Monthly Archives: February 2021

University of Kent medievalists’ collaborative project awarded funding from Flemish Research Foundation

We’re delighted to announce that ‘Literatures Without Borders: A Historical-Comparative Study of Pre-Modern Literary Transnationalism’, a collaborative project involving medievalists at the University of Kent, has been awarded 62,500 euros by the Flemish Research Foundation.

This grant will be used to establish a new international network to examine the interactions between Latin and other cosmopolitan languages and literatures of the pre-modern world, including Jewish-Ladino-Yiddish, Arabic and Byzantine-Greek.

This new project is led by RELICS (Researchers of European Literary Identity, Cosmopolitanism and the Schools), based at Ghent University, and it will bring together researchers from sixteen partner institutions, including Kent. This project will be an exciting opportunity to expand and deepen the intellectual collaborations between medievalists at Kent and scholars elsewhere in Europe.

Dr Emily Guerry co-organising international conference on Thomas Becket: Life, Death and Legacy

The year 2020 marked the 850th anniversary of the brutal martyrdom of St Thomas Becket inside Canterbury Cathedral and, in a matter of months, Becket had become one of the most popular saints in all of medieval Europe, attracting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and inspiring countless legends and works of art, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. To commemorate Becket’s legacy, Dr Emily Guerry (Co-Director of MEMS) is co-organising an international online conference 28-30 April (Thomas Becket: Life, Death, and Legacy) with papers from over 40 speakers from around the globe.

Emily is working with colleagues at Christ Church University and Canterbury Cathedral to host this conference, with generous support from the British Academy. You can reserve a ticket, please note that ALL Kent students can book for free.

Our conference coincides with the launch of an exciting exhibition on Becket at the British Museum, which will feature a 6-meter-tall 800-year-old stained glass window showing the miracles of Becket, on loan from Canterbury Cathedral. For any queries about either of these events, please get in touch with Emily Guerry.