The Medium Ævum Lecture has taken place every year since 1958, delivered by a distinguished medievalist following the Society's Annual General Meeting. Since 2012, the Lecture is hosted by a different institution each year, from around the United Kingdom.

The Annual Lectures

2024 Sarah Bowden 2024 MÆ AGM and Lecture: ‘Shifting Landscapes: St Oswald of Northumbria in England and Germany’ Grimond Lecture 3, Grimond Building, University of Kent / Online - Saturday 14 September, 2024
2023 M.S. KEMPSHALL The 2023 MAE Lecture: Causes and Chronography in Medieval Historical Writing Grosvenor Museum, Chester - Saturday 01 July, 2023
2022 Ryan Perry The 2022 MAE Lecture: Middle English Books of Devotion & Liturgical Privatisation in 15th England University of Nottingham / Zoom - Saturday 02 July, 2022
2021 Jocelyn Wogan-Browne The 2021 MAE Lecture: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Women and Multilingualism in Late Medieval England Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, Online (Zoom / aevum.space) - Friday 04 June, 2021
2019 David D'Avray

The 2019 MÆ AGM and Lecture - David d'Avray (UCL), 'How to explain the Medieval Papacy'

University of Birmingham - Saturday 27 April, 2019
2018 Janet Nelson

MÆ Annual Lecture, Meeting and Colloquium - Medieval Life Writing - in Celebration of the Lecture's 60th Anniversary

Harris Manchester College - Friday 29 June, 2018
2017 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton

Literary Networks of the Vicars Choral and the Clerical Proletariat in Late Medieval York

Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham - Saturday 06 May, 2017
2016 Liz Herbert McAvoy

Gerald's Hard Country: Representations of Landscape and Enclosure in the Itinerarium Kambriae

Cardiff University - Saturday 16 April, 2016
2015 Andy Orchard

Mightier than the Sword? Grasping the Point of the Anglo-Saxon Riddle Tradition

Bancroft Building, Queen Mary, University of London - Saturday 09 May, 2015
2014 Robert Bartlett

Gervase of Tilbury and International Courtly Culture

University of Lincoln - Saturday 03 May, 2014
2013 Nigel Palmer

Gospel Meditations in Fourteenth- and Fifteenth-century Europe: Three Voices from the Upper Rhine

Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol - Saturday 18 May, 2013
2012 Helen Cooper

The Ends of Story-telling

University of Durham - Saturday 19 May, 2012
2011 Sarah Medlam Estate and Precedence: The Form and Function of Beds in Medieval Households Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College, Oxford - Tuesday 12 April, 2011
2010 M. Michèle Mulchahey How the Dominican Order Dealt with Error within its Own Ranks: Unsanctioned Publication and the Censure of Durand of St-Pourçain Lincoln College, Oxford - Friday 16 April, 2010
2009 Alixe Bovey Ludic Margins: the Gravity of Play in Gothic Manuscripts Lincoln College, Oxford - Friday 03 April, 2009
2008 Miri Rubin

Mary of the Europeans: Emotion and Devotion

St. Hilda's College - Saturday 08 March, 2008
2007 Alan Deyermond

'These things are figures of the true': Uses of Biblical Typology in Medieval Spanish Literature

St. Hilda's College - Saturday 10 March, 2007
2006 Éamonn Ó Carragáin

'The Dream of the Rood' and Eighth-Century Northumbria

Mansfield College - Saturday 11 March, 2006
2005 Sarah Kay

The Place of Thought in Late Medieval Didactic Literature: The Case of Christine de Pizan

Mansfield College - Saturday 05 March, 2005
2004 Anne Hudson

Robustissimus Antichristi Achilles: Thomas Netter, Wyclif and the Lollards

Balliol College - Saturday 28 February, 2004
2003 Mary Carruthers

Learning to Read the Hard Way (Peter of Celle: "On Afflication and Reading")

Balliol College - Saturday 22 February, 2003
2002 Margaret Bent

The Musical Stanzas in Martin le Franc's Le champion des dames

Balliol College - Saturday 02 March, 2002
2001 Maurice Keen

Medieval History: Angevin England through Medieval Eyes

Balliol College - Saturday 24 February, 2001
2000 Peter Dronke

Imagery of Dance in Early Medieval Europe

Balliol College - Saturday 04 March, 2000
1999 Reinhard Strohm

Late Medieval Song

University College - Saturday 06 March, 1999
1998 Ian Michael

Private Book-Collecting in Spain from St Isidore (570-636) to the Marquis of Santillana (1398-1458)

Magdalen College - Saturday 28 February, 1998
1997 David Rees

Language and National Identity in the British Isles 1100-1400

University College - Saturday 22 February, 1997
1996 Michael Lapidge

Byrhtferth and his Books

Magdalen College - Saturday 24 February, 1996
1995 Dennis Green

On Recognising and Failing to Recognise Signals to Irony and Fiction in Court Literature

