ASNC Research Seminar

The ASNC Research Seminar is a forum for post-doctoral researchers working in ASNC-related topics and senior members of the ASNC department to present research papers. The seminar provides an opportunity to present new work in an informal setting, or to share with a ‘home’ audience papers intended for presentation at conferences further afield. The seminar meets monthly (though not in August), usually on the last Friday of each month, but with some flexibility depending on speaker availability. The ASNC Research Seminar is open for all members of the university to attend.  Seminars are followed by a trip to a local pub.

 

Forthcoming Seminars

These seminars are usually on a Friday at 5pm and during 2023-24 will take place either in person, on Zoom, or in a hybrid format. In-person seminars will be held in the English Faculty Building, 9 West Road Cambridge. Where online attendance is possible we will circulate a link, a meeting ID and a password in advance of each seminar.

In order to make things are smooth as possible, please note a few practicalities for online attendance:

  • Everyone in the audience is kindly asked to put themselves on 'mute'.
  • Note that any handouts accompanying the talks will be circulated via the Zoom chat function.
  • If you would like to ask a question or make a comment, please use the chat function to make yourself known. The chair will keep a list, and invite you to un-mute yourself in turn.

All are very warmly welcome, and we ask that if you are not a member of the ASNC department you please e-mail Marie-Luise Theuerkauf (mlt48cam.ac.uk) letting them know you that you would like to be added to the mailing list.

Easter Term 2024

  • 26 April 2024: Dr Fangzhe Qiu (University College Dublin), Mar aderid na dligthi-so: construction of textual networks in late medieval Irish ‘digests’
  • 10 May 2024: Dr Jonathan Hui: Constructing Irishness in Medieval Icelandic Romance
  • 17 May 2024: Dr Luisa Ostacchini (Stipendiary Lecturer in English at Oxford), title tbc
  • 24 May 2024: Dr Victoria Krivoshchekova (DIAS), title tbc

Future Events

 

