OxTalks is Changing
During Michaelmas Term, OxTalks will be moving to a new platform (full details are available on the Staff Gateway).
For now, continue using the current page and event submission process (freeze period dates to be advised).
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Department: Faculty of History
Talks:
Monday 13 October 2025
“I call them all by the Malabar name”: communicating colonial flora before universal nomenclature
Date: 13 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Madeline White (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Constructing a Queen: The Career of Jane Seymour from Gentlewoman, to Queen, to Central Dynastic Figure
Date: 13 October 2025, 16:30 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Elizabeth Norton (Independent Researcher)
Venue: Jesus College, Turl Street OX1 3DW
Venue Details: Memorial Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Imagining Monastic Perfection: Benedict, Fleury, and Beyond in the Central Middle Ages
Date: 13 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
James Miller (Oxford)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 14 October 2025
Introductory Party (in-person event only)
Date: 14 October 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 16 October 2025
Prosperity, Petitions, and Parliament: Peace, Union and Economic Debate in Early Jacobean England
Date: 16 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
s:
Dr Alexandra Gajda (Jesus College),
Dr Ellen Paterson (Keble College)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 17 October 2025
Oxford Centre for Global History 4th Anthony Gwilliam Annual Lecture - Femina Oeconomica: Global Gender Orders and the Rise of Neoliberal Woman
Date: 17 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:00
Speaker
:
Professor Maria Misra (Oxford)
Venue: H B Allen Centre,
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 20 October 2025
Welcome seminar and discussion of approaches to ‘play’ within histories of childhood and youth
Date: 20 October 2025, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker
:
N/A
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppard Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
The Science of Why Human Excrement Matters. Pierre Leroux and the circulus
Date: 20 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Michael Drolet (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Event, story and image in writings of John Arderne (1307-c.1380), English surgeon
Date: 20 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Peter Jones (King's College Cambridge)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 21 October 2025
Towards a History of Misunderstandings: The Missionaries’ Dilemma
Date: 21 October 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Peter Burke (Cambridge),
Chair: Filippo de Vivo
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Scottish Diplomatists in the Age of Enlightenment: The Edinburgh Network
Date: 21 October 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
:
Patrick Flood (New College, Oxford)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 22 October 2025
Military entrepreneurs, foreign soldiers, and Sweden’s wars of emergence 1560–1630
Date: 22 October 2025, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker
:
Jaakko Björklund (Helsinki)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 23 October 2025
Early Modern Selfhood Revisited: the Case of Feminism
Date: 23 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Dr Hannah Dawson (KCL)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 24 October 2025
"The traitor and agent Tshombe is in the hands of the Algerian revolution": 1960s plane hijackings between global anti-imperialism and international law
Date: 24 October 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Natalya Vince (Oxford)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 27 October 2025
Regulation of Anglo-American medical education and its effects on educational cultures
Date: 27 October 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Susan Lamb (Ottawa)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
A Princess of House d’Este at the English Court: Mary of Modena Between Religious-Political Alienation and Cultural Transfer
Date: 27 October 2025, 16:30 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Elena Taddei (University of Innsbruck)
Venue: Jesus College, Turl Street OX1 3DW
Venue Details: Memorial Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Ex urbe et ab Hierosolomis: The Materiality and Portability of Place in Pre-Reformation Europe
Date: 27 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Lucy Donkin (University of Bristol)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 28 October 2025
The Bonds of Freedom: Liberated Africans and the End of the Slave Trade
Date: 28 October 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
:
Jake Richards (LSE)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 29 October 2025
'Women, Politics, and the Irish Public Sphere in the Age of Revolution' (Oxford, 2025)
Date: 29 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
s:
Professor Catriona Kennedy (York),
Maria Luddy (Warwick),
Ian McBride (Oxford)
Venue Details: Schwarzman Centre, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 30 October 2025
“The thing is no Goblin; but the very party we talk on”: Self-fashioning and Mobility Aids in seventeenth-century Britain
Date: 30 October 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Olivia Bennison (St Edmund Hall)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 31 October 2025
Anti-apartheid in the international imagination: Capitalism, Socialism, Liberalism
Date: 31 October 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Saul Dubow (Cambridge)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 3 November 2025
Children on the streets. Conceptual thoughts on a history of modernity and empirical explorations on the example of the late German Empire
Date: 3 November 2025, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker
:
Joey Rauschenberger (University of Heidelberg)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppard Room, and online vya Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
From Teatime to TV: 200 Years of Science Communication at the Royal Institution
Date: 3 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Katy Duncan (Royal Institution)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Non-Binary Gender in Abbasid Baghdad: Reality vs. Fiction
