The second Aberystwyth conference for postgraduates and early career researchers will focus on notions of origins. Stories about roots have been at the core of every society of which we know. Whether describing peoples, places, movements or ideas, these narratives reflected and helped shape debates about identity and community. Where a society, idea or movement came from, the past it superseded and the future it promised to create, became a means for defining a community’s distinctiveness. Origins were recovered and imagined, their meaning debated and redefined.

The workshop will take place at Aberystwyth University 27-29 June 2018. It welcomes postgraduate and early career scholars working on the high medieval past from a variety of disciplinary perspectives – including but not limited to history, literary studies, art history, geography and archaeology – to offer a comparative and transregional approach.

Keynote papers will be given by Alheydis Plassmann (Bonn), Haki Antonsson (UCL) and Robert Berkhofer (WMU and President of the Haskins Society).

This event has been made possible thanks to funding from both the Graduate School and the Department of History and Welsh History at Aberystwyth University. The conference takes place under the auspices of the Centre for Research in Historiography and Historical Culture (Aberystwyth) and the Institute of Medieval & Early Modern Studies (Aberystwyth & Bangor).

Please send proposals (200-300 words) for 20 minute papers by 16 March 2018 to aberystwythmedievalists@gmail.com