Newsletter

  • Apply: Folger Institute Long-Term Fellowships

    Each year the Folger Institute awards research fellowships to create a high-powered, multidisciplinary community of inquiry. This community of researchers may come from different fields, and their projects may find different kinds of expression. But our researchers share cognate interests in the history and literature, art and performance, philosophy, religion, and politics of the early modern world. 

    The Folger Institute offers three long-term fellowship tracks: year-long (9 month) Scholarly fellowships, year-long (9 month) Public Humanities fellowship, and semester-long (5 month) Scholarly fellowships. Year-long fellows will receive an award of $70,000, and semester-long fellows will receive an award of $35,000.

    Long-term Scholarly fellowships are designed to support scholarly research projects that would benefit from significant primary research onsite at the Folger. Long-term Public Humanities fellowships are designed to support significant, full-time research and public humanities project implementation for Folger audiences.

    For all long-term fellowships, applications that propose productive use of the Folger’s Collections, in both traditional and non-traditional ways, are more likely to receive fellowship awards. Extensive experience in archives and special collections, however, is not a requirement.

    Please note that for the 2027-28 fellowship year, all long-term fellows will have the option to take a portion of their fellowship virtually. Year-long fellows may take up to three months virtually, and semester-long fellows may take up to one month virtually. This virtual time may be taken at any point in the fellowships. Applicants may propose any research schedule that best fits their project’s needs.

    The deadline for all Long-Term fellowship applications is December 15, 2026. Find out more here: https://www.folger.edu/research/the-folger-institute/fellowships/apply-for-a-fellowship/ Please join us for an info session on either October 9th and December 1st.

  • EOI: ANZAMEMS PG/ECR Reading Group Convenors

    The ANZAMEMS PG/ECR Reading Group is seeking new convenors! It is a low-effort role that involves planning the schedule each semester, posting reminders before each session, and joining the sessions to direct the discussion. We usually have two people sharing this role.

    Please email both Emily Chambers and Elizabeth Newton-Jackon (emily.chambers@murdoch.edu.au and enew505@aucklanduni.ac.nz) if you are interested in taking on this role from October.

  • Apply: S. Ernest Sprott Fellowship

    The S. Ernest Sprott Fellowship is available to Australian researchers and writers intending to study outside of Australia, leading to publishing a book relating to dramatic or non-dramatic English literature of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries.

    Up to $50,000 is available for each fellowship and up to two awards may be offered. Award payments will be made in instalments, as per reporting requirements.

    To be eligible for this fellowship, you must:

    • be undertaking a program of independent scholarly study outside Australia;
    • as a result of the above study, intend to publish a book relating to dramatic or non-dramatic English literature of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries;
    • be an Australian citizen;
    • be less than 45 years old, at the time of the award;
    • have an outstanding record of high academic achievement; and,
    • have completed formal study before the proposed travel dates.

    The fellowship will be awarded to the applicants who make the most compelling case for support by demonstrating:

    • the relevance of the comprehensive program of independent scholarly study outside Australia to a book relating to dramatic or non-dramatic English literature of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries;
    • the quality and feasibility of the proposed program of independent scholarly study outside Australia;
    • academic merit;
    • the skills, experience and aptitude required to carry out the proposed project as evidenced by the application.

    Applications close 5 October 2026. For more information, see https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/scholarships/prizes-and-scholarships/s-ernest-sprott-fellowship

  • Attend: “European Songs About the Sack of Rome (1527),” with Una McIlvenna (ANU), October 9, Friday.

    On Friday, 9th October, Monash Medieval and Renaissance Studies will be hosting a convivium with Associate Professor Una McIlvenna.