Date: 3 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Anna Chrysostomides (Queen Mary, University of London)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 4 November 2025
The Social Roots of Religious Violence in Sixteenth-Century Paris
Date: 4 November 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Tom Hamilton (Durham),
Chair: Giora Sternberg
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
The Transformation of the Corn Milling Trade in Early Modern England, 1540-1800
Date: 4 November 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
:
Mike Braddick (All Souls College, Oxford)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 5 November 2025
A minor power in a total war: Sweden’s system of military procurement during the campaigns against Napoleon, 1805-1807 and 1813-1814
Date: 5 November 2025, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker
:
Patrik Winton (Örebro)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 6 November 2025
Sailing upon Storied Seas: The Maritime Environment in Seafarers’ Writings, 1650-1750
Date: 6 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Dr Richard Blakemore (University of Reading)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 7 November 2025
Daring To Be Free: Enslaved Resistance in the Atlantic World
Date: 7 November 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 10 November 2025
Multispecies Interactions in bridging Folk and Biomedical Knowledge: hookworm, roundworm and wormweed in Jamaica, 1913-1936
Date: 10 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Jonathan David Roberts (Leeds)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Her Material World: Queens’ Stuff in the Global Seventeenth-Century
Date: 10 November 2025, 16:30 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Susannah Lyon-Whaley (University of York)
Venue: Jesus College, Turl Street OX1 3DW
Venue Details: Memorial Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
The Inscriptive Economy in Fifteenth-Century England
Date: 10 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Tom Johnson (Oriel College, Oxford)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 11 November 2025
NO MEETING
Date: 11 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Professor Eliga Gould (University of New Hampshire)
Venue: Examination Schools, 75-81 High Street OX1 4BG
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 13 November 2025
Rethinking the 1650s
Date: 13 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Professor Michael Braddick (All Souls College)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 14 November 2025
The Oppressed Assemble: Socialist Anti-Colonialism and the Promise of Post-Imperial Modernity
Date: 14 November 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Zaib un Nisa Aziz (Cambridge)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 17 November 2025
Crossing Borders, Reshaping Lives: Jewish Orphan Migrations and Humanitarian Relief Before the Holocaust (late nineteenth - early twentieth century)
Date: 17 November 2025, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker
:
Charlotte Canizo (Oxford)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppart Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Baconian Alchemy: Making Gold in the Novum organum and the Sylva (Co-organised with the research project NOTCOM, at the Maison Française d’Oxford)
Date: 17 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Daniel Garber (Princeton)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Between truth and justice: towards an intellectual history of post-Mongol Rus
Date: 17 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Angus Russell (King's College, Cambridge)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 18 November 2025
Title TBC
Date: 18 November 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Giuseppe Marcocci (Oxford),
Chair: Giora Sternberg
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Three scholars will join Bob Harris to discuss his work ahead of his retirement in 2026
Date: 18 November 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 19 November 2025
Art in the Age of the Maxim Gun: The South African War (1899-1902) and the British Illustrated Press
Date: 19 November 2025, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker
:
Sean Wilcox (Oxford)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 20 November 2025
Captured Consent: Contract Labor in English Charity, Colonization, and War, 1600–1700
Date: 20 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
s:
Dr Sonia Tycko (University of Edinburgh),
In discussion with Professor Giuseppe Marcocci (Exeter College)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 21 November 2025
Civil Wars and the End of the Cold War: Hypotheses for Global History
Date: 21 November 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Jeremy Adelman (Princeton & Cambridge)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 24 November 2025
Marie Curie and public histories of science
Date: 24 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
s:
Sarah Dry (Oxford),
Stéphane van Damme (CNRS/MFO)
Venue Details: Maison Française d'Oxford, 2-10 Norham Rd, Oxford OX2 6SE
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Male Marriage Gaps, Dynastic Centralisation and Habsburg Trust Fund Babies: Analysing Early Modern Dynasties from a Long(er)-Term Perspective
Date: 24 November 2025, 16:30 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Liesbeth Geevers (Lund University)
Venue: Jesus College, Turl Street OX1 3DW
Venue Details: Memorial Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
NO SEMINAR
Date: 24 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
No seminar
Venue Details: No Seminar
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 25 November 2025
Tadhg Ó Neachtain (1671–c.1752) – Jacobitism, Philosophy and Knowledge of the World
Date: 25 November 2025, 16:00 - 17:00
Speaker
:
Professor Fionntán De Brún (Maynooth)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Please ask the lodge for directions
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tadhg Ó Neachtain (1671–c.1752): Jacobitism, Philosophy, and Knowledge of the World
Date: 25 November 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
:
Fionntán De Brún (Maynooth)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 27 November 2025
William Sancroft’s Jest-Book; or, what did a seventeenth-century archbishop find funny?
