The Courtauld Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium (Friday 6 March 2026, London, UK)
Deadline for submissions 14th December 2025.
In our digital age, memory is both permanent and fleeting: forever enshrined on the internet, and yet easily forgotten amid the endless scroll of new information. In the Middle Ages, however, memory was more consciously articulated by medieval makers, patrons and viewers, and was appropriated to serve carefully crafted political, devotional and cultural agendas. Far from being passive repositories of remembrance, medieval artworks, buildings and objects played active roles in constructing, shaping and transmitting memory, whether personal, collective or institutional. This colloquium invites papers that explore the complex and dynamic relationship between memory and the material culture of the Middle Ages. It seeks to consider how images from medieval Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world engaged with the processes of remembering and forgetting, and how they mediated the relationship between the past and the present.
We invite submissions for 20-minute papers that investigate the relationships between memory, objects and buildings, as well as those involved in making, commissioning and viewing them. Respondents might consider themes including but by no means limited to:
- The role of images in preserving, rewriting or reframing the past, and in creating, re-creating and reinforcing memory
- Agendas of patronage and the politics of remembering and forgetting in the construction of memory
- Death, commemoration and the visual cultures of remembrance
- Genealogy, dynastic representation and strategies of commemoration
- Architecture, monuments and urban spaces as sites of shared or contested memory
- The staging and restaging of memory in rituals and processions
- The transmission of memory across geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries
- The afterlives of medieval images and their role in shaping modern memory of the Middle Ages
We invite PhD candidates to submit an up to 250-word paper proposal and title, a short CV, together with their complete contact details (full name, email, and institutional affiliation) by 14 December 2025. Please send these to Sophia Dumoulin (sophia.dumoulin@courtauld.ac.uk).
There may be some limited funding to support travel and accommodation costs for those without institutional support. If you would require funding support, please include a brief budget alongside your abstract.
