IMC Leeds 2011 report, II: Normans and Norman historians

Tuesday’s sessions continued the Norman theme with the strand ‘Normans, Normandy and the wider Norman world: 911 from a 2011 perspective’, bookended by David Bates and me, a fact which in no small way contributed to the pre-paper jitters of the previous evening. There were four sessions in all, though the third was the subject of an annoying clash and I ducked out to take part in a rebellion or two.

IMC Leeds 2010 report

After a couple of nights in Whitley Bay with my sister’s family, it was on to Leeds for the annual International Medieval Congress. This was, in fact, the ninth congress I’d attended, which makes me feel rather old. This year can be summed up simply as ‘good papers, good beer and good company’.

The 2010 Ford Lectures VI: Empire? From beginning to end

By the time we reached lecture number VI, this series was proving extraordinarily productive, not only from the point of view of listening to what David Bates had to say, but also from the amount of work I seemed to be doing while drinking tea with friends. In a term that was a long, old slog, I was tremendously grateful. Lecture VI had been given a huge build up so we were all eagerly anticipating David’s conclusion.

The 2010 Ford lectures V: Centre, periphery and networks

This time around tea with two fellow Normannists preceded the latest installment in David Bates’ journey through the murky realms of empire and Norman history. I confess I was probably more interested in this lecture’s title than the others. Regular readers of this blog know that Reivers and I have an interest in life on boundaries in all sorts of senses. Also, my more recent research has focused on looking at the relationship between centre and periphery as made manifest in chroniclers’ descriptions of the landscape. What David did here was to underline how networks in particular perpetuate empire and how, in the case of Normandy, the centre/core remained remarkably resilient.

The 2010 Ford Lectures III: William the Conqueror and empire

Fortified by tea with a friend, by now becoming a bit of a ritual, we both made our way to the Examination Schools in Oxford for the latest instalment of David Bates’ Ford Lecture series on the Normans and empire. For one and two, follow the links. The subject of number three, was William the Conqueror himself.

The 2010 Ford lectures II: the experience of empire

In the second of this year’s Ford lectures, David Bates started where he’d left off in the first one: Orderic Vitalis as a ten-year-old boy being packed off to St-Evroul to begin a new life in that monastery on the southern border of Normandy. Certainly Orderic experience uncertainly in leaving England – he did not know the French dialect spoken by the Normans – but he found kindness within the community. Bates thus cast Orderic as a ‘child of empire’ and a good person with which to begin a lecture focusing on the personal experience of empire and how this might form the basis for the exercise of power.

The 2010 Ford Lectures I: The Normans and empire

This year the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford are being given by Prof. David Bates (UEA and Caen-Basse-Normandie) on the subject of ‘The Normans and Empire’. This series is named after James Ford who left a legacy to endow a lectureship in British history. Thankfully, the rules are flexible enough to encompass a large slice of European history courtesy of David Bates and the Normans. I hope to be able to attend all six and blog about them in due course.

IMC Leeds 2008 report

The International Medieval Congress 2008 will be memorable for two things in particular: rain and cloves. It was the wettest Leeds for a good few years and it did cut down on the opportunities for catching up and bumping into people on the grass. As for the cloves, more of them later.

Looking forward to … IMC 2008

The teaching, marking and exams boards are all done for the year and it is time for me to switch my brain back to research mode for the next three months. Helping me to do this in the coming weeks is a couple of conferences: the International Medieval Congress held, as always at Leeds, and the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies held, unsurprisingly at Battle in East Sussex. More of that one later, but here’s what I’m looking forward to at Leeds.