactions in the Medieval Sub-Caucasian Region: Historiographical and Art-Historical Perspectives (Czech Science Foundation – Swiss National Science Foundation); in collaboration between the Department of Art History, University of Fribourg and the Center for Early Medieval Studies, Department of Art History, Masaryk University, Brno.

Organizers:
Ruben Campini, Ivan Foletti, Annalisa Moraschi, Adrien Palladino – Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Paper proposals of no more than one page, accompanied by a short CV, shall be submitted until June 30, 2021 to palladino.adrien@gmail.com.

Acceptance notification will be sent by July 15, 2021.

More information can be found here: https://www.earlymedievalstudies.com/EN/index.html

Call for Papers: History of the Book Conference, Durham University Online (Deadline 30th June 2021)

The Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Durham University asks for paper submissions for its upcoming History of the Book Conference online, 8th-9th September 2021. They hope to attract contributions from scholars working on premodern book cultures from anywhere across the globe, and we hope to organize the conference to facilitate discussions that include comparative and/or connected perspectives.

The institute invites proposals for papers on the following topics:

  • The material organization of knowledge (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, philosophical, scientific, technical, medical or natural-historical texts and libraries, catalogues, taxonomies, storage, margins, rubrics, annotations, indices or tables of contents)
  • The organization of knowledge about other cultures (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc., and epistemic, cultural, linguistic or religious difference)
  • The disorganization of knowledge (the movement, circulation, sale, forgery, theft, or dispersal of knowledge texts or knowledge’s changing meaning as it is appropriated, edited, altered or moved between contexts)

Please send an abstract of max. 250 words, along with your name, affiliation and title to admin.imems@durham.ac.uk. Deadline for submissions is 30th June.

CFP: ‘Image & Narrative in Romanesque Art’, British Archaeological Association International Romanesque conference, British School at Rome (28-30 March 2022), deadline 31 July 2021

The British Archaeological Association will hold the seventh in its series of biennial International Romanesque conferences in association with the British School at Rome on 28-30 March, 2022.

The theme of the conference is Image and Narrative in Romanesque Art, and the aim is to examine the deployment and nature of imagery in the 11th and 12th centuries. While illustrated codices, sequential pictorial narratives, apse mosaics, devotional statues were well established before c.1000, several important new image types and settings came into being over the Romanesque period – moralizing programmes, historiated cloisters, figuratively enriched portals, imagery in glass. How might we understand image and narrative in the Latin West between c.1000 and c.1200? We welcome proposals for papers concerned with narrative modes, the significance of spatial positioning, accessibility and visibility, the uses and physical trappings of devotional images, the relationship between static and portable forms, and the extent to which media play a role in the development or importation of new iconographical formulae. Are images invested with singular meanings, or are they intentionally polysemous? Does the interest in architectural ‘articulation’ initiate a new understanding of the expressive and aesthetic potential of imagery, and/or emphasise its didactic purpose?  Are viewers provided with guidance as to interpretation – through inscriptions or compositional and visual triggers? What are the preconditions for change – theology, monasticism, political and ecclesiastical reform? How does medium and setting affect imagery?

Proposals for papers of up to 30 minutes in duration should be sent to John McNeill and Grazia Fachechi on romanesque2022@thebaa.org by 31 July, 2021. Papers should be in English. Decisions on acceptance will be made by the end of August.

The Conference will be held in the British School at Rome (immediately north of the Borghese Gardens) from 28-30 March, with the opportunity to stay on for two days of visits to buildings in and around Rome on 31 March and 1 April.