Previous papers

  • 15 March 2024: Professor Caz Batten (Pennsylvania), Blood and Bone: Bodies, Illness, and Healing in Old English and Old Norse Medicine
  • 8 March 2024: Professor Irina Dumitrescu (Bonn), Beowulf, She Wrote
  • 16 February 2024: Dr Caitlin Ellis (Oslo), Early English Imperialism? Barbarus and Basileus in Britain
  • 2 February 2024: Dr Lee Colwill, Rímur and how to make them pay
  • 24 November 2023: Dr Christina Cleary (Queen's University, Belfast), Etymology and the essence of a text: motivation, methods and influences on the scholia to the Amrae Coluimb Chille
  • 10 November 2023: Denis Sukhino-Khomenko (Univerity of Gothenburg), The Tenets of Bocland: Royal Lordship and Sociolinguistics of pre-Norman English Land Proprietorship, c. 950–1066
  • 13 October 2023: Dr Tonicha Upham ((Past and Present Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London), Rethinking Rūs Sacrifice: Reading Arabic and Persian Geographies for “Viking” Funerary Killings
  • 26 May 2023: Sara Ann Knutson (British Columbia), 'Speaking Objects’ and Pseudo-Arabic: Islamic Coins and their (In)tangible Movements to Scandinavia
  • 12 May 2023: Cameron Wachowich (Toronto), From 'Historiae adversus Paganos' to 'Scéla Alaxandair': the prehistory and development of an Irish classical adaptation
  • 10 March 2023: Victoria Flood (Birmingham), ‘Historia Fabulosa’: Writing fairies in England and Wales
  • 3 March 2023: Laura Gazzoli (Austrian Academy of Sciences), ‘Opus muliebre’? The challenges of searching for a history of trans women in the early middle ages
  • 24 February 2023: Francesco Marzella (ASNC), Love, Nature, Prophecy: the Latin sources of Vita Merlini
  • 17 February 2023: Jesse Harrington (University College Cork), The Fickle Christenings of St. Lorcán of Dublin and Duke Arthur of Brittany
  • 18 November 2022: Katie Haworth (Cambridge): Women, jewellery and social networks in early Anglo-Saxon England
  • 11 November 2022: Kate Leach (Dartmouth College): Conformity and innovation in premodern Welsh medical charms
  • 27 May 2022: David Thornton (Bilkent), Of Butterflies and Battles: Territoriality, Home Advantage, and Conflict in Early Medieval Ireland
  • 20 May 2022: Patricia Boulhousa,
  • 6 May 2022: Tom Licence, Sex at the court of William Rufus
  • 29 April 2022: Fabio Mantegazza, Cogitosi Vita sanctae Brigidae: Towards A Critical Edition of the Earliest Latin Life of St. Brigit of Kildare
  • 11 March 2022: Matt Lampitt (MMLL), Cross-cultural Arthur and the Avalon Legend
  • 4 March 2022: David McCay (ASNC), Senchas and Dindshenchas: some medieval Irish critical vocabulary
  • 11 February 2022: Will Norman (ASNC/Defra), The Food Security Report, Iceland 1221
  • 26 November 2021: Luca Larpi, "Why should you stutter out your ineptitudes?" Mixed fortunes of Gildas' complaint
  • 12 November 2021: Tom Grant, Monster Fights and Dynastic Dramas: Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar as an Analogue to Beowulf
  • 18 June 2021: Ryan Lash (Notre Dame), Vitae in Stone: The Invention and Endurance of Early Medieval Saint Cults on Inishark and Inishbofin, Ireland
  • 28 May 2021: Joanna Tucker (Glasgow), Working with 'active manuscripts': medieval cartularies from Scotland
  • 14 May 2021: Lars Kjaer (New College of the Humanities), The Valdemarian kings of Denmark and the holy, 1157-1241
  • 12 March 2021: Alex Reider, The Exeter Book, The Phoenix, and the Interlingual Mode
  • 5 March 2021: Brynja Thorgeirsdottir (ASNC), The Íslendingasögur as Prosimetrum: The Interaction of Verse and Prose in Njáls saga
  • 19 February 2021: Diana Luft, Whatever happened to the Physicians of Myddfai?
  • 5 February 2021: Colleen Curran (Oxford),Writing Regional Identities: Cross-Cultural Scribal Exchanges between Britain and Brittany
  • 27 November 2020: Sharon Arbuthnot (ASNC), Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context
  • 13 November 2020: Ingrid Ivarsen (Emmanuel), Guidance notes for an Anglo-Saxon legislative drafter
  • 30 October 2020, Calum Platts (ASNC), The Battle of Tertry 687: an Austrasian turn in English History
  • 16 October 2020, James McIntosh (ASNC), When Words Collide: Towards a New Theory of Intertextual Relationships
  • 12 June 2020, Dr Emma Knowles (University of Sydney), Into the Wild: Characterising Hagar in Medieval Texts
  • 5 June 2020, Dr Ben Guy (ASNC), Of Manx and Men: Irish Pseudo-History in Early Medieval Wales
