Job Opportunity: Associate Lecturer/Lecturer in History (pre-1700), University of Sydney (Deadline 17th June 2021)

The School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI) is seeking to appoint an Associate Lecturer / Lecturer in History (pre-1700) from candidates who hold a relevant PhD, an outstanding research profile and demonstrated teaching excellence. The Associate Lecturer / Lecturer in History (pre-1700) will be expected to pursue an active research program, produce high quality publications, participate in the department’s research culture, contribute to teaching at all levels and undertake appropriate administrative roles and curriculum development as required. 

We are seeking an academic who can bring their expertise in areas outside of Western Europe and North America as well as one or more of the following thematic areas – Indigenous history (including comparative Indigenous history); race and cultural identity; mobility and migration; women, gender and sexuality; environment and climate. Interdisciplinary expertise, with versatility and breadth across geographic areas and time periods also forms a key component to this opportunity.

The successful candidate will teach large introductory units of study in History and INGS (International and Global Studies) as well as the opportunity to develop specialised higher-level units and to supervise Honours, Masters and PhD students in their fields of speciality. The successful candidate will also be expected to participate in the curriculum transformation currently underway at the University and to be willing to teach into interdisciplinary units.

The school is seeking applications from scholars who are committed to decolonizing methodologies/approaches and public engagement and outreach, including utilising museum collections.

To be considered for this position please ensure you submit the below documents as part of your application:

– Current CV (including two referees of international standing)

– Supporting statement which addresses the below criteria:

  • a PhD (in hand or near completion) in History or a closely related discipline
  • an active research program with significant potential for publication in highly regarded peer-reviewed international journals and presses
  • demonstrated teaching excellence (including capacity to teach introductory units of study as well as specialised higher-level courses) and ability to supervise Honours students, doctoral and other postgraduate research, in fields of speciality
  • capacity to communicate their research in well-regarded peer-reviewed international publications as well as community outreach and public engagement channels
  • capacity to seek research funding from internal and external sources
  • a collegial approach and ability to contribute to curriculum development and undertake other academic administrative duties

The application form can be found here.

New Publication: A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam Through Christian and Jewish Eyes, A Sourcebook, by Stephen J. Shoemaker

Early Islam has emerged as a lively site of historical investigation, and scholars have challenged the traditional accounts of Islamic origins by drawing attention to the wealth of non-Islamic sources that describe the rise of Islam. A Prophet Has Appeared brings this approach to the classroom. This collection provides students and scholars with carefully selected, introduced, and annotated materials from non-Islamic sources dating to the early years of Islam. These can be read alone or alongside the Qur’an and later Islamic materials. Applying historical-critical analysis, the volume moves these invaluable sources to more equal footing with later Islamic narratives about Muhammad and the formation of his new religious movement.

Included are new English translations of sources by twenty authors, originally written in not only Greek and Latin but also Syriac, Georgian, Armenian, Hebrew, and Arabic and spanning a geographic range from England to Egypt and Iran. Ideal for the classroom and personal library, this sourcebook provides readers with the tools to meaningfully approach a new, burgeoning area of Islamic studies.

Stephen J. Shoemaker is Professor of Religious Studies and Ira E. Gaston Fellow in Christian Studies at the University of Oregon. He is a specialist on early Christian apocrypha, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the rise of Islam. He is the author of The Death of a Prophet, The Apocalypse of Empire, and Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion, among many other publications.

Available from The University of California Press.

Job Opportunity: Lecturer in Late Medieval History, King’s College London (Deadline 14th June 2021)

The Department of History at King’s College London seeks to appoint a Lecturer specialising in Late Medieval History (1200-1500). Preference may be given to applicants specializing in Southern Europe and/or the Mediterranean region. You will conduct and publish high quality research in the subject, seek external research funding and engage in impact-generating activities. You will develop new modules in your area of specialism, and contribute to the planning, organisation and delivery of other teaching activities. You will assume pastoral and administrative responsibilities, and participate actively in the life and culture of the department. A strong research track record, excellent teaching ability, outstanding interpersonal skills and a collaborative ethos are essential for the role.

