Cultural Programme Medieval Afterlives Workshop
Please RSVP by 7 January 2025
This is an invitation to attend a session to brainstorm ideas for a Cultural Programme Season on Medieval Afterlives. Professor Marion Turner (English), Professor Henrike Lähnemann (MML), Professor Nancy Thebaut (History of Art), and Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach (Music) are already collaborating with the Cultural Programme on possible opportunities for the season and we are keen now to extend an invitation to others to join the conversation.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided from 12:30.

The aim of the session is to explore and test the potential for the season and bring together researchers who could be involved in shaping and delivering it.

The focus of the season will be on contemporary creativity, while also centring Oxford’s extraordinary medieval resources where appropriate – our manuscripts, instruments, objects, architecture, and spaces. This season might engage with novelists, poets, musicians, graphic artists, puppeteers, playwrights, actors, composers, designers, children’s book writers, textile workers, cartoonists, computer game programmers, AI technology, and more.

We would like the season to be ambitious and international while also engaging grass-roots, local communities, especially schools and young people. It will be wide-ranging, inclusive, accessible, innovative, and fun.

We also want to be open about the dark side of medieval appropriations in recent years, especially by the far right, and to examine and counter these narratives. While we want to bring in high-profile writers and artists, we also want to celebrate the creativity of everyone, including students. The season would be likely to take place circa 2028.

One overarching question might be whether this kind of contemporary creativity is an end in itself, or a gateway to the medieval past.

Please come along to this initial group meeting for all interested parties, which will be structured around the question:
What has medieval research to do with contemporary creativity?

If you have something you would like to share or discuss in advance, please feel free to reach out to the researchers who are already involved or the Cultural Programme via mailto:justine.shaw@humanities.ox.ac.uk.

Please RSVP to: mailto:culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk with ‘Medieval Afterlives Workshop’ in the subject line by 7 January 2025.
Date: 21 January 2025, 13:00
Venue: Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road OX2 6GG
Venue Details: Colin Matthews Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Speaker: Various Speakers
Organising department: Humanities Division
Organiser contact email address: justine.shaw@humanities.ox.ac.uk
Part of: Humanities Cultural Programme
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Belinda Clark