  • 22 May 2020, Dr Patrick Wadden (Belmont Abbey), Ostmen, Gaill, Hiberno-Scandinavians: Negotiating Identities in the Insular World, c.1000–c.1200
  • 8 May 2020, Dr Rory Naismith (ASNC), Gilds, States and Societies in Early Medieval England and Francia
  • 24 April 2020, Dr Erik Niblaeus (ASNC), The Reception of Adam of Bremen's History in Medieval Scandinavia
  • 28 February 2020, Dr Katherine Olley (UCL), Revisiting Pseudo-Procreation in Old Norse Literature
  • 31 January 2020, Dr Rebecca Thomas (Bangor University), Language and Nationhood in the Middle Ages: a Study of the use of cyfiaith and anghyfiaith in Welsh texts
  • 24 January 2020, Daniel Watson (DIAS, Dublin), The Six Ages of the World and Nostalgia for the Pagan Past in Early Irish Literature
  • 1 November 2019, Dr Rebecca Merkelbach, Love and Loss: Emotion and the Generic Hybridity of the ‘Post-Classical’ Sagas of Icelanders
  • 25 October 2019, Dr Mark Laynesmith, The sin of marrying a godparent: exploring a puzzle in the career of St Boniface
  • 7 June 2019: Rebecca Shercliff, Tochmarc Ferbe: Compositional Methods and Motivations in Twelfth-Century Ireland
  • 17 May 2019: Ben Allport, Communication and Community: Dynamics between Coast and Interior in Medieval Norwegian Sources
  • 11 March 2019: Dr Paul Gazzoli (Institute for Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences), Ethnic Identity, Source Criticism and Re-Writing the Early History of Norway
  • 15 February 2019: Michaela Jacques (Harvard University): Einion Offeiriad, Dafydd Ddu, and the Early History of the Medieval Welsh Bardic Grammars
  • 1 February 2019: Dr Rose Hedley (Swansea University): Cambria Scandinavica: Considering Wales in the Viking World
  • 25 January 2019: Dr Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, The Pen is(n’t) Mightier than the Sword: Reading Dindṡenchas Poetry as Political Propaganda in Tenth and Eleventh-century Ireland
  • 14 January 2019: Michael Herren, Editing the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary: Challenges and Some Solutions
  • 9 November 2018: Dr Hattie Soper, Power, Ability and Cræft in Old English Literature
  • 4 May 2018: Prof Dáibhí Ó Cróinín (NUI, Galway), A Lost(?) Genesis Commentary of Alcuin’s as a Source for the Irish Sex Aetates Mundi?
  • 27 April 2018: Shaun McGuiness (Bangor), The Bishops of Bangor, 1092-1307. Loyalties tested. The Politics of Intrusion and Exile
  • 16 February 2018: Debby Banham (Cambridge), Bread in Anglo-Saxon England: making and meaning
  • 19 January 2018: Dr Patricia Boulhosa (Cambridge), Variance in the Making and Transmission of the Medieval Icelandic Laws
  • 24 November 2017: Dr Conor O'Brien (Cambridge), Political Theology in early Irish and Anglo-Saxon Exegesis of the Catholic Epistles
  • 3 November 2017: David Callander (ASNC), Blending Time in early Welsh and English Poetry
  • 30 June 2017: Dr Charlene Eska (Virginia Tech), Taking Another Look at the Palaeography of H in Lebor na hUidre
  • 2 June 2017: Dr Elizabeth Boyle (Maynooth), Twilight of the Idols: Some Thoughts on Conversion, Martyrdom and Idolatry in Medieval Ireland
  • 5 May 2017: Dr Sarah Waidler (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), Stories of Saints: Independent Anecdotes of Irish Saints in Twelfth-Century Manuscripts
  • 28 April 2017: Prof Jón Karl Helgason (University of Iceland), Echoes of Valhalla in Viking Metal: The Influences of Snorri Sturluson and Led Zeppelin
  • 10 March 2017: Dr Oren Falk (Cornell), An Uplifting Downfall: The Icelandic Peace Corpse at Work
  • 27 January 2017: Ben Guy (ASNC), Writing Genealogy in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Irish and Welsh
  • 25 November 2016: Sarah Croix and Mads Heilskov (Aarhus University, Denmark): Death Rituals in Viking and Medieval Denmark: 'Birds, babies and bones: highlights from the oldest cemetery in Ribe' (S Croix) and 'The liturgy of the dead in Medieval Denmark' (M Vedel Heilskov)
  • 20 May 2016: Dr Silva Nurmio (Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin): Number Suppletion in Adjectives: Typology and the Brittonic Languages
  • 22 April 2016: Dr Robert Gallagher (University of the Basque Country): The Vernacular in Anglo-Saxon Charters: Expansion and Innovation in Ninth-Century England
  • 4 March 2016: Dr Thomas Heeboll-Holm (University of Southern Denmark): From Vikings to Vitalienbrüder. Danes, Denmark and Piracy, c. 1000-c. 1400
  • 12 February 2016: Dr Eleanor Heans-Glogowska: Converting the Conversion: A Fourteenth-Century Account of the Conversion of Iceland
