Memory and Legacy, Bristol CMS PGR Conference 2025, University of Bristol, April 24–25, 2025

The University of Bristol Centre for Medieval Studies is delighted to announce its call for papers for its annual medieval PGR conference, which will be held as a hybrid event on 24th – 25th April 2025. This year, the conference invites abstracts for papers and posters which engage with the theme of ‘Memory and Legacy’. We are especially interested in how people in the Middle Ages ‘remembered’ the past, their contemporary practices of remembrance and memorialisation, and the period’s enduring legacy.

The concepts of memory and legacy fascinated the societies of the medieval world: these ideas were ubiquitous within the time period, being found in multiple facets of medieval experience. Medieval society looked to the past for guidance on a range of issues, drawing on classical ideas in their understandings of gender and sexuality; medicine and natural philosophy; religious practice; and societal values and ethics. In addition, medieval society utilized the power of the past in building and reinforcing contemporary societal structures, whilst recognizing the significance of legacy in propagating and solidifying ideas of authority. Unsurprisingly, medieval art, music and literature frequently engaged with themes of memory and legacy, and responses to the medieval past have in turn disseminated throughout the centuries which followed, from Victorian re-imaginings of medieval tales to the problematic ways in which the medieval past is regularly weaponized by political groups. The study of memory has therefore never been so topical to the field of medieval studies, creating opportunities to explore not only how medieval society engaged with memory, but also how we respond to the legacy of this period .

This conference invites papers on any relevant topic to the theme of ‘memory and legacy’ in medieval studies and medievalism. We welcome papers from postgraduate researchers, Master’s students, early career researchers and independent scholars. 

Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• The act(s) of remembering and being remembered (including commemoration) Forgetting, lost knowledge and fragmentation
• Cultural memory
• Genealogy
• Textual transmission and adaptation
• Historiography
• Myths, origins, and legends
• Remembrance and identity
• Purpose of memory (e.g. the writing and rewriting of history)
• Medievalism and anachronism
• Displacement
• The makeup of legacy
• Traditions and traditionalism
• Hagiography and mystical experience
• Reinvention and reconstruction
• Selective memory
• Intertextuality
• Oral memory
• Materiality (e.g. palimpsests)
• Linguistic evolution
• Archival records and discoveries of texts
• Pedagogical memory (e.g. the canon)