‘Mearcstapa’ is an Old English compound word found in the poem Beowulf, meaning ‘boundary-walker’. It is used to refer to the Grendelkin, who literally, socially and academically inhabit the margins of their environment. They walk the lines between Heorot and fenland, humanised and dehumanised, recognition and obscurity.

We felt drawn to these mearcstapan, and the word itself. Particularly as people who may sit in the intersections of different identities (race, gender, class, religion, disability, sexuality and more), and/or navigate living in multiple worlds, they felt like kin to us. Even just as undergraduate students, we may often feel like mearcstapan in the world of university — full of passion and growing knowledge about the medieval that means we yearn to connect with others, but without the years of experience and prestige that would facilitate a sense of belonging in many scholarly spaces. We may feel caught between the amateur and academic, the uni bubble and the outside world.

Mearcstapan, then, aims to be a place where we don’t have to be ‘neither’ in our identities or studentships, but ‘both’. We want to make a home on the cusp, one foot in each world, tracing our own desire paths through the landscapes we dwell in.

We’d love for you to come and join us. The way is well-trodden.