Judging by the smiles on Rory and Tuija's faces they were very happy to be there.

Tuija described her activities at the event, "I participated in a Round Table discussion dedicated to Digital Libraries. All three of the panellists gave a brief 10-minute presentation on some aspect of digitisation and building of digital library repository. I was in the fortunate position to present a fully digitised collection of the Parker Library and to highlight the work done since Parker Library On the Web was first launched 15 years ago in collaboration with Stanford University Libraries. While the 2018 Parker 2.0 update provided a full refresh of the platform, the current work continues in data correction and maintenance, with some curatorial enhancements in providing new pathways to finding one’s way around the collection. 

"These types of large international meetings of our key-specialists are important grounds to make connections and contacts, and in keeping up with current and upcoming research interests in the field of medieval manuscript studies. I attended several interesting presentations on research work going on with various digital humanities related projects, some based on institutional repositories building and providing digital assets for researchers, others being more researcher-lead efforts of building new digital research assets. One repeated theme kept coming up: how can we as individual researchers and as institutional depositories ensure that the digital assets we are building today (both institutionally as well as individually), are accessible in the future? Researcher-lead projects are particularly vulnerable to moves related to career-development and institutional support, but – as the recent attack on the digital infrastructure of the British Library has painfully demonstrated – large institutions are not immune to the issues either."

Fellow Professor Rory Naismith, who is Professor of Early Medieval English History in the Department of Anglo Saxon, Norse and Celtic, also attended. He says, "The IMC in Leeds was a good event this year. The theme, 'crisis', prompted a lot of imaginative papers, and produced the session in which I spoke, on the subject of 'moral economy' in the early Middle Ages. Taking inspiration from the work of the modern historian E. P. Thompson (m.1941), the idea was to look at how people between the fifth and eleventh centuries thought about material resources and how they should be handled responsibly (or irresponsibly). My own contribution was based on the proceedings of a church council held at Paris in 829, which - unusually for the period - spells out very specifically some of the economic abuses that were being inflicted on weaker members of society by those who were rich and powerful. It describes attempts to manipulate prices and agricultural productivity. This is not in itself hugely surprising, but it is interesting that the bishops in Paris configured their thought around what was best for the poor: so, controlling prices was bad at good times because it restricted profits, but a good thing in bad times, as it prevented exploitation." 

Parker Library Early-Career Researcher Dr Alicia Smith (shown at right with Tuija), who has been researching the life of the 'harlot saint' Thais, was invited to present on a panel organised by a German research team who are working on records of medieval hermits and other solitaries in Europe. She explains, "I spoke about a version of the life of Thais written by a twelfth-century bishop as a commentary on contemporary practices of solitude and enclosure. I heard papers on lots of other subjects including medieval understandings of time and quantum theory, saints and punk rock, methodologies for studying trans experience in history, and a mystical text which exhorts us to be like 'divine lobsters'."

This was the 31st Medieval Congress. The programme included over 2,360 actively involved participants from 60 different countries in over 2,100 papers in more than 700 sessions and round table discussions, with up to 49 sessions taking place at any one time. In addition to the many talks and panels, the Congress offers events, excursions, performances and workshops - from pub quizzes to music, combat displays and falconry - as well as bookfairs and exhibitions.

The next Medieval Congress with the theme 'Worlds of Learning' will take place 7-10 July 2025.