  • 22 January 2016: Dr Eoghan Ahern (ASNC): Bede's Miracles Reconsidered
  • 11 December 2015: Dr Aaron Ralby (Independent Scholar, Cambridge): Memory, Space, and Style; Wisdom Literature in Theory and Practice
  • 23 October, 2015: Kerstin Hundahl (Lunds Universitet): 'All three shall be kings': The Battle for the Danish Throne, 1241-1259
  • 12th June 2015: Roger McClure: A New Appraoch to Editing Texts: The annals of Tigernach
  • 28th May 2015: dr Aideen M. O'Leary (Aberdeen): The "Apocalypse" of 1096, and the Religious Transformation of Ireland
  • 15th May 2015: Dr Jaakko Tahkokallio (Helsinki): Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britannie: the time and place of publication
  • 20th March 2015: Dr Owain-Jones (Bangor) Brut y Tywysogion: Networks of Chronical Writing in Medieval Wales
  • 20th February 2015; Dr Megan Cavell (Durham): Bringing Animal Studies to Anglo-Saxon England
  • 23 January 2015: Dr Elizabeth Boyle (Maynooth): 'Absalom, Absalom!' Translating th eStory of King David in Medieval Ireland
  • 12th Decemember 2014: Dr Catherine Rooney (Darwin College): The Early Manuscripts of Gerald of Wales
  • 30th May 2014: Dr Phil Dunshea (ASNC), Edinburgh and Lothian in early Insular texts
  • 21st March 2014: Dr Patricia Pires Boulhosa (ASNC), Fish Trade in Mediaeval Iceland - History and Archaeology
  • 21st February 2014: Dr Natalia Petrovskaia (ASNC), Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Romans 
  • 30th January 2014: Stefany Wragg, Wearmouth to Winchester: Tracing the Old English Bede, Text and Image
  • 22nd November 2013: Dr. Erik Niblaeus (CRASSH): Writing Medieval History in the Wake of the Schleswig-Holstein Crisis (c. 1848-64)
  • 25th October 2013: Dr Deborah Potts (ASNC): How to write like a Viking: mixing Óðinn’s mead and modern poetic practice
  • 26th April 2013, Mr Orri Tómasson (Teaching Associate in Modern Icelandic), 'Sigurður Nordal´s Íslenzk menning: A National Narrative'
  • 31st May 2013, Dr Matthias Egeler (Junior Research Fellow, Dept. of ASNC), 'From Veleda to the revivification of Thor’s goats: ten centuries of Celtic-Germanic religious encounters'
  • 25th January 2013, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, 'Northern Winds and Mists': Disentangling Narrative Threads in the Saga Voyages of the North Atlantic'
  • 22nd February 2013, David Woodman, 'Volume one of an edition of the Worcester Chronicle'
  • 22nd March 2013, Conan Doyle, ‘Gut feelings and bellyaches: Internal Anatomy of the Gastro-Intestinal Tract in Old English’
  • 7th December 2012, Brittany Schorn (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic), 'Genre and eddic poetry'
  • 21st November 2012, Katja Ritari (University of Helsinki), 'The theme of love in the sermons of Columbanus'
  • 26th October 2012, Karin Stüber (Indogermanisches Seminar, Universität Zürich), 'Periphrastic constructions in Old and Middle Irish'
  • 25th May 2012, Dr Nick Sparks (Dept of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), ‘A Fragment From an Insular Manuscript of Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum’
  • 27th April 2012, Dr Margo Griffin-Wilson (Dept of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), ‘Praise of Patron and Patrimony: Medieval Tales and Eulogistic Verse in Teallach coisgreatha críoch Bharrach’
  • 23rd March 2012, Dr Matthias Ammon (Dept of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), 'The Semantics of word-pairs in Old English'
  • 24th February 2012, Dr Levi Roach (St John’s College, Cambridge), 'Penitential kingship: a millennial phenomenon?'
  • 27th January 2012, Dr Rob Crampton (Dept of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), 'Was the author of Merugud Uilix Meic Leirtis a Platonist?'
  • 9th December 2011, Dr Denis Casey (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), 'Renaissance Language Teaching and Medieval Irish Grammatical Tradition in Queen Elizabeth's Irish Primer'
  • 25th November 2011, Dr Elizabeth Ashman Rowe (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and Clare Hall), 'Shaggy Breeks and Boneless Vikings: The Development of the Legend of Ragnar loðbrók'
  • 28th October 2011, Prof. Dr Bernhard Maier (University of Tübingen), 'Bringing the ends of the earth together": Celticists and Orientalists in Victorian Britain'
  • 17th June 2011, Dr Paul Gazzoli, (Dept of ASNC), 'From confinia normannorum to tanmaurk ala? Frankish annals and the origins of Denmark.'
