IMC Leeds 2011 report, I: southern Italian Normans

Best Leeds ever just about sums up IMC just gone. If last year was all about ‘good papers, good beer and good company‘, then this year’s IMC continued that theme with better weather and an energy about the place I haven’t felt in a while (and as evidenced by the number of people who joined in the dancing). As this year marks the eleven-hundredth anniversary of the traditional date of the foundation of Normandy, there was a decided Norman theme to parts of the conference and most certainly my session attendance. Well, let’s start with Monday and see how far I get.

The Norman Conquest of North Africa

Recent research has taken me far from Normandy to much sunnier climes in my pursuit of understanding the relationship between landscape, people (for that read Normans) and history writing. It is not yet clear whether I have embarked on a hunt for the Questing Beast, or whether my Snark will turn out to be a Boojum, but for the moment, the project at least has the appearance of scholarly endeavour, rather than antiquarian nonsense. All this is a long-winded way of saying that on Monday I went to Oxford to hear about the Normans in North Africa given by the redoubtable Alex Metcalfe from Lancaster. I confess that I do not know much about the Normans in North Africa. I was vaguely aware that they went there and this might have something to do with Sicily, so I was keen to attend.

Norman Edge IV: Local boundaries and national frontiers of the Norman world

I have returned from my progress of the North simultaneously refreshed and knackered. Never again will I do two papers in such a short space of time. Fortunately, the hours spent on trains and their associated stations were rewarded with two very good and thought-provoking conferences: the IMC at Leeds and also the Norman Edge at Lancaster. I’ll blog Leeds in due course, but herewith an account of the latest adventures on the Norman Edge, which also returns us to the notional them of this blog – boundaries.

Normans on the edge and an edgy Normanist.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a new project at Lancaster called ‘The Norman Edge‘ and briefly commented on its first symposium. Unfortunately, I missed the second one in the summer due to a combination of circumstances, but did make it to the third one on ‘Colonial mentalities’ last week. Not only was this a very interesting collection of high quality papers, but it left me feeling reinvigorated after a long term. There are very few occasions as an historian when you feel part of something much bigger than your own research, but the Norman Edge is really fostering an idea of scholarly community, and what is more, inclusive of people at all stages of their careers from MA students right the way through to distinguished professorial types.