The new symposium will comprise keynote addresses, panel discussions, a tour of Cambridge College Libraries, formal conference dinner, publications fair and wine reception. Refreshments and lunches are provided for conference guests and college accommodation is available. As on the previous occasion, a limited number of small bursaries will be awarded. We invite proposals from scholars in the disciplines including but not limited to English, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Religious Studies.

Topics for discussion could include:     

• Kingship and Queenship, Earls and Ealdormen
• Abbots and abbesses, monks and nuns
• Ecclesiastical and secular authorities
• Institutional authority
• National authority and identity
• Masculine, feminine, and neuter: linguistic authority
• Auctors and Auctoritas
• Textual authority, witnesses, and scribal traditions
• Kinglists and genealogies      
• Nuns in the scriptorium   
• Female voices, male scribes – authority and authorship
• Gender and legal practices
• Moral authority
• Ritual and authority 
• Establishment of authority: feuds, force, and warfare
• The construction of gender in chronicles.

Selected papers will be published in a volume bearing the same title within two years of the conference. The 2008 inaugural proceedings appeared in The Medieval Chronicle, vols VI (2009) and VII (2010, forthcoming).