Humanities Division - Oxford Talks

OxTalks is Changing

OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk

Humanities Division part of: University of Oxford

Monday 9 February 2026

Tuesday 10 February 2026

Wednesday 11 February 2026

11:00 - Latest Intersections Reading Group with the RAI
Reading Group
LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network
14:00 - Imperial Circulations: Climate Knowledge, Port Labor, and Material Worlds
Cherry Briggs (Independent Researcher), Alison Bennett (University of Oxford)
Transnational & Global History Seminar
16:15 - Messianism and History: A View from Nineteenth-Century Sudan
Hengameh Ziai
Koch History Centre Seminars and Events
16:30 - Dominican Gifts of Mesoamerican Things in Early Modern Italy: Circulation and Reception
Davide Domenici (University of Bologna)
Iberian History Seminar
17:00 - Civil Servants and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland: “Keep People Talking”
Dr Giada Lagana (Cardiff)
Oxford Irish History Seminar
17:00 - Lecture 4: Accra and Kumasi: Architecture and Decolonization
Please note that all six lectures will take place in-person only, and the lectures will not be recorded.
Esther da Costa Meyer (Princeton)
Slade Lectures 2026: Urban Change and Representation
17:00 - ‘On First Noticing Bergman and Kafka'
Professor Amit Chaudhuri (Novelist and Poet)
Modern and Contemporary Literature Research Seminar
17:15 - Mercenaries for Peace: Masculinity, Internationalism, and Pleasure on the Front Lines of Peacekeeping
Margot Tudor (City)
History of War Seminar Series
17:15 - 'Fiction and Other Minds' Seminar': Embodied Words and Creative Worlds
Dr Nadine Sigalov, Professor Kate Rossmanith
Fiction and Other Minds seminar
17:15 - Methodology Workshop
Various Speakers
Interdisciplinary Early Modern Graduate Workshop

Thursday 12 February 2026

Friday 13 February 2026

Monday 16 February 2026

Tuesday 17 February 2026

Wednesday 18 February 2026

12:30 - Ethics in AI Lunchtime Research Seminar:
Dr Felix Simon (University of Oxford)
Institute for Ethics in AI lunchtime seminars
17:00 - Lecture 5: Brasilia: Planned Exclusion
Please note that all six lectures will take place in-person only, and the lectures will not be recorded.
Esther da Costa Meyer (Princeton)
Slade Lectures 2026: Urban Change and Representation
17:15 - 'John Ashbery's Boredom' and ‘Serially Late: the Long Poems of Walt Whitman and Nathaniel Mackey’
Ben Philipps, Lochie Springett
Modern and Contemporary Literature Graduate Forum
17:30 - Shaping the future of AI and Human Rights
Professor Yuval Shany (King's College, London)
Institute for Ethics in AI Accelerator Fellowship Programme events

Thursday 19 February 2026

Friday 20 February 2026

14:00 - Campaigning and Counter-Insurgency in the Creole Archipelago: The British Struggle in the Revolutionary Caribbean
David Lambert (Warwick)
Global and Imperial History Research Seminar
15:00 - Title TBC
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Graham Priest (CUNY)
Jowett Society
17:00 - Beyond Average Wages: Wage Inequality in Medieval England, 1300–1514
Leonardo Ridolfi (University of Siena)
Economic and Social History Research Seminar

Monday 23 February 2026

Tuesday 24 February 2026

Wednesday 25 February 2026

11:00 - Latest Intersections Reading Group with the RAI
Reading Group
LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network
14:00 - Transnational Trade & Labour History
Camille Neufville (University of Strasbourg), Amrit Deol (California State University, Fresno)
Transnational & Global History Seminar
16:15 - Christians, Jews, and Muslims' resistance to the Spanish Monarchs in 15th c. Malaga
Celine Dauverd
Koch History Centre Seminars and Events
16:30 - Old Customs and the Contest for Jurisdiction over Jews and Muslims in Late Medieval Iberia
Rodrigo Garcia-Velasco (UCL)
Iberian History Seminar
17:00 - Lecture Series: The Bestseller of Failed Ottomanism: Muslim-Christian Coexistence, Istanbul’s Urban Life, and Ottoman Imperial Collapse in Konstantinos Makridis’ Popular Satire
Dr Kutay Onaylı (Magdalen College, University of Oxford)
17:00 - One History or Many? Transitional Justice Theory and the Politics of Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland
Professor Louise Mallinder (QUB)
Oxford Irish History Seminar
17:00 - Lecture 6: Permanently Temporary Cities: Refugee Camps
Please note that all six lectures will take place in-person only, and the lectures will not be recorded.
Esther da Costa Meyer (Princeton)
Slade Lectures 2026: Urban Change and Representation
17:15 - Male bodies for the fatherland. Invalidity and self-mutilation in the eighteenth-century Habsburg monarchy
Please note this session is in the Old Library, All Souls College
Julia Heinemann (Antwerp)
History of War Seminar Series
17:15 - ‘James Schuyler's Romanticism: “A little trick I picked up from Bill Coleridge”’
Eric Lindstrom
Modern and Contemporary Literature Research Seminar
17:15 - Male Bodies for the Fatherland: Invalidity and Self-Mutilation in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy
Joint session with the History of War seminar. Please note the change in regular time and place. This seminar will take place at All Souls College at 17:15 on Wednesday 25 February.
Julia Heinemann (Antwerp), Chair: Peter Wilson
Early Modern World Seminar
17:15 - Interdisciplinary Colloquium
TBA
Interdisciplinary Early Modern Graduate Workshop

