Past Events

Previous MARS Programmes can be found online

The Poetry Contest in 600 Rounds - Book Launch and Lecture

10 December 2019, 16:00

The monumental ‘Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’ (Roppyakuban uta’awase) (1193-94) is one of the key texts for understanding poetic and critical practice in late twelfth century Japan, and the conflict between conservative and innovative poets which was to play out in the following decades.

This text is being published for the first time in complete English translation with accompanying commentary and notes by Dr Thomas E. McAuley (SEAS) (McAuley, T. E. (2020) The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds (2 vols): A Translation and Commentary. Leiden: Brill)

In this Book Launch seminar event, Professor Christina Laffin (University of British Columbia) will set the context of the Contest with a special lecture:

'Vernacular, Cosmopolitan, and Poetic Learning in the Age of the Roppyakuban uta’awase'

Anyone interested in attending can sign up here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-poetry-contest-in-six-hundred-rounds-tickets-81287823067

Thursday 11th July 2019, 10-11.30, Jessop West, G03.

John Joseph Gallagher will be visiting the University on 11th-12th July on a short-term visiting postdoctoral fellowship. John recently received his PhD on the Bible in Anglo-Saxon England from the University of St Andrews and is keen to apply for postdoctoral fellowships based in Sheffield. He’ll be giving an informal presentation on his research on Thursday 11th July, 10-11.30, Jessop West, G03. Please do come along him, meet him, and join in the discussion (there will be plenty of time for Q&A). Biscuits will be provided, but bring your own hot drinks 

Tuesday 5th March

Tuesday Archaeology lunchtime seminar: David Petts, ‘New Light on the Archaeology of Early medieval Lindisfarne’, 1pm, Hadfield Building LT 22

AND

ShARC will be hosting Laura D. Gelfand (Fulbright Research Fellow 2018-19, Department of the History of Art, University of York / Professor of Art History, Utah State University). “From she-wolf to hoary heathstepper and beyond: Inventing and representing the big bad wolf” 3pm in Jessop Building Ensemble Room.

AND

Guy Halsall (York), ‘The Barbarian Migrations in the Twenty-First Century’, 4.15pm

More information, also on venue, here:

http://history.dept.shef.ac.uk/event/guy-halsall-university-york-migration-hub-the-barbarian-migrations-twenty-first-century/

Tuesday, 26 February

Prof. Eleanor Robson from University College London: ‘What is local history in the Middle East today? Some answers from the Nahrein Network’ on , at 4:15 PM in Jessop West

This seminar will deal with aspects of local history, heritage preservation, the construction of knowledge about ancient Iraq in Europe over the past two centuries, and the history of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. Anyone with interests in the ancient history or archaeology of the region, public history and heritage, or the current situation for the research community in Iraq will surely benefit from hearing the talk. All are welcome

Friday February 22 2019

“The Violent State in Historical Perspective”, White Rose Collaboration Fund, February 22, 4pm-5.30pm, G03 Jessop West, University of Sheffield

Please join us on February 22 for the first in a series of public talks hosted by a new White Rose Collaboration Fund network “The Violent State in Historical Perspective”. This network brings together historians at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield, and York, researching a diverse range of epochs, cultures, and regions to break new ground in the study of the state’s relationship to violence. The network seeks to investigate how states across the globe, from classical times to the contemporary era, have deployed violence to shape society and define the duties and privileges of citizenship. The first talk will be a conversation between Monica Kim (NYU) and Patrick Lantschner (UCL).

Monica Kim is a historian of the United States and the world, focusing on decolonisation, race, empire, and modern warfare in 20th Century East Asia. Her book, The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History, was recently published by Princeton University Press. She has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and is a member of the editorial collective of Radical History Review. Patrick Lantschner is a historian of late medieval Europe and the Islamic world. His research focuses on revolt in heavily urbanised regions of the low countries, southern Europe and the near East, and particularly how these conflicts departed from, or were rooted in, ordinary politics. He published The Logic of Political Conflict in Medieval Cities: Italy and the Southern Low Countries, 1370-1440 with Oxford University Press in 2015. He is currently working on a project which examines the underlying causes of the volatile political order in Christian and Islamic societies in the Age of the Crusades.

For more details on the “Violent State” network please visit: https://www.whiterose.ac.uk/collaborationfunds/the-violent-state-in-historical-perspective/

Ancient and Modern Knowledges: a two-day colloquium sponsored by MARCUS, 22-23rd June 2018

Provisional programme: https://networks.h-net.org/node/14281/discussions/1896941/ancient-and-modern-knowledges-colloquium-22-23-june-2018 

For all details, see https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ancient-and-modern-knowledges-a-two-day-colloquium-tickets-43704494319

Visit of Prof. Thomas Römer, the Chair of Hebrew Bible and Its Contexts at Collège de France

Tuesday, 30 January

14:00 to 15:30

Masterclass: Historians Working with Archaeologists and Archaeology, presented w/ Emeritus Professor Philip Davies

16:30 to 18:00

Lecture: The Ark of the Covenant and the Archaeology of Kiriath Jearim

Arts Tower, Lecture Theatre 3

Wednesday, 31 January

14:00 to 15:30

The Future of Biblical Studies: A Discussion with Graduate Students

16:30 to 18:00

Lecture: The Political Function of the Abraham Narrative

Arts Tower, Lecture Theatre 3

For more details, please contact Dr Casey Strine

The Late Antique and Early Medieval City. A One-Day Workshop at the University of Sheffield in honour of Dr Simon Loseby – Wednesday, 13 Sept

