Basic Program 2024-2025
The basic program comprises a total of twelve courses organized by the Research School, that have been purpose-developed for training and support of PhD students and Research MA students who specialize in Medieval Studies (history, art history, and literary history, in particular).
It consists of a core curriculum of 5 ECTS for Research MA-students and 8 ECTS for PhD students. This core curriculum is supplemented with electives for 2-5 ECTS. The Research School reserves itself the right to cancel a course in case of insufficient interest (i.e. less than 4 registrations for a course). At the same time, the Research School aims to allow as many people as possible to participate in these courses. However, if there is great interest in a particular course, a maximum number of participants may be set. The maximum number of participants will be communicated via the website and/or newsletter. In addition, there will be several (inter)national symposia, (co-)organized by the Research School, and the yearly Medieval Studies’ Day, whose active attendance can generate 1-2 ECTS points.
Core Curriculum
- Introduction to Medieval Studies in the Netherlands (IMS)
- Thesis Lab: “The Source Course”
- Rethink your Thesis: Concepts, Questions, Composition
Introduction to Medieval Studies in the Netherlands (IMS)
The course offers an introductory survey of what is going on in the field of international medieval studies. It tries to answer such general questions as: what disciplines contribute to medieval studies; how can we get informed on the field; which are the leading international centers of education and research; what are fashionable themes and topics in medieval studies; what’s new in theory and methods of research; and what have Dutch universities to offer in all these respects?
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students at the start of their programs resp. research projects.
- Period & location: February-March 2025; five course days in several medieval studies departments of other Dutch universities. One introductory meeting in November 2024.
- Course Coordinator: Dr I. Wolsing (Leiden)
- Course load: 2 ECTS
- Minimum number of participants: 5
Thesis Lab: “The Source Course”
This multi-day course on location offers research MA-students and PhD candidates who are in the initial stage of their project the opportunity to reflect thoroughly on the primary sources they are going to use – in terms of typology, heuristics (theoretical) approaches, and methods of analysis – before specialists who first give short presentations on their own use of the same or similar source types.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD-students in the initial stages of their research.
- Period: March 2025; one course week of 2-5 days (depending on the number of participants).
- Location: Dominican Convent Huissen (with 1-4 overnight stays)
- Course Coordinator: Dr I. Wolsing (Leiden)
- Course load: 3 ECTS
- Minimum number of participants: 5
Rethink your Thesis: Concepts, Questions, Composition
The course offers PhD-students who are about halfway with their project the opportunity to have the complete lay-out of their project scrutinized by invited specialists in their field who are not their supervisors. A close and critical look will be taken at research questions, the (first, provisional) analysis of research results, and the design of the dissertation in the making. In preparation the participants turn in a complete draft of the Introduction of their dissertation.
- Aimed at: advanced PhD-students.
- Period: June 2025; 1-2 full days (depending on the number of participants).
- Location: Leiden University.
- Course Coordinator: Dr R. Stein (Leiden)
- Course load: 3 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 5
Electives
- The Medieval Studies Day
- Medieval Book Scripts
- Material culture
- Visual culture
- Exploring the Medieval Archive
- Literary culture
- Medieval Latin
- Summer School: Manuscript Studies: Codicology and Digital Techniques
- Presenting Medieval Research
Yearly open day for all members of the Research School, including Flemish colleagues. By turns organized by one of the participant universities; sometimes by an associated Flemish university. Usually, the program comprises two keynote lectures around a chosen theme, followed (or preceded) by 10-20 short papers on a variety of subjects, presented in a number of parallel sessions by PhD students and/or tenured staff.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students, PhD-students; other members of the Research School and Flemish associates.
- Date: 8 November 2024
- Place: Gent
- Coordinators: Dr. Stefan Meysman and dr. Leen Bervoets
- Course load (for Research MA-students only): 1 ECTS
This course introduces students to a range of scripts used for copying medieval books (focusing in particular on the Latin tradition, but also incorporating vernacular examples). In addition to teaching skills for reading such scripts, it will also contextualise the development, presentation, and use of various book scripts within medieval written culture. Throughout students will learn up-to-date methodologies for studying book scripts, while also engaging with current research perspectives on scribal practice and script proliferation.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students.
- Period: February/March 2025
- Place: Leiden
- Coordinator: Dr. I. O’Daly (UL)
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Minimum number of participants: 4
- Maximum number of participants: 12
- Basic knowledge of Latin is required. Students will also be introduced to scripts used for writing in medieval vernaculars (e.g. Dutch, English).
