Lectures, seminars, workshops, prizes and opportunities for engagement with manuscripts, book history, and Bodleian Special Collections. Links below to affiliated groups and programmes.
Visit the Bodleian Bibliographical Press: printing history through practice
Jan – March 2025
New opportunity!
Oxford Bibliographical Society / Balliol College research associate position
Applications are invited for the inaugural Oxford Bibliographical Society / Balliol College research associate position.
Early career scholars and graduate students from any institution whose research would benefit from the use of Balliol’s printed or manuscript holdings, and whose work has a bibliographical component (broadly conceived), are invited to apply. The successful applicant will receive a £500 stipend, plus accommodation and meals in Balliol (outside of term time), to cover a period of 2 weeks.
The applicant’s project should meaningfully engage with some aspect of Balliol’s holdings, which are particularly rich in medieval manuscripts; the history of science; early modern pamphlets and liturgical print; literary papers of major authors (Graham Greene, Robert Browning, Swinburne, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot); 19th-century diplomatic history; and 20th century (inter-war) political history. The wider holdings can be seen at Historic Collections | Balliol College.
Applications should consist of a brief (2-page) CV and a 500-word proposal, describing how this 2-week research project would benefit the individual’s work.
Please send applications, and also any questions, to Professor Adam Smyth at adam.smyth@balliol.ox.ac.uk, by Friday 28th February 2025. For details of the Oxford Bibliographical Society, please visit here.
Bodleian Special Collections Coffee mornings, Fridays at 10:30am in the Weston Library for Special Collections
All Bodleian Readers are welcome, every Friday in termtime, 10:30-11:30 at the Special Collections coffee morning in the Visiting Scholars’ Centre (Level 2, Weston Library).
A Bodleian Reader card or University card is required for access. Each week a guest speaker shows new acquisitions, discoveries or re-discoveries from the Special Collections. To subscribe to email updates for Friday coffee mornings, send an email message to coffee-mornings-weston-subscribe[at]maillist.ox.ac.uk
Lectures and public events at the Weston LIbrary
Zine Fair 2025
Saturday, 22 February
Blackwell Hall, Weston Library
All welcome.
Magna Carta 1225: new discoveries and repercussions
A series of three lectures accompanying the display, Magna Carta 1225, on view in the Blackwell Hall, Weston Library. Register to attend these public lectures, open to all: https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/magna-carta
Friday 31 Jan, 1-2pm, Nicholas Vincent, ‘Magna Carta: new discoveries’
Thursday 20 Feb, 12-1pm, Dean Irwin, ‘Magna Carta and Jewish communities’
Thursday 27 March, 1-2pm, Sophie Thérèse Ambler, ‘Magna Carta and England’s First Revolution, 1258-1265’
Seminars and workshops at the Bodleian Libraries
Seminar in palaeography and manuscript studies, Hilary 2025
Convenors: Matthew Holford and Peter Toth
All seminars take place in the Weston Library, Horton Room, 2.15-3.45pm. Manuscripts will be shown. A University of Oxford card or Bodleian reader card is required to gain access to the seminar room. If you do not have a card, please email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk at least 24 hours in advance to arrange access.
Monday 27 January 2025 (week 2) Julia King, ‘Manuscripts In and Out of Syon Abbey’
Monday 10 Feb. 2025 (week 4) Ugo Mondini, ‘Poetry and education in medieval Southern Italy’
Monday 17 Feb. 2025 (week 5) Jo Edge, ‘Working with divinatory texts and manuscripts’
Monday 10 March 2025 (week 8) Lucio del Corso,‘Greek papyri in the Bodleian Library. A tale of lost texts and forgotten books’
Teaching the Book workshop
More than a blank sheet: how to read paper in early modern books
Andrew Honey (Bodleian Conservation and English Faculty) will guide a workshop on learning from papers used in early modern books.
Friday 14 February, 3:30 – 5 pm
Horton Room, Weston Library
University card or Bodleian reader card required for access
Registration required, register here.
History and Materiality of the Book Seminar
Organisers: Matthew Holford, Andrew Honey, Laure Miolo
ALL WELCOME
Wednesdays 2-3.30pm (see details below). Venue: Weston Library, Horton room (Level 1). No registration required. Access is via the reader entrance to the Weston Library, requiring a University card or Bodleian reader card.