    On 6 May 1527, the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V mutinied due to lack of pay and sacked the papal city of Rome. Mostly German and Spanish, the troops were led by the French turncoat Charles III, duc de Bourbon, who was immediately fatally injured as he scaled the city walls. Without a leader, the largely mercenary troops began looting, killing, and holding citizens for ransom. The pope, Clement VII, was forced to flee to the Castel Sant’Angelo until he had paid a ransom. 2027 will mark the 500th anniversary of the Sack, widely thought to have been the end of the Italian High Renaissance. This paper will look at contemporary songs about the Sack of Rome in multiple European languages, asking how this cataclysmic event was reported on and perceived in different places. Given the international origins of the troops, how did perspectives on the event differ from one language tradition to another? How did songs about the Sack of Rome differ from other songs about military conquests? How do we need to approach these multimedia artifacts to appreciate their true significance for the people who sang and heard them?

    Una McIlvenna is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow 2023-2027 and Associate Professor in English at the Australian National University. Her research interests lie in the fields of early modern cultural and literary history. Her most recent book, Singing the News of Death: Execution Ballads in Europe 1500-1900, won the 2023 Katharine Briggs Award from the Folklore Society. She has published on execution ballads and the tradition of singing the news in Past & Present, Media History, Renaissance Studies, and the Huntington Library Quarterly.

    The convivium will include reception with nibbles and drinks from 4pm – 4.30pm, with the presentation starting going from 4.30pm – 6pm with a response by Yasmin Haskell, reflections and Q&A. It will be held in S701, Menzies, Monash Clayton Campus.

    There is also the option to attend the presentation remotely. For more information, please email cmrs-postgraduatecommittee@monash.edu

  • Hakluyt Society Essay Prize 2027

    The Hakluyt Society awards annual essay prizes of £1500 to the winning essay, with a second
    prize of £500 to the runner-up (on occasions one or both prizes maybe shared between
    entries). The prize or prizes for 2027 will be presented, if possible, at the Hakluyt Society’s
    Annual General Meeting in London in June 2027. Winners will also receive a certificate
    commemorating their award and a one-year membership of the Hakluyt Society and a copy of
    their choice of volume from the Society’s publications. The Society hopes that once the
    judging of the 2027 essay prize is completed that the winning essays will be published, either
    in the Society’s online journal or in a recognised academic journal. Prize winners agree to acknowledge the receipt of their award in any future publication of the
    prize essays. In addition, they will be expected to contribute to the Society’s public
    dissemination as appropriate. This may include, but is not limited to, presenting a paper at a
    Hakluyt Society symposium (in which case travel expenses within the UK will be
    reimbursed) and contributing to the Hakluyt Society blog.

    The competition is open to any registered graduate student at a higher education institution (a
    university or equivalent) or to anyone who has been awarded a graduate degree in the past
    three years. For an essay to be considered for the prize, confirmation and evidence of the
    student status of author (as defined above) must be sent at the same time as the essay is
    submitted. Allowance can be made for any period of career break, e.g., for family care, health
    reasons or reasons consequent upon the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Essays should be submitted as email attachments in Word.doc format to The Administrator at
    office@hakluyt.com by 1 March 2027. The subject line of the email should include the
    words ‘HAKLUYT SOCIETY ESSAY PRIZE’ and the author’s name. By submitting an
    essay, an entrant certifies that it is the entrant’s own original work. Please refer to https://www.hakluyt.com/hakluyt-society-essay-prize/ for more details.

  • Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) : Moving History: Critical Thinking, ECR Workshop

    Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford): Moving History: Critical Thinking, ECR workshop

    Date: Tuesday 29 September 2026

    Time: 3:00pm – 5:00pm AEST

    Venue: Upper East Room, University House, The University of Melbourne

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/moving-history-workshop-vic

    This free in-person workshop, led by Professor Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford), will explore creative approaches to historical practice. Together, we will work with primary sources, secondary materials and your own research to help you develop your critical and creative thinking through a combination of focused textual analytical tasks alongside short, physical and innovative thought exercises – all designed to stimulate original and incisive analysis!

