Fifteenth-Century Conference, Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent, Thursday 3rd to Saturday 5th September 2026
To book for the conference, please follow this link.
Programme:
Thursday 3rd September
11am-12:45pm: Registration
12:45pm: Welcome
1-2:30pm: Session 1 (Chair: Sheila Sweetinburgh)
Susan Rose, ‘A ‘moat defensive’ or the road to power and riches? Did the importance of maritime affairs in English life and government change profoundly in the course of the fifteenth century?’
David Harrison, ‘The great highways of 15th-century England and Wales’
2:30-3pm: Tea break
3-4:30pm: Session 2 (Chair: Ryan Perry)
John Colley (St John’s, Cambridge), ‘Quis e Britannico Graecum doctus venit? Classical learning and vernacular letters in 15th-century England’
Charlotte Ross (Purdue), ‘Reconstructing the textual history of Hoccleve’s The Regiment of Princes’
4:30-5pm: Tea break
5-6:30pm: Session 3 (Chair: David Rundle)
Assia Alami (Paris-Est), ‘Female Authority and Persuasive Strategy in Fifteenth-Century Gentry Correspondence’
Ryan Perry (Kent), ‘Books of common profit and reading communities in 15th-century London’
6:30pm: Drinks Reception and Poster Session
Friday 4th September
9-10:30am: Session 4 (Chair: James Ross)
Virginia Davis (QM, London), ‘The political significance and influence of the wives of chief governors in late medieval Ireland’
Tara Shields (Queen’s, Belfast), ‘…he means to wander all over the diverse climes of the world to exercise and increase his knightly deeds – 15th-century military men on pilgrimage to St Patrick’s Purgatory’
10:30-11am: Coffee break
11am-12:30pm: Session 5 (Chair: Rowena Archer)
Leah Jepson (Bangor), ‘Matriarch of York: family, faith and female incentive in the life of Margaret Blackburn’
Tim Clark (Warwick), ‘The piety of Richard Beauchamp, 13th earl of Warwick, and its influence on the Beauchamp chapel’
12:30pm: Lunch
2:15pm: Visit to Canterbury Cathedral Archives
3:30-5pm: Session 6 (at Canterbury Cathedral; Chair: Julian Luxford)
Mary Franklin-Brown (Christ’s, Cambridge), ‘Of oak and alabaster: the humanist iconography of Henry IV’
Anne Curry (Southampton), ‘The Latin lives of Henry V: the final frontier?’
5pm: Walking Tour of Canterbury
6pm: Drinks Reception, Eastbridge
7:30pm: Conference Dinner
Saturday 5th September
9-10:30am: Session 7 (Chair: Anne Curry)
Chloe McKenzie (North Eastern University London), ‘Isabella and Catherine de Valois: sisters, queens and ladies of the Garter’
David Potter (Kent), ‘Louise de Savoie, 1476-1531: female power and the written word’
10:30-11am: Coffee break
11am-12:30pm: Session 8 (Chair: Sheila Sweetinburgh)
James Ross (Winchester), ‘Richard, duke of York, and the politics of 1450: further evidence’
Mark Horowitz, ‘The uprising that wasn’t: Henry VII’s royal policy and the development of the modern English state’
12:45-1:30pm: Session 9 (Chair: David Rundle)
Julian Luxford (St Andrews), ‘Lollardy and English art in the long fifteenth century’
2:30pm-5pm: Optional excursion to Sandwich