I love these History Weekends
Note the new venue - Now at University of Kent Templeman Library
kchh.org/exciting-tim...

Thinking pilgrimage - Canterbury, Eastbridge and Maison Dieu, Dover - KCHH From the Archbishop's pilgrimage and Eastbridge to Dover at Night, events highlight the value of community.

As the new Archbishop of Canterbury arrives in the city having walked from St Paul's, Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh reflects on medieval pilgrimages to Canterbury kchh.org/thinking-pil...

Showcasing medieval studies - from troublesome kings to international trade - KCHH As well as looking forward to the Canterbury Medieval Weekend, we explore migration in 15th-century Kent.

Great post from Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh on the Canterbury Medieval Weekend - fast approaching- do have a peek! kchh.org/showcasing-m...

Medieval Kent - shipbuilding, coins and the Canterbury Blackfriars - KCHH Investigating medieval Kent through shipbuilding in the Cinque Ports, Kent's coin hoards and the Canterbury Blackfriars

Great blog from Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh on recent Canterbury events inckuding Dominicans and abd ancient coin hoards - do have a look! kchh.org/medieval-ken...

Exploring aspects of Kent's past - KCHH Before I come to the main report about the highly successful ‘Exploring Kent History’ day that took place yesterday (Saturday 14th February) in Special Collections at the University of Kent, I want to...

Blog from Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, loads of Jent abd Canterbury news, including her recent piece for Radio 3 on Christopher Marlowe kchh.org/exploring-as...

Leeds International Medieval Congress 2026 Alicia Spencer-Hall will be giving a keynote (paper 1199): 'Timely Images': Medieval Trans Saints, Historiographical Dysphoria and/as Trans-Temporal Methodology (Language: English)

Description In Transgender Warriors, Leslie Feinberg writes: 'I couldn't find myself in history. No-one like me seemed to have ever existed'. Such a feeling - what I call 'historiographical dysphoria' - is familiar to marginalised subjects, those of us who have been written out of cis-hetero-normative history. Gender dysphoria refers to the distress and dis-ease caused by a mismatch between one's assigned gender and one's identified gender. Historiographical dysphoria is an artefact of gender dysphoria, and, more generally, the multifarious dysphorias that come from an authentic existence that does not, cannot, and will not fall in line with the dominant norms of cis-hetero-normative society. This is the distress and dis-ease caused by the wilful cleaving of an individual from the past, from the collective past of their community. Transphobic rhetoric insists upon the newness of transness, and indeed trans people. We are a symptom of modernity's degradation, a disease in urgent need of cure. There we no trans people in the Middle Ages, no queer people, no crips either. We have no past, and, as such, we will not be allowed a future. This is the story that traditionalist historiography so often tells. In recent years, things have begun to change. Trans saints have become ever more visible in scholarship, a vital resource for trans and genderqueer people at a time of ever-rising transphobia. We turn to the past to survive the present and to scope out new ways of being in the future. This paper articulates the possibilities and pleasures of trans-medievalist work, focussing on trans saints. This is scholarship that attends to trans lives, experiences, and traces in the medieval past and operates 'trans' time itself. It rejects normative linear chronology in favour of the fierce embrace of trans-queer-crip time(s), of the blurry temporalities of transition itself. In this way, trans-medievalist work offers a powerful methodology for the entire medievalist field.

Cat's officially out of the bag
#IMC2026 @imc-leeds.bsky.social #MedievalSky 🗃️

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Why Kent maps (and friars) are exciting - KCHH Jason explores the Faversham oyster maps to investigate producers and audiences in terms of visual communication.

Lovely post on Kent and Canterbury history from Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, do please have a look kchh.org/why-kent-map...

A fantastic little book this - Jane's letters, with observations on social life, the state of the roads, the practices of the parish church and much else - add insights into a village now completely different to the one she knew.

Pretty much the only building left from her time is the church. 🗃️

Medieval Canterbury Weekend 2026 Sheila Sweetinburgh answers our questions in anticipation of an exciting weekend of speakers coming to the University of Kent in 2026.

www.memslib.co.uk/post/medieva...

Blogpost on the fab Medieval Canterbury Weekend 2026, it's a great line up...