Online Conference: Liturgy, Literature & History: Oswald of Northumbria and the Cult of Saints in the High Middle Ages, 5th-6th August 2021

From the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of London:

‘The centrality of the cult of saints to medieval Christianity is reflected in surviving liturgical, historical, literary and administrative texts, material culture and architecture.  Too often, however, disciplinary boundaries mean these sources are studied in isolation from one another.  A multi-disciplinary approach is needed if we are to properly understand both the mechanisms by which saints’ cults spread and also the manner in which veneration of the saints drove other forms of political, cultural and social expression.  This conference, focussed on the cult of Oswald of Northumbria in the high Middle Ages, brings together historians, literary scholars, musicologists and art historians to explore the cult of saints through texts, objects, space, sound and the senses and particularly interrogates the influence of the liturgy on society.  The conference was intended to include a performance of Oswald’s feast-day liturgy drawn from Peterborough manuscripts and enacted in the space for which it was originally envisioned, we hope this recreation will be possible on Oswald’s feast day in 2022.’

This conference will take place via Zoom Webinar. Video presentations of the papers will be available to view from 2 weeks before the conference and the live element on 5th & 6th August will consist of discussion sessions. Delegates will be sent a link to access the video presentations and details of how to join the webinar nearer the time. There will also be an optional informal social/discussion session on Thursday evening – details about how to join this will be shared during the webinar.

All the pre-recorded videos will have the option to turn on accurate closed caption subtitles and the discussion sessions will feature live captioning via a Caption Viewer URL. A transcript of the discussion sessions will be available after the conference by emailing history.oswald@ucl.ac.uk with ‘transcript’ as the subject heading. If you have any other access requirements that could support your involvement in the conference then please email history.oswald@ucl.ac.uk with ‘access’ as the subject heading.

Registration

The conference is free and open to all. Please register for the live Webinar sessions using the links below. There is no need to register for the informal discussion as details about how to join this session will be shared during the Thursday Webinar.

If you are interested in the conference but do not reside in a time zone that makes attendance at the live element plausible then you are still welcome to register for the conference. By registering you will be able to access the pre-recorded videos at times to suit you, to submit questions to speakers in advance of the live sessions and, by emailing history.oswald@ucl.ac.uk with ‘transcript’ as the subject heading, to be sent a written transcript of the discussions after the conference ends.

Draft Programme (All times BST)

Thursday 5th August

14:30 Welcome

14:45 Panel 1

Professor Tessa Webber (Cambridge), ‘Public reading and the celebration of the feast of St Oswald at Peterborough: the knowns and unknowns’

Dr Nicholas Karn (Southampton), ‘Towards a new edition of Hugh Candidus’s Peterborough chronicle’

Chair: Professor Elisabeth van Houts (Cambridge)

15:30 Short break

15:45 Panel 2

Professor David Hiley (Regensburg), ‘Old and new in the liturgical chants for the feast of St Oswald’

Dr Johanna Dale (UCL), ‘King Oswald’s Arm: Liturgy and Material Culture at Peterborough Abbey’

Chair: Dr Helen Gittos (Oxford)

16:30: break

17:00 Panel 3

Professor Julian Luxford (St Andrews), ‘Images and Relics of Oswald in Later Medieval England’

Professor Nicholas Vincent (UEA), ‘Oswald and England’s Kings, 1066-1307’.

Chair: Dr Philippa Hoskin (Cambridge)

18:00 Informal social gathering

Friday 6th August

14:00 Welcome

14:05 Panel 4

Dr Benjamin Müsegades (Heidelberg), ‘An Englishman abroad. The cult of St Oswald in the medieval Empire’

Dr Diarmuid O’Riain (Munich), ‘The Lives of Oswald and other English saints in the twelfth-century Magnum Legendarium Austriacum’

Chair: Professor Björn Weiler (Aberystwyth)

14:50 Short break

15:00 Panel 5

Dr Henry Parkes (Nottingham), ‘Oswald’s Office in the Bodenseeraum’

Dr Gerhard Lutz (Cleveland Museum), ‘Oswald and Hildesheim Reconsidered’

Chair: Dr Jonathan Lyon (Chicago)

15:45 Break

16:15 Panel 6

Dr Sean Dunnahoe (California State), ‘The transmission of Oswald’s liturgy into Scandinavia’