    By the end of the course, we will have:

    • thought critically and creatively about historical arguments made by scholars
    • explored the differences and connections between evidence and argument
    • considered how we can write with clarity and precision
    • analysed the strengths and weaknesses of AI summaries of articles
    • used movement as a stimulus for creative and critical thinking

    This is an experimental and innovative in-person workshop open to anyone with an interest in the relationship between exercise and creativity.

    The course has been designed for HDR History students.

  • AAH & Holberg Prize Lecture Series: 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate, Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA

    Join the Australian Academy of the Humanities, in partnership with the Holberg Prize, for a series of free, public lectures across Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, delivered by 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate, Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA.

    Lyndal Roper is Emeritus Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. She was the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in History, and the first Australian. Roper’s most recent publication, Summer of Fire and Blood: A History of the German Peasants’ War (1524-6) details the greatest uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution (Winner, Cundill Prize 2025). She has written a biography of the reformer Martin Luther and has published on witchcraft and on gender and the German Reformation. She has lived and worked in Germany (where she held a Humboldt Fellowship and was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg). She was a graduate of the University of Melbourne and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the University of Basel. She is the Holberg Laureate 2026.

    ‘Dr Liar’ meets ‘The Devil Himself’: Martin Luther and Thomas Müntzer

    Date: 23 September 2026

    Time: 5.30 – 8.00pm AEST

    Venue: Forgan Smith Building, Room 1-E109, The University of Queensland

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/aah-holberg-uq-lecture-2026

    Join Lyndal as she explores Luther and Müntzer’s connection to the Peasants’ War and to one another; and how the afterlife of their enmity has shaped modern Germany.

    History and Commemoration: Cycling the German Peasants’ War of 1525

    Date: 25 September 2026

    Time: 12.30 – 2.30pm AEST

    Venue: The Law Foyer, Law School Building, The University of Sydney

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/aah-holberg-unisyd-lecture-2026

    Join Lyndal as she reflects on the importance of experiencing history for her research and writing of Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War, Winner of the 2025 Cundill History Prize.

    Brotherhood: Gender and the German Peasants’ War
    1524-26

    Date: 30 September 2026

    Time: 5.30 – 7.30pm AEST

    Venue: Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre, Elisabeth Murdoch Building, The University of Melbourne

    Register: https://events.humanitix.com/2026-academy-lecture

    Join Lyndal as she delivers the 2026 Annual Academy Lecture, on how masculinity and brotherhood underpinned the German Peasants’ War; and how the roles and voices of women have been remembered.

  • Call for EOI: Premodern Relationalities Roundtable

    Transforming Premodern Pasts through Indigenous Knowledges

    Tuesday 22 September, 2026, Macquarie University, Sydney

    Expressions of Interest are invited from researchers of the premodern world, from HDR to senior scholars, who would like to participate in a roundtable on Premodern Relationalities to be held 9.30-5.00pm Tuesday 22 September 2026, at Macquarie University, in the Wingaru Learning Space, Macquarie University. This is a discussion-based event. Participants will not offer presentations, but will complete pre-circulated readings in preparation for the sessions to take place on the day, which will involve group discussion.

    ‘Indigenous relationality’ is an ethical-epistemological framework that looks beyond geopolitical maps to recognise the interconnectedness of Indigenous worldviews, identities, values and peoples. Research on relationalities is future-oriented, arguing for how Indigenous ways of balance, care, and community support thrivance in the wake of colonialism. Recently, Indigenous and ally scholars in early historical disciplines such as medieval studies have started looking to relationalities as a framework for tracing intercultural connections across the medieval world and understanding Indigenous presence in premodernity.

    The roundtable will enable an innovative convergence of historical and futurist research. Of particular interest are:

    • how an Indigenous relationalities lens can transform our idea of the global past
    • how historical research can offer powerful case studies of Indigenous relationalities across time and space.

    This event seeks to create a dialogue between Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers. It will be led by visiting scholars Dr Tarren Andrews (Yale) and Dr Madi Williams (Canterbury), in conjunction with Prof Louise D’Arcens (Macquarie).