For questions, please e-mail laure.miolo[at]history.ox.ac.uk
The series of seminars has been designed to introduce participants to the various material aspects of the book, thereby laying the foundations for the reconstruction of manuscripts’ production and history. The objective is to provide the indispensable elements for the analysis of the manuscript.
The seminars also provide a forum for specialists from different fields of manuscript studies to share their expertise. The sessions bring together curators, librarians, researchers and conservators to provide a comprehensive understanding of the various components of the codex from diverse perspectives. These components include the writing surface, ink, binding, decoration, manuscript production in its broadest sense, and its provenance. The seminars thus represent a valuable opportunity to demonstrate the necessity of close collaboration between researchers, curators/librarians, and conservators for a comprehensive consideration of the manuscript in its entirety. Such collaboration facilitates a more profound comprehension of the diverse contexts in which the manuscript was created, copied, and utilised.
Wednesday 22 January: Manuscript Structures — Matthew Holford
Wednesday 29 January: Writing supports (parchment and paper) and Bindings — Andrew Honey
Wednesday 5 February: Inks and Pigments — Julia Bearman and Robert Minte
Wednesday 12 February: Decoration — Martin Kauffmann
Wednesday 26 February: Calendars and time-reckoning — Laure Miolo
Wednesday 5 March: Medieval Libraries and Provenance — Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo
Wednesday 12 March: Text identification — Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo
Oxford Bibliographical Society meetings
All welcome. See the OBS website for list of events.
Thursday 6 February at 5.15 pm
Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College
Leah Price (Rutgers University)
Reading from home
Thursday 6 March at 5.15 pm
Shulman Auditorium, Queens College
Melanie Bigold (Cardiff University)
Books of her own: genres, use, and meaning in women’s libraries, 1660–1820
Thursday 8 May at 5.15 pm
Benjamin Henry Room, Blackwell’s
The rare book trade in 2025: a discussion with Sian Wainwright (Blackwell’s), Adi Blum Levin (Quaritch), Fuchsia Voremberg (Maggs), Chris Saunders (Sotherans) and Mark Byford (New College)
Thursday 29 May at 5.15 pm
T. S. Eliot Lecture Theatre: jointly with the Merton History of the Book Group
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
Meeting to begin at 4.30 p.m. Lecture to follow at 5.15 after a brief interval for tea
Sarah Cusk (Lincoln College) and Sophie Floate (Brasenose College)
Printed books from the libraries of some early
Oxford humanists
History of the Book at Oxford
Further events
The Lyell Lectures begin 29 April 2025
Leah Price (Rutgers), ‘Victorian Books and their Servants‘
All at 5:15 pm in the Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. All welcome. Registration (free ticket gives entry to all five lectures); https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/lyell-lectures-2025
Tuesday 29 April Bibliodomesticity: Who served Victorian books?
Thursday 1 May Shirkspaces: Where don’t George Gissing’s characters write?
Tuesday 6 May The angel in the library: reading aloud between chattel slavery and domestic violence
Thursday 8 May Biblioempathy: How rich and poor readers pictured each other
Thursday 15 May Literacy at nurse: Is it ever too late to read?
HOLD THE DATE
1 May 2025: The Concertina-fold Book Across Cultures
3-4 pm, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library
Accordion, screenfold, chain—various terms have been applied to books folded in a zig-zag or ‘concertina’ pattern. Seen now as novelties, concertina-fold books were once found worldwide. They were even the preferred or sole book format in some places, before the imperial spread of the codex. A group of International experts come together for an afternoon conversation on the historic uses of the format as part of The Concertina-Fold Book across Time, Space and Cultures project, supported by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Their discussion will be grounded in some of the outstanding examples housed at the Bodleian. Attendees will have the opportunity to see a few of the Bodley books in action and to play with concertina-book facsimiles.
RBS Summer School at the Weston Library
Two courses offered by Rare Book School will take place at the Weston Library, Oxford in Summer 2025
These are:
Transmission of the Bible from the Beginnings to 1500, taught by Peter Toth
Researching Medieval Manuscripts: From Cataloging to Cultural History, taught by David Rundle