The H.M. Chadwick Lectures, the Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures and the E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures all take place annually. Booklets based on these lectures are available to purchase through the department.

A list of this year's lectures, together with other events hosted by the Department, can be found here: Departmental Events

For more information on each series of lectures please click on the individual links below.

H.M. Chadwick Lectures

Hector Munro Chadwick (1870-1947) was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge (1912-41). The Department of ASNC, which owes its existence as well as its interdisciplinary outlook to H.M. Chadwick, has wished to commemorate his enduring contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies by establishing an annual series of lectures in his name. The H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture (established in 1990) is delivered by a scholar who is invited to Cambridge for the occasion, on a subject calculated to be of interest to the whole Department. The H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures are held annually at the end of Lent term.

2024 Annual Lecture

The thirty-fifth annual lecture was given by Professor Julia Crick (Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies, King's College London), entitled 'A palaeographer's vision': the life, times, and work of T. Julian Brown, Professor of Palaeography, University of London, 1960-87. The lecture took place on 14 March 2024.

For details on how to purchase pamphlets from the lecture series, please click here.

Past H.M. Chadwick Lectures

2023: Professor Elizabeth Tyler, The Order of the Exeter Book
2022: Dr Conrad Leyser, The Rise of Blood Kinship in the Early Medieval West
2021: Professor Ralph Mathisen, Barbarians, Hacksilver, and Hoards: The New Monetary Economy on Rome's Northern Frontier
2020: Professor Sarah Foot, Why were there no martyrs in the early English Church?
2019: Professor Judith Jesch, The Poetry of Orkneyinga saga
2018: Professor Greg Toner, Manifestations of Sovereignty in Medieval Ireland
2017: Anthony Harvey and Philip Durkin, Spoken Through: How Scholarly Dictionaries Mediate the Past
2016: Susan Irvine, Uncertain Beginnings: The Prefatory Tradition in Old English
2015: Catherine McKenna, ‘Py Ganwyf?’ Some Terminology for Poetry in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Wales
2014: Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cult of Othin and the Pre-Christian Religions of the North
2013: John Blair, The British Culture of Anglo-Saxon Settlement
2012: Michael Lapidge, H.M. Chadwick: A Centennial Commemoration
2011: Wendy Davies, Water Mill and Cattle Standards: Probing the Economic Comparison between Ireland and Spain in the Early Middle Ages
2010: Joseph Falaky Nagy, Mercantile Myth in Medieval Celtic Traditions
2009: Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, Stealing Obedience: Narratives of Agency in Later Anglo-Saxon England
2008: Sverre Bagge, Order, Disorder and Disordered Order: Interpretations of the World and Society from the Pagan to the Christian Period in Scandinavia
2006: Dennis Green, A room of their own? Women readers in the Middle Ages
2005: Patrick Sims-Williams, The Iron House in Ireland
2004: Peter Foote, The Early Christian Laws of Iceland: Some Observations
2003: Malcolm Godden, The translations of Alfred and his circle, and the misappropriation of the past
2002: James Graham-Campbell, Pictish Silver: Status and Symbol
2001: Richard Gameson, The Scribe Speaks? Colophons in Early English Manuscripts
2000: Andrew Wawn, ‘Fast er drukkið og fátt lært’: Eiríkur Magnússon, Old Northern Philology, and Victorian Cambridge
1999: Marged Haycock, 'Where cider ends, There ale begins to reign': drink in medieval Welsh poetry
1998: Donald Scragg, Dating and Style in Old English Composite Homilies
1997: Peter and Ursula Dronke, Growth of Literature: the Sea and the God of the Sea
1996: Isabel Henderson, Pictish Monsters: Symbol, Text and Image
1995: Daniel Huws, Five Ancient Books of Wales
1994: Peter Sawyer, Scandinavians and the English in the Viking Age
1993: Gad Rausing, Emperors and popes, kings and bishops: Scandinavian history in the 'Dark Ages'
1992: Pádraig Ó Riain, Anglo-Saxon Ireland: the evidence of the Martyrology of Tallaght
1991: Bruce Mitchell, H. M. Chadwick, the Study of Anglo-Saxon: Fifty Years On
1990: D. A. Bullough, Friends, Neighbours and Fellow-drinkers: Aspects of Community and Conflict in the Early Medieval West

Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures

In 2000 Hughes Hall, Cambridge, instituted an annual lecture in memory of Dr Kathleen Hughes, who at her death in 1977 was Reader in Celtic Studies in this Department. Up until 2003, the focus of the series was mediaeval Welsh history; since then it has been any aspect of the history taught in the Department. The Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures are held annually in Easter Term.

2024 Lecture

The next lecture will be given by Professor Gordon Noble (Aberdeen) on 25 April 2024 and entitled 'The Development of the Pictish Kingdoms in Northern Britain, c.AD300-900'. Further details will be published closer to the event.

The Hughes Memorial lectures are published jointly by Hughes Hall and the Department in April each year.