    There are limited places available. Interested researchers are asked to contact Louise D’Arcens (louise.darcens@mq.edu.au) by Friday 11 September with preferred contact details for the pre-readings, plus a paragraph outlining their research interests and reasons for wishing to participate in the roundtable.   

    This event is generously supported by the Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, and is a complementary event to the Indigenous Relationalities Symposium, which will be held on 23-24 September in the Centre for Global Indigenous Futures (CGIF), Macquarie University.  

    Full information including speaker biographies is available in the flyer below:

    Premodern Relationalities Roundtable SeptemberDownload

  • Attend: Limina Schism Conference, 16th October, The University of Western Australia

    Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies invites you to its annual conference, Schism – an interdisciplinary humanities conference exploring dualities and contradictions, ruptures and divisions, departures, tensions, and frayed edges.

    In our contemporary world, we face the continuing ruptures of things we once thought whole and solid. From institutions and ideologies to our understanding of the past and of ourselves, schism could be said to be a defining feature of our experience today.

    Limina invites attendees to engage with fresh perspectives, connect ideas across disciplines, and consider why the study of the humanities matters today. Join us for a day of thought-provoking conversation and discovery.

    The conference will run on Friday, 16th October from 9am – 5pm and will be held in Margaret Fairweather Education Space (103.G01), Hackett Hall, The University of Western Australia. Tickets include a keynote address by Dr Shino Konishi, a series of diverse panels, and end-of-day workshop on zine making led by Sunday Sapphics.

    Tickets available at: https://events.humanitix.com/limina-schism-conference

  • Lecture: Kinship Colonialism: Female Authority in an Irish-Caribbean Dynasty with Professor Christine Walker (Hong King University),

    11am, Monday 28 September 2026
    ACU Melbourne

    Drawing on research from her new book project, “Imperial Kin,” this talk highlights the instrumental roles played by elite Irish families in expanding English and French interests in the Americas. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Cromwellian Conquest of Ireland divested local rulers of their property and status and forced them into exile. Certain Irish noble families migrated to English and French settlements in the Caribbean, where their early investments in racialized plantation slavery quickly rebuilt lost fortunes. At the same time, these groups purposefully manipulated heredity, turning the riches generated by enslaved laborers into dynastic power. Successive generations of kin intermarried, and first-cousin matches were common.

    Women played central roles in executing this novel yet potent blend of colonialism and consanguinity. Female relatives forged essential marriage alliances, commanded thousands of enslaved people, acted as patrons, and birthed numerous children. They established an intimate form of rule that relied on the destruction of Indigenous communities and the exploitation of enslaved people. Within decades, groups who had lost everything in Ireland ruled some of the most lucrative colonies in the Americas

    Register to join in person or online: https://forms.gle/AzRsDaE78Due33RY7

  • CFP: Singing History: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Ballads and the Past, 11-12 November, 2027 at the National Library of Australia, Canberra

    For centuries, the news was sung. As soon as a newsworthy event occurred, ballads were composed, set to familiar tunes, and passed on orally. Printed ballads were sold on busy streets and marketplaces by street singers, who would sing the song as a way of advertising their wares. Ballads combined news, entertainment, and moral lessons in a format designed for maximum dissemination, whatever the literacy rate. They are therefore excellent sources for examining how ordinary people – rather than just educated elites – were encouraged to understand the society in which they lived. Songs told the news of disasters, politics, crime and punishment, military conflicts, and sports. They also sang about workers and labour protests, emigration and new lands, and they told stories of heartbreak, loss, and victory. Ballads were often deliberately sensationalist, consciously seeking to manipulate our emotions.

    This conference will explore not only this long-standing European tradition of mass media, but also trace its evolution – through transportation ballads and songs about convict shipwrecks – to 19th-century Australia, a land already rich with Indigenous musical culture. Here, topical songs were often printed in newspapers, and editors commissioned ballads as a way to invent a romanticised image of the fledgling colony. How did this European practice engage – or not – with Australian Indigenous culture, the longest sustained traditions of song in the world?