Thursday 26 February 2026

11:45 - Glut
Content awareness: This session engages methodologically and theoretically with archival materials that may involve sexual violence, reproductive politics, racialised power, gendered harm, and coercion, particularly in contexts where such materials appear in uneven, repetitive, or overwhelming abundance (“archival glut”). While the focus of the session is analytical and methodological rather than descriptive, some themes may nevertheless be challenging. For those who may find it helpful, we also recommend the excellent resources produced by the Challenging Research group, which offer guidance on working with emotionally demanding archives and topics: https://challengingresearch.org/resources/
Anthea Butler (University of Pennsylvania, and Koch History Centre), Catherine Sloan (Oxford)
WGQ Centre
14:00 - The Worst Bird in Britain? Gamekeepers, bird protection, and the Little Owl controversy in England, c.1900-1954
Max Long (Oxford)
Modern British History Seminar (in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for European History)
15:00 - 'Fictions of Legal Hearing'
Professor Nomi Dave (University of Oxford)
Graduate Research Colloquium
17:00 - 'Made to measure or prêt à chanter? The court of Wilhelm IV and the later Alamire manuscripts'
Andrew Kirkman (University of Birmingham)
All Souls Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music
17:00 - Lecture 6: Self vs. Society
Professor Peter Mandler (Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge)
The James Ford Lectures 2026: The Language of Social Science in Everyday Life
17:00 - “Commerce has taught us more humanitie”? Enslaved Black people, Jewish people, and the conditional rightslessness of ‘infidels’ in seventeenth-century England
Dr Kathleen Commons (Sheffield)
Early Modern Britain Seminar
17:00 - Film Screening: Victim (1961)
Film screening and discussion
LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network
17:15 - Debt in stone: architectures of finance in late Ottoman Istanbul
Eva Schreiner (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence)
Khalili Research Centre Seminars

Friday 27 February 2026

Monday 2 March 2026

12:00 - Seeking Wonder in the Long Nineteenth Century: Women, Folklore and Fairy Tales from a Transnational Perspective
Elena Sottilotta (University of Cambridge)
Italian Research Seminar
14:00 - Shut Up and Write (or Translate)!
TBA
Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation
16:00 - Popular Science Writing: Literary Approaches
Michael Whitworth (Oxford)
Oxford Centre for the History of Science Medicine & Technology (OCHSMT) Seminars and Events
17:00 - Insular manuscripts: why membrane matters
Please note: this session will be in-person only, not hybrid - this is due to restrictions governing the sharing of unpublished results by grant partners
Jo Story (Leicester)
Medieval History Research Seminar

Tuesday 3 March 2026

Wednesday 4 March 2026

Thursday 5 March 2026

Friday 6 March 2026

14:00 - Hobbes the Egyptian: The Leviathan as Anti-Bible
Robert Yelle (LMU Munich)
Global and Imperial History Research Seminar
15:00 - Title TBC
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Professor James Ladyman (Bristol)
Jowett Society