Date: 27 November 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Dr Tim Reinke-Williams (University of Northampton)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 28 November 2025
Art and Decolonial Love: Visualizing Just Futures in the Chicanx Civil Rights Movement
Date: 28 November 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Charlene Villaseñor Black (Oxford)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Monday 1 December 2025
Enslaved Children, “Adultification,” and Resistance in the antebellum US South, 1812-1861
Date: 1 December 2025, 11:00 - 12:15
Speaker
:
Aisha Djelid (Oxford)
Venue: Magdalen College, High Street OX1 4AU
Venue Details: Sophia Sheppart Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Anxious nurses and forgotten patients: psychoanalysing the hospital in mid-century Britain
Date: 1 December 2025, 16:00 - 17:30
Speaker
:
Grace Whorrall-Campbell (Oxford)
Venue: Radcliffe Observatory,
Venue Details: Room 0.018, Schwarzman Centre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Margins, marginality, and marginalisation: drawing lines within and around late medieval Catholicism
Date: 1 December 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Robert Swanson (University of Birmingham)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 2 December 2025
German Mining Science and the Quest for Metals in the Early Modern World
Date: 2 December 2025, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Gabriele Marcon (Vienna),
Chair: Howard Hotson
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
“Of myself alone”: Inventing the Written Proposal of Marriage in Long Eighteenth-Century England
Date: 2 December 2025, 16:15 - 17:15
Speaker
:
Sally Holloway (Warwick)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Beckington Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 3 December 2025
The loyalties of professionals: Black soldiers in the Rhodesian army, 1963-1981
Date: 3 December 2025, 17:15 - 18:15
Speaker
:
Marc Howard (Independent Scholar)
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Thursday 4 December 2025
Writing James VI and I
Date: 4 December 2025, 17:00 - 18:00
Speaker
:
Professor Clare Jackson (Trinity Hall, Cambridge)
Venue: Lincoln College, Turl Street OX1 3DR
Venue Details: Oakeshott Room, and online via Microsoft Teams
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Friday 5 December 2025
The Americas in Catholicism’s Global Cold War
Date: 5 December 2025, 14:00 - 16:00
Speaker
:
Daniel McDonald (Oxford)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Gillis Lecture Theatre
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 27 January 2025
Daily Bread: Thinking Comparatively about Food Protests, Social History, Gender, and Archival Politics
Date: 27 January 2026, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Maartje van Gelder (Amsterdam),
Chair: Filippo de Vivo
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 10 February 2025
The Case for India: Restating Eighteenth-Century Oriental Despotism from a History of Knowledge Perspective
Date: 10 February 2026, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
s:
Stéphane Van Damme (ENS Paris/MFO),
Chair: Giuseppe Marcocci
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Wednesday 25 February 2025
Joint session with the History of War seminar. Title TBC
Date: 25 February 2026, 17:15 - 18:45
Speaker
s:
Julia Heinemann (Antwerp),
Chair: Peter Wilson
Venue: All Souls College, High Street OX1 4AL
Venue Details: Wharton Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA
Tuesday 10 March 2025
Postgraduate presentations - title TBC
Date: 10 March 2026, 14:00 - 15:30
Speaker
Various Speakers
Venue: Exeter College, Turl Street OX1 3DP
Venue Details: Rector's Drawing Room
Organisers:
TBA
Hosts:
TBA