    We invite talks and performances from a range of disciplines that will highlight the multi-media aspects of song and balladry in all its forms, including lyric, music, image, material form, performance, and practice in Europe, Australia, and beyond.

    We are also interested in how the digital humanities have transformed our understanding of historical song. How can we use technologies and tools of the 21st century to bring songs from the past to a modern audience? How can existing databases, such as those documenting Australia’s convict history, be linked to those cataloguing song, such as convict ballads? Trove has become an indispensable tool for contextualising the past, but how can we use it to connect and expand these linkages historically, contextually, and digitally?

    This 2-day gathering at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, will bring together historians, literary scholars, singers, musicians, musicologists, art historians, folklorists and folk song practitioners, scholars in digital humanities, archivists, librarians, and anyone interested in topics such as, but not limited to:

    • ballads, songs, and balladry
    • how popular song figures in musicology
    • folklore and folk song studies
    • singers, songwriters, and the songwriting process
    • the history of news, news media, and ‘fake news’
    • political history, military history, colonial history
    • convict history, convict ballads
    • Australian history, Indigenous history, diasporic histories (including the many emigrant groups to Australia)
    • music and nation-building, national and sporting anthems
    • protest songs
    • maritime and shipwreck history, sea shanties
    • history of sports and sports songs
    • digital history, digital humanities, digital cultural heritage
    • archives, Trove, libraries (esp. digitised collections)
    • print media, print culture
    • visual material culture, broadsides

    Keynote speakers include:
    Professor Siv Gøril Brandtzæg (Norwegian University of Science and Technology), expert in Comparative Literature, broadside ballads and digital humanities.

    Dr Angela McShane (Warwick University), social and cultural historian of balladry in Britain.

    The conference will also launch the database Singing the News, hosted by the Centre for Early Modern Studies (CEMS) at the
    Australian National University.

    Submission Details:
    Given the many disciplines that study song, we invite a range of conference formats: traditional papers and panels, but also lightning talks, workshops (such as singing, music or dance lessons), and performances – feel free to get in touch to discuss ideas you might have about presentation formats.

    Please submit abstracts of c.250 words, plus a short bio (100 words) by 30 March 2027 to SingingHistory2027@gmail.com with the subject line “Singing History 2027 Proposal”. Notifications of acceptance will be provided by the end of May. If you need earlier confirmation for travel or funding purposes, write to SingingHistory2027@gmail.com.

  • CFP: Unsettling Shakespeare, 2027 ANZSA Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, 10–12 February 2027.

    The Australian and New Zealand Shakespeare Association invites you to explore the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries across places, times, languages, and cultures.

    Taking place in Te Whanganui-a-Tara | Wellington at Te Herenga Waka | ‘the mooring place of canoes’, the conference takes its lead from this sense of travel, arrival, and the sharing of knowledge, and looks to foster diverse, detailed, and multi-perspectival approaches to Shakespeare from across the world.

    We encourage approaches that foreground questions of place, identity and belonging; settler colonial culture and Indigeneity; travel, mobility, and cross-cultural encounter; and reception, transmission, adaptation, and translation.

    We also invite you to unsettle Shakespeare in other ways—and we welcome any submissions that contribute new approaches to Shakespeare in his worlds and in ours.

    Our call for papers is now open!

    We are delighted to announce two of our keynote speakers – with more to come!

Editors

This newsletter is edited by ANZAMEMS Communications Officer Dr Elizabeth Burrell. Please contact the Editor with any notices to be posted in the Newsletter. ANZAMEMS reserves the right to edit the content of all notices. Unless noted, ANZAMEMS does not endorse any event, product or service advertised in this newsletter.

Submissions

We regularly post call for papers, conference announcements, job postings, prize announcements, workshops, and other listings that may be of interest to our members. All postings to the newsletter also are published on our Twitter page. Please email submissions as a word document or in plain text to the Editor.

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