Power in the Middle Ages

Moore Institute, NUIG, November 7-9^th 2008.

On the weekend of November 7-9^th 2008, twenty-two postgraduate students of medieval studies from Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and Portugal gathered at NUIG to discuss the theme of Power in the Middle Ages. The interdisciplinary conference was organised by three doctoral students of medieval literature working in the English Department under the supervision of Dr. Catherine LaFarge; Dermot Burns, Lisa Padden and Grace Windsor. Plans for the conference were set in motion in early May; the principle aim in organising the event was to offer postgraduates working in this area a rare opportunity to come together at a conference specifically geared towards students at both MA and doctoral level. The conference was kindly sponsored by the MA in Medieval Studies, the Registrar's Office, the Quality Office and the Department of English.

The conference panels comprised as follows:

• The Power of the Ideal
• Discourses of Power
• Medieval Literary Production and the Material World
• Families and Gender
• Embodiments of Physical Prowess
• Representations of Irish History
• Patronage
• Power and the Supernatural
• Monsters and Magic

Due to the success of the conference and in conjunction with the MA in Medieval Studies, the committee decided to work towards establishing the event as an annual gathering for postgraduate students. The result is Imbas.

A selection of papers from the 2008 conference are available to download here. Click here to see Duncan Berryman's video experiment, Defending the lord's power - Testing the strength of an Irish Tower House door, conducted at Queens University, Belfast. Due to constraints on time and resources, these papers have not been edited by the committee. By publishing these papers, the conference committee aims to both contribute to the growing medieval postgraduate community, and to aid the academic development of the delegates.

The 2008 Imbas Committee: Grace Windsor, Lisa Padden, Dermot Burns

National University of Ireland, Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland
Programme director: Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Dept of History.
Tel: +353 (0)91 524411, Ext. 2697. Fax: +353 (0)353 91494556. E-mail: daibhi.ocroinin@nuigalway.ie.
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