KCL particularly welcomes applications from black and minority ethnic candidates as they are under-represented in the Department of History. All applications from members of groups with protected characteristics that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the Equality Act are welcomed.  This post will be offered on an indefinite contract.This is a full-time post – 100% full time equivalent.

Skills, knowledge and experience

Essential criteria 

1. PhD in Medieval History completed

2. Excellent research expertise in Late Medieval History

3. Ability to convene, teach and assess modules relating to medieval history across the undergraduate curriculum

4. Ability to engage students and support their learning

5. Demonstrable administrative and interpersonal skills, a collaborative ethos, and capacity for team-working

6. Strong track record in research relative to career stage

7. Experience of teaching and supporting students at UG level 

Desirable criteria 

1. Experience of teaching and supporting students at PG level

Further information

Interviews for shortlisted candidates will be held in early July. The selection process will include a presentation and an interview. To assist in the shortlisting process, applicants are asked to include a copy of an article or chapter (either published or intended for publication) and a proposal for a collaboratively taught module.They should make clear in their supporting statement how they meet each of the selection criteria for the post using examples of their skills and experience. This may include experience gained in employment, education, or during career breaks (such as time out to care for dependants). Applicants should include a separate short statement describing past experience that promotes diversity and inclusion, broadly understood, and/or plans to make future contributions to more inclusive representation of racialized and other minorities in the applicant’s core discipline, or in the academy more broadly. Please note that we are able to offer visa sponsorship for this role.

Deadline to apply is 14th June 2021. For complete information, visit the job posting here.

Online Lecture: ‘”I saw wonders, I saw horrors”: Reconsidering Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin’, with Emma Capron, The National Gallery, London, 9 June 2021, 5-6pm (BST)

Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin—a vividly coloured, densely populated tableau of heaven, earth, and the underworld—is one of the best preserved, visually complex, and finely executed altarpieces to survive from fifteenth-century France. It is also one of the best documented: its lengthy contract reveals that it was commissioned in 1453 by Jean de Montagny, a canon in Avignon, to be placed at the Carthusian monastery of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, just across the Rhône from the papal city. The panel was specifically intended for an altar that stood in the funerary chapel of Pope Innocent VI, who had founded the monastery in 1356.

Scholarship on the altarpiece has primarily focused on its sprawling imagery, following an iconographic method notable for neglecting information extrinsic to the image. The complexity of its patronage, its intended audience of enclosed Carthusians and, crucially, its physical location at the Villeneuve charterhouse were broadly overlooked. This paper addresses these very issues and in so doing challenges the interpretation that has held authority up to now. In recovering the Coronation’s context, it argues that in addition to reflecting Montagny’s devotional interests, the altarpiece played a key role in articulating the monastery’s institutional memory—a pressing concern as it was nearing its centenary—by commemorating its papal founder and celebrating the visionary event that led to its foundation.

Emma Capron is Associate Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery. Previously she was the Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow at the Frick Collection in New York, where she curated the exhibition The Charterhouse of Bruges: Jan van Eyck, Petrus Christus, and Jan Vos (2018-19). She also worked for Christie’s Old Masters in London and held fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum and the Musée du Louvre. Among other publications, her discovery of Simone Martini’s last documented work appeared in The Burlington Magazine in 2017. She completed her PhD on altarpieces in late medieval Avignon at the Courtauld Institute under the supervision of Susie Nash in 2019.

Speaker: Emma Capron – Associate Curator of Renaissance Painting, The National Gallery, London 

Organised by: Tom Nickson – The Courtauld

This is a live online event.  

Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before the event start time.  

If you have not received the log in details or have any further queries, please contact researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk. 

Book now via this link.

Call for Papers: ‘Theatrum Libri: The Press, Reading and Dissemination in Early Modern Europe’ (Deadline 30th June 2021)

Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania kindly invites you to an international academic conference ‘Theatrum Libri: The Press, Reading and Dissemination in Early Modern Europe’ (Martynas Mažvydas’s Readings), which will be held on December 1-2, 2021 (Vilnius, Lithuania/Virtual).