Professor Brigitte Meijns (KU Leuven), ‘The Abbey of Bergues-Saint-Winnoc and the Cult of St. Oswald in Eleventh-Century Flanders’

Chair: Dr Erik Niblaeus (Cambridge)

17:00 Short break

17:15 Panel 7

Dr Sarah Bowden (King’s College London), ‘St Oswald’s raven: sanctity, sovereignty and animality in the Munich Oswald‘

Dr Francesca Brooks (York), ‘Falling into precipice of mind and monastery’: Lynette Roberts (1909-95) and the Lives of the Cambro-British Saints’

Chair: Dr Emily Ward (UCL)

18:00 Concluding remarks

This conference has been organised with support from The British Academy, Peterborough Cathedral, and UCL.

Online Lecture: ‘The Anatomy of Ritual: Votive Body Parts in Greco-Roman Antiquity and Beyond’, The Warburg Institute, 8th June 2021 17:30 – 19:00 GMT

Dr Jessica Hughes works at The Open University and is a co-founder of The Votives Project, a website and network for people who study, create or use votive offerings or other related ways of communicating with the divine. In this paper, she will introduce her research on anatomical votives in classical antiquity, the models of human body parts which were dedicated in sanctuaries all over the Greco-Roman world. She will discuss a range of votive materials, techniques, forms, and findspots, and consider how these objects can help us understand changing ideas about divine power and human frailty in the ancient Mediterranean. The seminar will also look at how the anatomical votive tradition developed in later times, drawing in particular on material from the Catholic Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary in the modern Italian city of Pompeii. How do these nineteenth- and twentieth-century metal anatomicals relate to the terracotta models that were dedicated in Roman temples down the road in ancient Pompeii? And how can this kind of comparative work contribute to our debates about material devotion and cultural memory? 

Register here.

This event is part of the A Material World: Devotion events series, which brings together academics and heritage professionals from a wide range of disciplines to discuss issues concerning historical devotional materials, their conservation, presentation, display, and reconstruction.

Organisers: Rembrandt Duits (Acting Curator, The Photographic Collection, The Warburg Institute) and Louisa McKenzie (PhD student, The Warburg Institute).

All sessions during 2020-2021 will be delivered online.

Online Lecture: What should historians do in the next decade of the climate crisis?, 1st June 2021 (15:30-17:30 GMT)

The final seminar of this year’s Anthropocene Histories series will be a panel discussion with Andreas Malm (Lund), Julia Adeney Thomas (Notre Dame), and Ling Zhang (Boston College), online on 1st June 2021 from 15:30-17:30 BST.

In the run-up to the UN climate change conference in Glasgow this November, much attention is focused on the political and social adaptations needed to address the climate crisis. Going into and beyond that however, there are also questions for historians and the discipline of history. From to activism, to reparative climate justice, to the shape of the wider historical narratives we offer, historians too face a question about we should do in the next decade of the climate crisis.

  • Andreas Malm is Senior Lecturer in Human Ecology at the University of Lund, and author most recently of How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire.
  • Julia Adeney Thomas is Associate Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, and co-author most recently of The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach.
  • Ling Zhang is Associate Professor of History at Boston College, and author of The River, the Plain, and the State: An Environmental Drama in Northern Song China, 1048-1128.

Advanced registration is essential. Book here.

Post-doctoral Fellowship: ‘Global at Venice – Research and Training for Global Challenges’ Cofund Fellowship Programme 2021 (Deadline 30th June 2021)

The first call for the “Global at Venice – Research and Training for Global Challenges” Cofund Fellowship Programme is now open.

The programme, funded through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND scheme, gives 15 talented researchers from all over the world the opportunity to undertake their research and training activity at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The programme is supported by the University’s corporate partners, including research centres, non-academic networks of spin-offs, and small and medium enterprises, where Fellows will have the opportunity to complete secondments, bridging the gap between academic and applied research, and between research and market.

