We are proposing to organise sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2024, sponsored by the Viking Society. The dates of the conference are 1-4 July. We hope this will be a great way to promote interest in medieval Scandinavian topics and for Society members from all over the world to meet in dialogue. (Participation is not limited to Viking Society members, though, so feel free to pass this notice on to others who could be interested.)
The overall theme of the conference is ‘Crisis’. We welcome proposals responding to this theme in a medieval Scandinavian context (see the Call for Papers for inspiration on how it could be interpreted: https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-2024/). We also welcome proposals, however, for papers ranging beyond the theme to address any aspect of the diverse interests covered by the Society, in whatever discipline – literary, historical, archaeological – and from a variety of perspectives. We hope to include a range of speakers from graduate students and early career researchers to more senior scholars.
If you would be interested in offering a paper, please get in touch! We can be reached by email at a.finlay@bbk.ac.uk and/or t.bourns@ucl.ac.uk. We will do our best to group individual papers together thematically, but please also let us know if you have an idea for a theme that others may be willing to join and we will try to make up the numbers (three twenty-minute papers being standard for a session). It will be helpful too if you could provide a short abstract (this will be needed eventually – c. 100 words – but a rough indication is all we need for the moment).
Session proposals are not due until 30th September 2023, so titles and topics do not need to be final at this stage, but we are setting an initial deadline for offers of 24th August. This is so that any offers that we can’t fit into our session plan can still be referred to the main programming committee, which has a deadline of 31st August for individual papers.
For those not familiar with the Leeds IMC conventions, please note that the Viking Society’s ‘sponsorship’ unfortunately does not imply financial support, and you, or your institution, will have to be able to fund attendance at what is, sadly, quite an expensive conference (though there are some bursaries available –see https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/proposals/bursary/ )
Hoping to see many of you in Leeds!
Alison Finlay
Tim Bourns