In the early modern period, the word theatrum (Latin for “theater,” area or work, space of action, arena) was used quite often metaphorically in book titles, for example, Theatrum mundi, et temporis (“World and Time Theater”), Theatrum politicum (“Theater of Politics”), Theatrum cometicum (“Theater of Comets”), Theatrum botanici (“Theater of Plants”), Theatrum patientiae (“Theater of Suffering”), Theatrum virtutum (“Theater of Virtues”), and others. The representatives and publishers of the Renaissance and Baroque era very quickly realized the appeal of the word “theater,” which usually meant the accumulation, systematization, and orderly sorting of inexhaustible knowledge on a subject. One of the most famous works of that time is the encyclopedia Theatrum vitae humanae (“Theater of Human Life” or “The Life of Man”) by the Swiss humanist, doctor Theodor Zwinger (1533-1588). The book presented systematical and comprehensive information about man. In this historical period, the archiving of knowledge was understood as a conscious and purposeful action.

The conferences invites participants to look at the printed book and manuscript as an archival phenomenon in terms of content (accumulation of knowledge) and form (accumulation of books). The conference is also aimed at the reflection on the creation of the book and its structure, the press, its dynamics in socio-cultural processes, highlighting the role of the author, publisher, distributor, reader, and book collector. Since the narratives of the past are created by both selected individual elements of the book and personal or institutional archives, the topic of the presentation can be very broad and varied.


The library encourages scholars from various disciplines to reflect on and share their new research, methods and applications, including the application of digital humanities and open data in research of the book:

– The 15-19th century book as an archival phenomenon (accumulation of knowledge and books) in Lithuania and Europe;

– The role of knowledge accumulators and book collectors, systematizers and sorters in forming a personal or institutional archive;

– The materiality of the book and its various elements (book marks, structure, parts, details, a title page, covers, inscriptions, typography, illustrations, vignettes, decorative elements, etc.) as a means of generating ideas, tool for creating a narrative or result of historical circumstances;

– Book economics: market and business strategies (prices, book fairs, catalogs, advertising, and reviews);

– Applying digital technology and interactive, unique tools for data storage and use.


Conference venue: Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, Gedimino Ave. 51, Vilnius. Participants who travel from abroad will be accomodated to present their papers on-line.
Conference language: Lithuanian, English (simultaneous translation).
Duration of the presentation: 20 minutes.


The deadline for sending abstracts (up to 200 words) is June 30, 2021. Abstracts should include name, affiliation, and an email address. Please send them and other inquires to the following email address: skaitymai2021@lnb.lt Articles based on the conference papers will be published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal ‘Aktualu rytoj’.

Online Lecture: Subterranean Hagia Sophia: Revealing the Waters Below the Hagia Sophia, 1st June 2021 17:00 pm GMT

Since 2005, Çiğdem Özkan Aygün has directed an interdisciplinary survey of the subterranean remains in the area of Hagia Sophia. Speleologists, professional photographers and divers have also supported the survey and documentation. Most finds have been new to scholarship and unexpectedly rich and informative about the history and construction techniques of the structures. They have opened a door into the monument’s unexplored relation with water management. This survey has proven that the area around Hagia Sophia was crucial for the water supply distribution over the first hill of the city, where the ancient water supply line ended. Further exploration beneath the Hippodrome and Topkapı Palace area revealed connections in the water supply. This talk will explain the relation of subterranean structures to the water supply system and present their 3D models and a short documentary. 

Discussant: James Crow, University of Edinburgh

Advance registration required.

Call for Papers: Eikón / Imago Journal 2022, ‘Pre-Modern “Pop Cultures”? Images and Objects Around the Mediterranean (c. 350-1918)’ (Deadline 30th June 2021)

Eikón / Imago requests paper submissions for their 2022 issue: ‘Pre-Modern “Pop Cultures”? Images and Objects Around the Mediterranean (c. 350–1918)’. Special Guest Editors will be Ivan Foletti, Zuzana Frantová, and Adrien Palladino.

