This one-day interdisciplinary research day aims to cultivate research links between medievalist postgraduate communities, and the conference will be a free public event. The theme of the event – Medieval Material Matters – has been chosen as a means of focusing discussion. A plenary lecture by an international established academic working on questions of materiality, will be delivered in the morning. In order to maximise opportunities for exploratory conversation following the plenary, there will be 2 sessions for short presentations (10-15 minutes) based on pre-circulated papers in the morning and afternoon, followed by a session discussing a piece of secondary reading in seminar format. The final part of the day will be used to think about future collaboration.

The research day will seek to address the following questions:

• How might ‘materiality’ be understood – and critiqued – in medieval contexts? How does textual materiality fit into this understanding? What are the role of objects (material or otherwise) within this context?
• What perspectives can research in Medieval Studies offer on discussions/theorisations of materiality in other periods?
• How might the digital environment in which medieval research increasingly takes place affect our thinking about the materiality of cultural artefacts, objects, and spaces?

This event is running as part of the prestigious and well-established Medieval Seminar Series at the University of Warwick.

Medievalist keynote Speaker: Professor Catherine Brown, University of Michigan.

Supported by the Humanities Research Centre (Warwick), the Department of French Studies at Warwick, and the Society for French Studies.