Summer Common Room, Magdalen College - Saturday 25 February, 1995
1994 Linda M. Paterson Editing Medieval Lyric Poetry: Marcabru's D'aisso lau Dieu St. John's College - Saturday 26 February, 1994
1993 C. David Benson

Images and Audience: Piers Plowman and Wallpainting

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 06 March, 1993
1992 Patrick Boyde

Blossoming Garden & Circling Melody: a reading of Paradiso XXIII

Lady Margaret Hall - Wednesday 19 February, 1992
1991 Alexander Murray

Excommunication and Conscience in the Middle Ages

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 16 February, 1991
1990 Jill Mann

The Owl and the Nightingale

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 24 February, 1990
1989 Alan Deyermond The Individual Voice in Medieval Spanish Prose St. Hilda's College - Saturday 11 March, 1989
1988 Tony Hunt

Anglo-Norman Medicine

St. Hilda's College - Saturday 05 March, 1988
1987 Stephen White

Justice and Judgement at the Court of King Arthur: The Trial of Guinevere

St. Hilda's College - Saturday 14 March, 1987
1986 Alastair Minnis

Towards a History of Medieval Theory and Criticism

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 15 March, 1986
1985 G.R. Evans

Literal and Metaphorical in the Bible

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 09 March, 1985
1984 Damasus Trapp

Thomas More and the Visual Arts

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 03 March, 1984
1983 Leslie Seiffert

God's Amnesty: Hartmann's Gregorius and the Vie du Pape Saint Gregoire

Lady Margaret Hall - Saturday 05 March, 1983
1982 Peter Dronke

The Writings of Marguerite Porete

Saturday 13 March, 1982
1981 Douglas Gray

Tribute to Professor Jack Bennett

Saturday 14 March, 1981
1980 Henry Mayr-Harting

The Bamberg MSS of c.1000AD and the God of the World

Saturday 15 March, 1980
1979 Dominica Legge

William Marshall and Arthur of Britanny: A Detective Story

Merton College - Saturday 17 March, 1979
1978 Janet Coleman

Fourteenth-century Theology. Piers Plowman and some Radical Franciscans

Merton College - Saturday 11 March, 1978
1977 R.W.V. Elliott

By Hylle and by Vale in the Gawain Country

Merton College - Saturday 12 March, 1977
1976 Robert B. Patterson

The Countesses of Gloucester and the status of women in Norman and Angevin England

Merton College - Saturday 13 March, 1976
1975 Giles Constable

Petrarch and Monasticism

Merton College - Saturday 15 March, 1975
1974 T.B.W. Reid

The Right to Emend

Merton College - Saturday 16 March, 1974
1973 Colin Hardie

Allegory in the Divina Commedia: the Epistle to Cangrande

St. Peter's College - Saturday 17 March, 1973
1972 F.P. Pickering

Medieval Patterns of History

Merton College - Saturday 11 March, 1972
1971 David Luscombe

The pseudo-Denys in the West

Merton College - Saturday 13 March, 1971
1970 K. Ugawa

Peasant Holding and Inheritance Custom in Medieval England: A Comparative Study

Merton College - Saturday 14 March, 1970
1969 Beatrice White

Medieval English Literature: Heads and Tales

Merton College - Saturday 15 March, 1969
1968 Rachel Bromwich

Dafydd ap Gwilym: a Welsh Contemporary of Chaucer

Balliol College - Saturday 16 March, 1968
1967 J.E. Cross

The Conception of the old English Phoenix

Balliol College - Saturday 18 March, 1967
1966 E. Talbot Donaldson

Approaches to Chaucer

Balliol College - Saturday 19 March, 1966
1965 J.J.G. Alexander

Anglo-Saxon Illumination and the Continent in the 11th Century

Taylorian Institute - Saturday 13 March, 1965
1964 Marie Thérèse d'Alverny

Dante and Wisdom

Magdalen College - Saturday 21 March, 1964
1963 E.F. Jacob

A Mediaeval Bishop of Norwich: Dr Thomas Brouns

Magdalen College - Saturday 16 March, 1963
1962 James J. Murphy

Rhetoric in Fourteenth Century Oxford

New Room, Magdalen College - Saturday 17 March, 1962
1961 Alfred Ewert

The Twelfth Century Renaissance in French Literature

New Room, Magdalen College - Saturday 11 March, 1961
1960 K.B. McFarlane

The Lollard Knights

New Common Room, Merton College - Saturday 12 March, 1960
1959 Eugène Vinaver

Tradition and Design in Twelfth-century French Romance

Upper Bursary, Merton College - Saturday 07 March, 1959
1958 Nora Chadwick

The Earliest Records of the British Heroic Age

Upper Bursary, Merton College - Saturday 08 March, 1958