From the announcement:

‘“We may not be able to define it, but we know it when we see it”: this is the slightly ironic definition Holt Parker gives us for “popular culture” (Parker 2011: 147). But who is able to define it, and can we really assess this notion for pre-modern cultures, so temporally distant? For centuries, “popular culture” was simply not an object of study for art historians, classicists, archaeologists and others. Following the prejudices of their fields, scholars were predominantly concerned with the “elites” and their cultures. According to Parker, products of “popular culture”, while “quantitatively superior”, are seen as “qualitatively inferior”, since they are products of “mass culture” conceived by “the people” and thus of little scholarly interest (Parker 2011: 169).

Starting in the 1960s and continuing in the 70s–80s, with the shifting paradigms of cultural history – increasingly incorporating social studies and anthropology – the notion of “popular culture” has received greater attention. We might mention, among others, the fundamental contributions of Mikhail Bakhtin on medieval “folk cultures” (1968), Santo Mazzarino’s work on the “democratization of culture” during the Late Empire (1974), as well as Aaron Gurevich’s Medieval Popular Culture (1988). In recent years, Jerry Toner’s Popular Culture in Ancient Rome (2009), and the volume Popular Culture in the Ancient World, edited by Lucy Grig (2017) have shed new light on the issue. These are but a few examples of the variety of questions that the notion of “popular culture” can evoke.

We should add to this general question the decision to follow an extremely longue durée. This can be justified by Jacques Le Goff’s conception of a “very long Middle Ages”. From an art historical perspective, such a perception is even more pertinent if we take into consideration selected expressions of popular culture, which, by all evidence, maintain premodern patterns throughout modernity and up to the beginning of the 20th century. Russian panel paintings – so-called “icons” –, the most popular and thus reproduced devotional images in the Latin West, can be evocative in this regard, such as the Roman Salus Populi Romani. Lastly, we can mention the culture of printed fragments of sanctity, from the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammad to images of the Virgin printed on “Schluckbildchen”.

In endeavors meant to question “popular culture”, the place of art history – immersed in the Vasarian tradition – and visual studies remained generally marginal, with increasing attention to objects traditionally considered “minor”. Even in this framework, however, mainly objects belonging to the elites were investigated. This issue of Eikón / Imago would thus like to investigate and reconsider the notion of “popular cultures” through images and objects. From pilgrim souvenirs in lead, terracotta images, objects of popular devotion, apotropaic amulets, printed imagery, metallic devotional panels, erotic or caricatural images to games, we wish to embrace a wide spectrum of images and objects conceived by/for “low”, “unofficial”, or “non-elite” individuals and groups.’

Eikón / Imago is especially interested in questions such as (but not limited to) the following: ‘How did images deal with established “popular culture” of shared myths and images that were not always compatible with official beliefs – Christianity, Islam, Judaism – in the Mediterranean space and beyond? How did these “popular” images/objects survive and transform after important moments of mass conversion and reconversion (including the conversion to socialism and communism) in the Mediterranean space? What was the attitude of authorities towards “popular cultures”? Do these attitudes differ in time and space? How did elite image-conceivers and makers adapt their language in order to create efficient “popular images” to convey social, political, or religious messages? What contacts could exist between “low” and “high” cultures, between “elite” and “non-elite” images and objects? Can material culture help us to refine the notion of “popular” or “mass culture”?’

The deadline to submit is 30th June 2021. For complete information, please click here.

Online Conference: ‘Iconography and Religious Otherness’,15th Conference of Iconographic Studies, 10th-11th June 2021

You are kindly invited to the 15th Conference of Iconographic Studies organized by Center for Iconographic Studies – University of Rijeka, Department of Art History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split and Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism, University of Macerata and the COST project “Islamic Legacy: Narratives East, West, South, North of the Mediterranean (1350-1750)”. The conference will take place on 10th and 11th June 2021 online via Zoom. For complete information and links to the Zoom meetings, please visit http://cis.ffri.hr/en/conference-2021-2/.