Past Kathleen Hughes Memorial Lectures

2023: Dr Elizabeth Boyle, The Moral Economy in Early Medieval Ireland
2022: Professor Dauvit Broun, The Church and the Beginning of Scotland
2021: Dr Caroline Brett, You Read it Here First: Early Traditions of Welsh Saints in Brittany
2019: Dr Jacopo Bisagni, From Atoms to the Cosmos: the Irish Tradition of the Divisions of Time in the Early Middle Ages
2018: Dr David Parsons, Warning: May Contain Saints Place-Names as Evidence for the Church in Early Wales
2017: Elva Johnston, When Worlds Collide? Pagans and Christians in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Ireland
2016: Julia Smith, Relics and the Insular World, c.600-c.850
2015: James E. Fraser, Iona and the Burial Places of the Kings of Alba
2014: Nancy Edwards, The Early Medieval Sculpture of Wales: Text, Pattern and Image
2013: Robert Bartlett, Gerald of Wales and the Ethnographic Imagination
2012: Alex Woolf, The Churches of Pictavia
2011: Thomas Charles-Edwards, St Patrick and the Landscape of Early Christian Ireland
2010: Marie Therese Flanagan, Reform in the Twelfth‐century Irish Church: A Revolution of Outlook?
2009: Colmán Etchingham, The Irish 'Monastic Town': Is This A Valid Concept?
2008: Oliver Padel, Slavery in Saxon Cornwall: the Bodmin Manumissions
2007: Paul Russell, 'Read it in a Glossary': Glossaries and Learned Discourse in Medieval Ireland
2004: Ken Dark, Archaeology and the origins of Insular monasticism
2003: Scott Gwara, Education in Wales and Cornwall in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries: Understanding De raris fabulis
2002: R. R. Davies, The King of England and the Prince of Wales, 1277‐84: Law, Politics and Power
2001: David Stephenson, The Aberconwy Chronicle
2000: David N. Dumville, Saint David of Wales

E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures

Edmund Crosby Quiggin (1875-1920) was the first teacher of Celtic in the University of Cambridge. The Department has wished to commemorate Dr Quiggin’s contribution by establishing in his name, and with the support of his family, an annual lecture and a series of pamphlets. The E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture (established in 1993) is delivered by a scholar invited to Cambridge for the occasion. Up until 2004, the focus of the series was The Sources of Mediaeval Gaelic history; since 2006 it has been any aspect of the philology and the textual culture of the Celtic and Germanic languages and literatures taught in the Department. The E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures are held annually at the end of the Michaelmas Term.

2023 Lecture

This year's lecture was given by Professor Kristen Carella (Assumption University, Massachusetts) and was entitled 'Northumbrian Law before the Vikings. It took place on 30 November 2023.

To purchase pamphlets from the lecture series, please click here.

Past E.C. Quiggin Memorial Lectures

2022: Professor Daniel Donoghue, Lawman's Last Words
2021: Professor Ralph O'Connor, The Music of What Happens: Narrative Terminology and the Gaelic and Norse-Icelandic Saga
2020: Dr Kees Dekker, Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in the Works of Francis Junius (1591-1677)
2019: Professor William Miller, Of cursing, prophesying, advising, and anxieties of causation: Laxdæla saga ch. 75 and beyond
2018: Dr Jayne Carroll, Speaking fluently: watery place-names and the medieval English landscape
2017: Professor Pierre-Yves Lambert, The Manuscripts with Old Breton Glosses
2016: Dafydd Johnston, Language Contact and Linguistic Innovation in the Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym
2015: Lars Boje Mortensen, Meritocratic Values in High Medieval Literature
2014: Matthew Townend, Antiquity of Diction in Old English and Old Norse Poetry
2013: Mark Stansbury, Iona Scribes and the Rhetoric of Legibility
2012: Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Marriage, Law and Tochmarc Emire
2011: Odd Einar Haugen, 'So that the writing may be less and quicker, and the parchment last longer': The Orthographic Reform of the Old Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise
2010: Liam Breatnach, On the Early Irish Law Text Senchas Már and the Question of its Date
2009: Carole Hough, Toponymicon and Lexicon in North‐West Europe: 'Ever-Changing Connection'
2008: Uáitéar Mac Gearailt, On the Date of the Middle Irish Recension II Táin Bó Cúailnge
2007: Henrik Williams, Rune-stone Inscriptions and Queer Theory
2006: Eriche Poppe, Of Cycles and Other Critical Matters. Some Issues in Medieval Irish Literary History and Criticism
2005: Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, The Kings Depart: The Prosopography of Anglo‐Saxon Royal Exile in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries
2002: Pádraig P. Ó Néill, Biblical Study and Mediaeval Gaelic History
1999: Tadhg O'Keefe, The Gaelic Peoples and their Archaeological Identities, A.D. 1000‐1650
1998: John Hines, Old-Norse Sources for Gaelic History
1997: T. M. Charles-Edwards, The Early Mediaeval Gaelic Lawyer
1995: David N. Dumville, Councils and Synods of the Gaelic Early and Central Middle Ages
1994: Dauvit Broun, The Charters of Gaelic Scotland and Ireland in the Early and Central Middle Ages
1993: John Carey, The Irish National Origin-Legend: Synthetic Pseudohistory