Conferences
Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520–1689.
To be held in St Andrews, 26 June 2026
Abstract Deadline: 11 December 2025
We are pleased to announce a one-day interdisciplinary conference on the theme Death and Bereavement in Early Modern Britain, 1520–1689. This event will explore how individuals, families, and communities experienced death and mourning during a period of profound religious and social change. We are delighted that our keynote speaker will be Professor Alec Ryrie
(Durham University), whose work on the religious and emotional history of the Reformation continues to shape the field.
We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers from postgraduate students, early career researchers, and established scholars from a broad range of disciplines, including social, religious, literary, material, and medical history. Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words, together with a short personal biography, to [email protected] by 11 December 2025.
Panel proposals are also welcome. Limited travel bursaries are available for postgraduate students upon request.
Contact: [email protected]
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Proclaiming, Affixing, Distributing: Disseminating the Law in Early Modern Europe. The 2nd COMLAWEU project, 5-6 May 2026.
Deadline for proposals: 31 October 2025.
Full details: https://comlaweu.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/events/
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Print and Education
The 18th USTC / St Andrews Book History Conference, 18-20 June 2026. Deadline for proposals: 12 December 2025.
Full details: https://ustc.ac.uk/conference
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USTC Conference 2021 – Gender and the Book Trades, 16-19 June 2021
This conference seeks to discuss possible frameworks for analysing the critical relationship between gender and book history while confronting the binaries that have structured the historiography. It will bring together academics, librarians, archivists and antiquarian booksellers working across periods to build a more inclusive bibliography and explore new directions in the study of gender and the history of the book
Churches and War in Central Europe, C.17th – C.21st
Dates and location: 28th-29th June 2020, ONLINE
Name of organiser: Bridget Heal (St Andrews) and Tom Brodie (Birmingham)
This workshop will bring together scholars of German and Central European history to discuss the use and abuse of church buildings during times of war as well as their post-war restoration and reconstruction. Scholars writing about the history of war and its aftermath have tended to focus, understandably, on the loss of life and the human suffering it caused. But the fate of architecture and material culture is also a central part of the story. The papers at this conference will use ecclesiastical buildings, and the discourses that surrounded them, to access experiences of destruction and suffering and to highlight the importance of religion for the survival and recovery of individuals and communities. The workshop’s chronological scope will be broad, ranging from the Thirty Years War via the Napoleonic Wars to World War Two. The discussion will be interdisciplinary, drawing extensively on art and architectural history, and on material culture as well as on textual sources. Speakers will consider issues such as:
- the ideological struggles that shaped seemingly prosaic decisions about the financing and control of the reconstruction of ecclesiastical buildings
- the interplay of local and regional or national interests
- the importance of the aesthetic choices made during restoration and reconstruction
- the symbolic significance of rebuilding projects for particular confessional (and other) communities.
Confirmed speakers: Emily Fisher Gray, Bridget Heal, Michael Rose, Jim Bjork, Tom Brodie, Paul Betts.