An exciting new postdoctoral position focusing on Old English epistolary materials

Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, D III 14, f. 104r – Medizinische Sammelhandschrift http://www.e-codices.ch/de/ubb/D-III-0014/104r. Detail of a 12th-century medical manuscript showing a grotesquely inhabited initial Q for a text that would begin Quadrimerum expertum ad asmaticos... The manuscript is ruled. The short version of the initial description is that it portrays a doctor, nurse, and patients. In detail, the inhabited figures include a woman nursing a human and a dragon, while a bearded gentleman with an unguent bottle is applying two cupping horns to different parts of the nursing human. The dragon, on the other hand, does not need any medical treatment, but nevertheless requires nourishment for flight and other dragon-like activities. The script is a transitional hand that cannot possibly compete with that dragon for our attention.

The e-codices December 2025 update is live, with 31 manuscripts! Enjoy them all! www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/all/...

Kent History Postgraduates plus Gloucester - KCHH The Kent History Postgraduates group is back, plus the memorial service in Gloucester for Peter Hobbs

kchh.org/kent-history...
Great to see all the research from Sheila's postgrad group now up at Kent

Wonderful little hedgehog

Front cover for Love and anti-Judaism in medieval English romance, illustration from British Library MS Cotton Nero A X/2 of Lady Bertilak and Gawain in the bedchamber. Gawain is lying down with eyes closed, wrapped in green blankets, and Lady Bertilak is wearing a spotted dress, seated beside him with her hair up, her arms outstretched in a loose embrace and touching under his chin.

My book, Love and anti-Judaism in medieval English romance: Typologies of violence and desire, with @manchesterup.bsky.social, is coming out next month! I would be delighted if you might consider ordering a copy for your libraries 💚

Well I certainly won't ever use them again

Yes, it was a tender reading

This might also be a good opportunity to share my poem 'Medieval Mystic Margery Kempe in Tesco', published last year in The London Magazine (thank you!). It has a flavour of the medieval/modern mash-up that I enjoy! #gms2025 #teammargery thelondonmagazine.org/poetry-medie...

Georgia is fab, great to see everyone at UWP reception last night. Thank you to all our guests

Popping this out there for the evening crowd. It's part of a new writing project - I'm excited and nervous, so any support would be welcome! Here, I'm writing about how a long-ago writer captured grief for a wanted baby that didn't come to be.

lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/grief-care...

I'm a bit shattered too but oh it was so great to meet you and I loved your paper

#GMS2025 was fantastic-inspiring, encouraging, and also exhausting. I thought I might have a wander around London tonight, but after 3 days of conferencing and 1 of walking the entirety of Canterbury I ordered food in and am going to watch some fluff.

This will be amazing!

If you read nothing else today, read this.

I appreciate all the shares I’ve had on this! It will be a really fun course & it also gives me some welcome additional income after the cuts that were made to my main post, which kick in from August… The realities of HE life these days.

This comment absolutely made my day. I've been working really hard with my writing, and it is so lovely to feel as if we're starting to build a real community here on bluesky.

#PrideMonth might be drawing to a close, but we’re just getting started:
Only two days until this year's Gender & Medieval Studies conference on charity and care in the global Middle Ages!

medievalgender.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/GMS-2025-Conference-Programme.pdf
@medievalcanter.bsky.social

Photo of Canterbury Cathedral, blue sky

View through a stone archway with columns, looking out onto a garden and historic stone building in sunlight.

Name tag reading “Eva Locher” placed on top of a blue book titled Queering the Mediterranean, with part of an old map visible underneath.

Possibly the best backdrop for a Medieval Studies conference (and the prettiest name tags). A great day at #GMS2025, thank you @medievalcanter.bsky.social!

Cover of Introducing Medieval Animal Names

Cover of Introducing the Medieval Fox

Introducing the Medieval Ass

Introducing the Medieval Swan

Will you be attending @imc-leeds.bsky.social next week? Join us in celebrating our brilliant Medieval Animals series on Tuesday 8th July at 5:30pm in the Parkinson Building🥂

@medievalcanter.bsky.social @vickiblud.bsky.social

So many highlights of #gms2025! @menysnoweballes.bsky.social plenary, the Unruly Wombs roundtable, all the care that @medievalcanter.bsky.social showed us (cake & more!), and spending time with the most wonderful people ❤️ Thank you!