  • 13th May 2011, Dr Mark Williams (Peterhouse), 'Dafydd ap Gwilym, Metaphor and Ecocriticism'
  • 18th March 2011, Dr Richard Dance (Dept of ASNC), and Fellow, St Catharine's College, 'Lady Bertilak's buttocks, and other adventures in etymology'
  • 28th January 2011, Dr Nick Zair (Faculty of Classics and Research Fellow, Peterhouse), 'How can we tell if a language is Celtic?'
  • 17th December 2010, Dr Hilary Powell (Dept of History & Philosophy of Science, and Research Fellow, Darwin College), 'Following in the footsteps of Christ: text and context in the Vita Mildrethae'
  • 26th November 2010, Dr Caroline Brett (Affiliated Lecturer in ASNC), 'Soldiers, saints and states? Another look at the Breton migrations'
  • 29th October 2010, ( Dr Paul Russell, Reader in Celtic, ASNC), 'Reading Ovid in medieval Wales'
  • 18th June 2010, Dr Kathryn Powell (Honorary Research Associate in ASNC), 'The Scipmen Scribe and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 383'
  • 30th April 2010, Dr Denis Casey (Dept of ASNC), 'Towards a Critical Edition of the Annals of Clonmacnoise' 
  • 28th May 2010, Dr Stephen Leonard (Junior Research Fellow, Trinity Hall, Cambridge), ‘Identity and Language in Early Iceland’
  • 29th January 2010, Dr Martin Brett (Life Fellow, Robinson College, Cambridge), ‘Episcopal Authority and Revenue before 1180’
  • 26th February 2010, Dr Patricia Boulhosa (Honorary Research Associate in ASNC, University of Cambridge), ‘Sagas and the Law: the Icelandic goði’
  • 12th March 2010, Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes (Honorary Research Associate in ASNC, University of Cambridge, and Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Leicester) '"He shall go to God's judgement, and experience there what he may": Ideas of Ordeals in Anglo-Saxon England'
  • 11th December 2009, Dr Debby Banham (Honorary Research Associate in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic) 'Grantacæstir to Grontbricg: Did Offa of Mercia build the bridge at Cambridge?'
  • 20th November 2009, Rory Nasmith (Junior Research Fellow, Clare College), 'Understanding English Coinage c.900 - c.973: Local, National and International'
  • 30th October 2009, Dr Elizabeth Boyle (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow), 'Catholicism, cannibalism and eucharistic controversy in Ireland'
  • 25th September 2009, Dr Karen George (Honorary Research Associate in Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic), 'The structure and purpose of Gildas's De excidio Britonum'
  • 26 June 2009, Dr Kaarina Hollo (Lecturer in Irish, ASNC), ' The tale of Mis and Dub Ruis: antecedents and contemporary contexts'
  • 24 April 2009, Dr David Woodman (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, ASNC and Robinson College), 'Charters and Hagiography in Early Northumbria'
  • 27th March 2009, Dr Pádraic Moran (Early Irish Glossaries Project/Jesus College), 'Féichín of Fore, Connacht and Pictland? Evidence for the cult of a midlands saint'.
  • 27th February 2009, Dr Mark Williams (Peterhouse College), ' Morgan Llwyd's astrology and its contexts'
  • 30th January 2009, Dr Rebecca Rushforth (Corpus Christi College), ' What Ealdorman Ordlaf did next: estate transmission and textual transmission in a charter of Edward the Elder'
  • December 12th 2008, Dr Fiona Edmonds (Lecturer in Celtic History and Fellow of Clare College), 'Whithorn's renown in the early medieval period: Whithorn, Futerna and magnum monasterium' N.B. This is an opportunity to hear the 2008 Whithorn Lecture, which Dr Edmonds gave earlier this year'.
  • November 28th 2008, Dr Peter Stokes (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, ASNC), ' A Ninth-Century Insular 't'? Statistical Palaeography at Work'
  • October 31st 2008, Dr Emily Lethbridge (Junior Research Fellow, Emmanuel College), ' Eggertsbók: Texts and Contexts'.
  • September 26th 2008, Dr Roy Flechner (Junior Research Fellow, Trinity College), ‘Sic et non in Irish Ecclesiastical Law’
  • July 25th 2008, Lizzie Boyle, (Honorary Research Associate in ASNC), ‘Margaret Stokes and the study of medieval Irish art in the nineteenth century’
  • July 4th 2008:, Dr Alderik Blom (Junior Research Fellow at Girton College), 'Multilingualism and the Vocabularium Cornicum'
  • May 30th 2008, Dr Sharon Rowley (Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College), 'Uncertain Origins and Idiosyncratic Styles: Some Interpretive Dilemmas in the Old English Bede'