The course will be dealing with various kinds of material culture as sources for knowledge and research in Medieval Studies. A basic premise is that material sources are of the same level of relevance as other source types, such as written sources. With respect to relics of material culture, the questions of reliability and meaning are particularly fascinating. In addition, various types of material sources will be discussed and analyzed, varying from pictorial to archaeological remains, and from liturgical objects to buildings. Part of the course will be on-site and museum visits.
- Period: 2025 (TBA)
- Location: Utrecht University
- Course Coordinators: Dr A.J.M. Irving (Groningen) and Dr W. van Welie-Vink (Amsterdam)
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 15
This course deals with a variety of aspects of medieval visual culture: the ‘grammar’ of visual representation; how to ‘read’ medieval images in their written, oral or cultural context; how to search for representations of a specific topic; its historiography (including the ‘minor arts’) and the importance of ‘auxiliary sciences’ such as costume history and heraldry. This course not only aims at participants with an art historical background, but also encourages participation from other fields of study where the study of visual aspects, as an extra carefully studied source, can add new perspectives.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students
- Period: March-April 2025
- Course Coordinator: Dr M. Meuwese (Utrecht)
- Location: Utrecht University
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 12
Exploring the Medieval Archive
Archives are among the most important repositories of medieval sources. They contain a wealth of magnificent material that provides new insights, not only to historians but also to literary historians and art historians. However, accessibility is not straightforward. The texts are often written in difficult-to-decipher handwriting, and interpreting the content is not always easy. This course aims, on the one hand, to provide practical training for Research Master's students and PhD candidates in the skill of reading medieval archival documents and understanding the text. On the other hand, the course addresses the cultural history of medieval archives and the various types of sources.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students.
- Period: April-May 2025
- Location: Utrecht
- Course Coordinator: Dr R. Stein (Leiden)
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 12
Medieval literature can be seen as historical object, but also as literature in its full right – and this tension between its Alterity and its Modernity will be illustrated from several perspectives. The course features an eye on Latin literature, on less known traditions, but also an oversight of main developments in vernacular literature. It will be dealing with performance as a key to understanding the literary fact, music and poetry, formalizations of medieval imagination, and the history of criticism on medieval literature. Next to that, it will address the forms and modalities of its conservation in connection to ‘modern reading’ culture.
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students
- Period: April-May 2025
- Location: Unversity of Amsterdam
- Course Coordinator: Dr J. Koopmans (UvA)
- Teachers: Dr J. Koopmans (UvA); Dr P. Gerbrandy; Dr. A. Seyhad-Goreb
- Course load: 2/5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 12
The course trains medieval historians, art historians and literary historians in the practical reading of all sorts of source texts/source text types written in medieval Latin. The participants bring in texts from, or related to, their own research projects. Aim of the course is to considerably widen the use of primary sources in the practicing of medieval history, and through that to enlarge its effectiveness. A requirement for participation is a basic knowledge of classical Latin (secondary school-level).
- Aimed at: Research MA-students (and PhD students).
- Period: May-June 2025
- Location: Utrecht University
- Course Coordinator: Prof. Dr E. Rose (Utrecht)
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 15
Summer School: Manuscript Studies: Codicology and Digital Techniques
Manuscripts are full of traces of their makers and users: their material features hold clues for their date and place of origin, their cultural contexts and their social lives during their long existence. In this course we explore the manuscript’s material features from this angle.
Within this field the digital turn has impacted the discipline massively. A few decades ago manuscript scholars could only study the materiality of manuscripts in special collections, and only search for evidence through catalogue descriptions and secondary literature. Now it is possible to access thousands of digital images of manuscripts and conduct research in distant, quantitative ways. New, non-invasive techniques have been developed to reveal material features that were previously invisible, such as marks and drawings scratched into the parchment, barely visible traces of fingers that touched the book, and even residues of bodily fluids. The second main topic of this course is precisely this: which new techniques have been developed to research medieval handwritten materials, and how do they change Manuscript Studies as a field of research?
- Aimed at: Research MA-students and PhD students.
- Period: May/June 2025
- Location: Leiden / The Hague
- Course Coordinator: Prof. dr M. Teeuwen (Leiden)
- Maximum number of participants: 15
The course coaches the participants in preparing a paper for an international congress on Medieval Studies (e.g. the yearly IMC at Leeds).
- Aimed at: PhD-students and Research MA-students.
- Period: June-July 2025 (with initial session in September 2024)
- Location: Utrecht University / International Medieval Conference Leeds.
- Course Coordinator: Dr S. Meeder (Nijmegen)
- Course load: 5 ECTS
- Maximum number of participants: 12