The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies is delighted to celebrate two significant new publications by its staff members, highlighting the Centre’s distinctive commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship and innovative methodologies applied to the premodern world.<\/p>\n
Dr Robert Gallagher<\/a>‘s new monograph, The Written Word in Early Medieval England: Kent, Mercia and Wessex, c. 830\u2013920<\/strong><\/em> (Cambridge University Press, 2026), offers a major reassessment of literacy, political culture and the role of writing in early medieval England. This book presents an innovative, holistic examination of the uses of the written word in early medieval England during a century of political and societal upheaval, culminating in the emergence of the kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons under Alfred the Great and his children, \u00c6thelfl\u00e6d and Edward the Elder. Through a diverse range of documentary, literary and material evidence, Robert Gallagher explains how literary activity during this period \u2013 particularly involving members of the laity \u2013 has often been underestimated. He focuses on several innovations in documentary culture that took place in the mid-ninth century, which in turn played a significant role in establishing the cultural conditions for Alfredian cultural renewal. The evidence makes clear that limited personal literacy did not pose a barrier to participation in literary activity. This study thus makes a major new contribution to our understanding of England’s ninth- and tenth-century history. Find out more here.<\/a><\/p>\n Equally reflective of MEMS’ international outlook is Dr Suzanna Ivanic<\/a>‘s co-edited special issue of European History Quarterly<\/em>, Connected Central European Worlds: Material Entanglements, 1500\u20131700 <\/strong>(link here<\/a>). Bringing together leading scholars from across Europe and North America, the collection explores the movement of objects, ideas and people across Central Europe, demonstrating how material culture illuminates connections that transcend political, linguistic and religious boundaries. Cross-border connections in early modern Central and Eastern Europe played a pivotal role in shaping the region\u2019s cultures, populations and trajectories of development. In recent years, a range of methodologies and analytical frameworks has been brought to bear on these complex interactions, though scholarship has tended to focus on Ottoman Europe, the Habsburg Empire, or post-1945 Eastern Bloc contexts. Approaches grounded in connectivity and entanglement have underscored the region\u2019s richly interwoven cultures and identities, seeking to reposition Central and Eastern Europe on the global historical stage. Yet a significant gap remains in our understanding of the region\u2019s eastern flank, which is the central focus of this <\/span>Special Issue<\/span><\/i>. Our agenda centres on Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland-Lithuania: a vast and heterogeneous expanse marked by cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity, political fragmentation, and multiple religious traditions, stretching from the Danube to the Dnipro and from the Pontic steppe to the Baltic coast, all undergoing constant transformation in the period <\/span>c.<\/span><\/i> 1500\u20131700. The contributions featured here adopt a material approach, both to challenge the dominance of text-bound modes of inquiry\u2014often complicit in the reproduction of nation-centred histories\u2014and to chart a path towards recovering less visible histories of early modern Central and Eastern Europe. In doing so, they foreground the region\u2019s significance for understanding key dynamics of the early modern world across a wider historical landscape.<\/span><\/p>\n Together, these publications exemplify the intellectual ethos that has defined MEMS since its foundation. Research at the Centre thrives through collaboration across disciplines, bringing together historians, literary scholars, archaeologists, art historians and specialists in material culture to investigate the many ways in which the medieval and early modern past can be understood. Whether through manuscripts, objects, architecture or visual culture, MEMS researchers employ diverse sources and methodologies to uncover new perspectives on the premodern world and places MEMS at the forefront of premodern scholarship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies is delighted to celebrate two significant new publications by its staff members, highlighting the Centre’s distinctive commitment … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82691,"featured_media":1604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82691"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1605,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/1605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/memsnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}