Organised by MARCUS and the Centre for the History of the City

Conference hashtag: #LosebyFest

Wednesday, 13 Sept, 2017, 6pm: special MARS paper for early arrivers

Venue: Jessop West, Room G03 (ground floor)

Robin Whelan (Oxford) – ‘One man, two guvnors: Christian identity and political service in late antiquity’

Chair: Danica Summerlin

Thursday 14th Sept 2017

Venue: 38 Mappin Street, Workroom 2

9.45 am. Coffee & registration

10am Introduction – Martial Staub

10.15.  Andrew Marsham – ‘Early Islamic Urban Settlement Patterns’

Chair: Julia Hillner

11.15. Coffee

11.30. Round table 1 – Comparisons

Chair: Mairin MacCarron

Rob Heffron – ‘Movement and Topography in Rome and Constantinople: A Comparison’

Andy Merrills – ‘”The crowd caught a whiff of that crazy Casbah jive”: urban life in the forgotten corners of post-Roman Africa’

12.30. Sandwich Lunch

1.30pm. Sarah Foot – ‘Bede’s Cities’

Chair: Charles West

2.30pm. Tea

3pm. Round table 2 – Reflections

Chair: Tom Brown

Eliza Hartrich – ‘Urban Decline and its Discontents: From Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages’

Andrew Heath – ‘The place of the Classical and Medieval in the Modern City’

4pm. Bryan Ward-Perkins – ‘Simon Loseby’s Late Antiquity’

Chair: Simona Latimer

5pm. End of Conference

GREG WALKER MASTERCLASS

4 May 2017, 10-12, HRI

‘Complaining About the Weather: John Heywood, Thomas More, and the Opening of the Reformation Parliament’

A unique opportunity to join Greg Walker, Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Edinburgh, for a masterclass. Professor Walker is a specialist in the literary culture of the reign of Henry VIII. He has written widely on late-medieval drama and poetry, Renaissance literature, the history of the stage in the period before the building of the professional playhouses, and the cultural consequences of the Henrician Reformation. He has also published on the early films of Alexander Korda and popular music in the 1970s.

This masterclass is free and open to all students and members of staff. However, spaces are limited, so please register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/greg-walker-masterclass-tickets-33391864967. For more information, please e-mail Dr Charlotte Steenbrugge (c.steenbrugge@sheffield.ac.uk).

This session will look at two texts, one an historical ‘source’, Sir Thomas More’s opening address to the Parliament of 1529 (Henry VIII’s ‘Reformation Parliament’), delivered on 3 November, the other a literary work, the interlude, A Play of the Weather, written by More’s nephew John Heywood at some point in the same period. I have suggested that the two documents are connected, and that the play comments on the parliament, the events that led up to it, and the turbulent debates of the session that followed. But that claim is fraught with problems, theoretical, practical, and methodological.

The workshop will be based on a close reading of the relevant texts. But, as you will quickly discover, deciding on what exactly the ‘relevant texts’ are is itself a challenge. What exactly did More say in that speech? The two most comprehensive accounts are rather different in their emphases, and create problems of interpretation of their own.And then there is the more complex issue of deciding what More might of meant by whatever it is we think he said. What was the range of possible implications of a speech delivered to Parliament in the presence of the King? Then there is Heywood’s interlude. How might we read that in the light of More’s speech and the events in Parliament? Need the two things be connected at all? What might Heywood have intended his audience(s) to make of the interlude? What was the range of possible utterances in an interlude in this period? How controversial or ‘political’ was it possible to be in a dramatic or literary work in this period? And how secure can we be in our answers to any of these questions?

The reading will be provided before the workshop to all participants.

Friday 4th November, 2016. ‘Divine Injustice in Antiquity and the Middle Ages’. Conference organised by Dr Charlotte Steenbrugge.

Wednesday 26th October, 2016. ‘Incense, Trade and the Global Ancient World’. A masterclass with Professor Nicholas Purcell (Oxford)

Friday, 20 May 2016. CONQUEST 950. Conference organised by Alyx Mattison and James Chetwood.

Friday, 18 March 2016: REALMS Lecture: ‘The Arthur of History and the Volcanic Winter of 536-7’, Dr Andrew Breeze (University of Navarra).

16, February 2016.  Prof. Stefan Esders (in association with HRI Fellowship Programme): masterclass and seminar.

A talk by Professor Elena Isayev (Exeter), which was part of the regular MARS program, was also in association with the HRI Fellowship Programme. Her talk was entitled, ‘No Migrants: Mobility in ancient Italy before borders’.

18th-20th September 2015. BABAO ANNUAL CONFERENCE:University of Sheffield

1st June 2015, Roundtable on Mobility: Movements, Transitions and Transformations. Keynote: Prof. Peter Heather (KCL): Migration in the First Millenium (working title)

20th – 22nd November 2014, “Husbandry in the Western Roman Empire: a zooarchaeological perspective”

26th November 2014, Professor Tim Parkin (Manchester): Did they count? Numbers in Antiquity

4th February 2015 MARCUS Roundtable

28th May 2015, Sheffield Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Society Lecture:Dr Christine Wallis, (Sheffield): Writing a Good Book: Uncovering the Work of Anglo-Saxon Scribes

12th to 14th November 2015, Society for Medieval Archaeology 2015 Student Colloquium: University of Sheffield