Monday 9 March 2026

Tuesday 10 March 2026

14:00 - Investigations of Women’s Suicides in the County of Henneberg: 1590-1612
This presentation examines historical sources that address suicide in the early modern period. Although the analysis is academic and contextualised, the subject matter may be upsetting or triggering for some listeners. Audience members are encouraged to prioritise their well-being and step away if needed.
Louisa Bergold, Chair: Giora Sternberg
Early Modern World Seminar
15:00 - Special Contemporary History Seminar: The Rise and Demise of Italy’s Christian Democracy
Rosario Forlenza (LUISS Rome)
16:00 - "A Happy, Angry Man"? John Hope Franklin and the Dilemmas of Black History in Public
Tom Cryer (University of Oxford)
American History Research Seminar
16:15 - The Making of Marie Antoinette Style at The V&A
Sarah Grant (The V&A), Oliver Cox (The V&A)
Graduate Seminar in History 1680-1850
17:00 - Spinning at Home for the Market: Individual Productivity and Income in 18th Century Sweden
Kathryn Gary (Lund University)
Economic and Social History Research Seminar
17:00 - Artistic Exchanges during the Global Cold War: Algeria and the Eastern Bloc
Katarzyna Falęcka (Newcastle)
Modern European History Seminar
17:00 - Habitatio est omen - or: like land, like people
Thomas Honegger (Friedrich Schiller University, Jena)
Tolkien seminars
17:30 - "The Universal Vibration of Life": William Bartram's Swarm Ecology
Sheila Byers (University of Oxford)
Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture Research Seminar

Wednesday 11 March 2026

10:00 - Postgraduate Presentations
Please note these presentations will take place in the Schwarzman Centre, from 10:00-14:30
Various Speakers
History of War Seminar Series
11:00 - Latest Intersections Reading Group with the RAI
Reading Group
LGBTQ+ History Faculty Network
14:00 - Imperial and Postcolonial Regimes of Expertise: Medicine, Development, and Environmental Limits
Sudarshana Banerjee (University of St Andrews), Rishabh Bajoria (National University of Singapore)
Transnational & Global History Seminar
16:15 - From Sacrifice to Creation: Two Paradigms of Indian Political Thought
Salmoli Choudhuri
Koch History Centre Seminars and Events
16:30 - Title TBC
Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile (Sorbonne)
Iberian History Seminar
17:00 - Making Ireland Catholic: Morality and Modernity in the Free State
Fearghal McGarry (QUB)
Oxford Irish History Seminar
17:15 - 'Moments of unselfing: Rachel Cusk, Amit Chaudhuri, and the new impersonal'
Agota Marton
Modern and Contemporary Literature Research Seminar

Thursday 12 March 2026

Friday 13 March 2026

14:00 - Students Against Apartheid: Collective Emotions and the Making of a Global Movement
Daniel Manulak (Toronto & Oxford)
Global and Imperial History Research Seminar

Thursday 19 March 2026

17:00 - America 250: What Makes A Revolution?
Peter Mancall (University of Southern California)

Friday 20 March 2026

17:00 - America 250: The Declaration of Independence and American Identity at 250
Annette Gordon-Reed (Harvard University)

Tuesday 5 May 2026

14:00 - Toward a History of Misunderstandings: The Missionaries’ Dilemma
This talk has been rescheduled from Michaelmas Term. Please note the change of venue
Peter Burke (Cambridge), Chair: Filippo de Vivo
Early Modern World Seminar

Friday 15 May 2026

15:00 - Title TBC
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Jennifer Nagel (Toronto)
Jowett Society

Friday 29 May 2026

15:00 - Title TBC
Status: This talk is in preparation - details may change
Selim Berker (Harvard)
Jowett Society

Thursday 11 June 2026

09:00 - Day 1 - Reimagining Humanism: Religious Humanisms as Frameworks for Building a Common Life in a Fractured World
Various Speakers
McDonald Centre Annual Conference 2026: Reimagining Humanism
17:00 - Reimagining Humanism | McDonald Centre Annual Conference 2026
Register for the conference on Eventbrite. Please note that upon completing the Eventbrite registration, we will be in touch regarding payment methods.
Rev. Canon Prof. Luke Bretherton (University of Oxford), Slavica Jakelić (Richard P. Baepler Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Valparaiso University), Randi Rashkover (Nathan and Sofia Gumenick Chair of Judaic Studies, William & Mary), Eric Gregory (Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Religion, Princeton University), Ufuk Topkara (Professor of Comparative Theology from an Islamic Perspective at the Berlin Institute for Islamic Theology, Humboldt University of Berlin), Professor Joshua Hordern, Aaron Stalnaker (Professor of Religious Studies, Indiana University), Chammah Kaunda (Academic Dean at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS))

Friday 12 June 2026

09:00 - Day 2 - Reimagining Humanism: Religious Humanisms as Frameworks for Building a Common Life in a Fractured World
Various Speakers
McDonald Centre Annual Conference 2026: Reimagining Humanism

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