Online Conference: Materiality in the Eastern Mediterranean World, 28th-29th May 2021

The Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies (CEMS) at Central European University (Vienna/Budapest) is proud to announce the 7th International Graduate Conference on “Materiality in the Eastern Mediterranean World”, Vienna, 28-29 May 2021. The conference will provide a forum for graduate and advanced undergraduate students working on the Eastern Mediterranean to present their current research, exchange ideas, and develop scholarly networks.

The aim of this conference is to explore how a turn towards materiality can help us to understand the Eastern Mediterranean world. The conference seeks research that investigates the role of physical “things” in history. How are material culture, technology, and the physical environment entangled in historical processes? How has the physical world shaped and been shaped by forms of social life in the Eastern Mediterranean? How have ideas and emotions been put into practice and how have they been embodied in material objects (e.g. artifacts, relics, and manuscripts)? How could materiality in the Eastern Mediterranean differ from other regions?

Keynote lecture by Charlie Barber, May 29, 6:30 pm: Formlessness and Potentiality: Reflections on Art and Materiality in Fourteenth-Century Byzantium: ‘The first part of this paper will offer some readings of the definitions and use of Matter in a variety of writings, primarily from the early-fourteenth century.  Formlessness, Potentiality, and Harmonics will be discussed as aspects of Materiality.  Works by George Pachymeres and Theodore Metochites will be a particular focus. The second part of the paper will propose a reading of the use of marble in Metochites’ church of the Holy Savior in Chora. I will argue that the display of marble in the church was more than a demonstration of material resources.  Its presence speaks to the very identity of the monastery.’

Charlie Barber is the Donald Drew Egbert Professor of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

Advance registration is not required. To access the conference, please visit the CEU Events website.

Online Lecture: ‘The Use of Salisbury in the Long 12th Century (1075-1225): A Preliminary Revaluation’, 24th May 2021, 17:15 GMT

The next installment of the IHR History of Liturgy Seminar will occur on 24th May 2021. John Harper (Bangor University and the University of Birmingham) will be speaking on ‘The Use of Salisbury in the Long 12th Century (1075-1225): A Preliminary Revaluation’. Responses will be given by Frank Lawrence (University College, Dublin) and Helen Gittos (Oxford University).

Salisbury was one of three cathedrals relocated in 1075, but the only one to require a new clerical body, a new building, and, consequently, a new liturgy. Liturgical and chant historians have tended to treat the highly influential Use of Salisbury as a compilation and codification of the first part of the 13th century. John Harper’s work on the customary and the Mass of the BVM started to consider the earlier history of the Use. In the past fifteen months he has been working further on the liturgy of the first cathedral at Salisbury (1075-1225), in particular the ritual use of the building, and the liturgical patterns, forms, and texts.

This preliminary revaluation of the Use of Salisbury at the first cathedral will consider the evidence of three earlier sources that have received less attention from scholars: an unnoted gradual and epistolary (Salisbury Cathedral Library, MS 149), the Bedwyn Gradual (Cambridge University Library, Add MS 8333), and the fragment of a noted missal (Canterbury Cathedral Library, Add MS 128/29). Paleographical and internal evidence suggests that as a group these manuscripts represent a period from the third quarter of the 12th century to around 1200. The focus will be on observances and on proper chant texts of the mass, in relation to a select range of other sources: continental sources of the ninth century, insular sources from the Leofric Missal to the end of the 12th century, and sources of the Use of Salisbury from the 13th century.

There will be little time to examine the data on which this research is based in any detail. John Harper would be pleased to hear from anyone who would be interested to engage in a longer presentation and discussion. Please write to him at mus012@bangor.ac.uk.

This meeting will be held online via Zoom. Please register here:  https://www.history.ac.uk/events/roundtable-early-liturgy-salisbury-cathedral