The first call for proposals will award a maximum of 8 Fellowships each lasting 24 months.

Applicants are requested to submit their research proposal in one of the six interdisciplinary Research for Global Challenges Institutes (RGCI) that will support them with their individual research and training needs: 

  • Research Institute for Complexity (Science of complex economic, human and natural systems)
  • Research Institute for Digital and Cultural Heritage (Creative arts, cultural heritage and digital humanities)
  • Research Institute for Social Innovation (Public governance, welfare and social innovation)
  • Research Institute for International Studies (Cross cultural and area studies)
  • Research Institute for Green and Blue Growth (Environmental technology and green economy)
  • Research Institute for Innovation Management (Economics and management of innovation and entrepreneurship)

Applicants are required to choose a potential supervisor whose role is to integrate the research within the Research for Global Challenge Institute.

Research Fellows of any nationality on the date of the deadline (5 pm CET 30 June 2021) must meet the following criteria to apply:

  • Be in possession of a PhD degree awarded not later than 8 years prior to this call deadline.
  • Have at least one major publication without their PhD supervisor (either accepted, in press or published) at the time of deadline.
  • Have not resided or carried out their main activity in Italy for longer than 12 months during the 3 years prior to the call deadline, in compliance with the MSCA mobility rule.

Deadline for applications is 30th June 2021. To apply, visit the Institute for Global Challenges site.

Call for Papers: Greek Islands under the Control of Western Rulers, 13th-15th Cent.: Searching for Their Identity through Their Patronage (Deadline 30th June 2021)

After the Fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the armies of the Fourth Crusade and the signing of the treaty of Partitio Terrarum Imperii Romaniae, the majority of the Greek islands (in the Aegean, the Ionian Sea and Crete) gradually passed under the control of the Latins, initiating a new era of conflict and coexistence between the local populations, the new rulers and the settlers.

The Venetians, the Genoese, the Hospitallers et al., within this cultural environment, funded the construction, the decoration, or the renovation of secular and religious  buildings, as well as the production of artefacts. These initiatives constitute the irrefutable evidence of their presence in the Greek islands. Documents, inscriptions, coats of arms, donor portraits and other visual material can provide us with crucial information about the identities of the commissioners and their role within the local communities, and thus help us fill in some of the missing pages of the history of each island or complexes of islands.

With the financial support of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, through the Simon Barton Postgraduate & ECR Conference Prize, the Organizing and Scientific Committees would like to invite you to the virtual conference Greek Islands under the Control of Western Rulers (13th-15th cent.): Searching for their Identity through their Patronage, which will take place on 3 and 4 December 2021 via Zoom.

The conference aims to promote research on Latin patronage and how this reflects the status of the patrons in the Greek islands under western rule (13th-15th c.) and the interrelationship between the Byzantines and the Latins. Papers are expected to focus on the investigation of the various aspects of the patronage and what these initiatives can tell us about the process of the production of architecture and art (physical materials of the monuments and the objects, aesthetic taste of the commissioners, etc.), their profile (financial and social status, education), their social position within the local communities, their relations with the central or the local administration and the ways they used patronage to promote their status. Broader issues, such as the integration of the two cultures and their parallel development, devotional practices and beliefs, the social and political fermentations created by this coexistence, et al. are expected to be examined as well.

Postgraduate students and early career researchers from various disciplines (history, archaeology, history of art, epigraphy and palaeography) are particularly encouraged to participate. Emphasis will be given to interdisciplinary approaches.

Presentations will be given in Greek or in English. Please send your title and an abstract (about 300 words), written in Greek or in English, to latinpatronageconference@gmail.com, no later than the 30th of June 2021. Paper proposals should also contain the full name of the participant, affiliation, e-mail address, phone number and 5 keywords that best represent the content of your paper. Notifications of acceptance and relevant information will be sent via e-mail by July 2021.

The complete announcement is available from academia.edu