Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association
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jaema.bsky.social
Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association
@jaema.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1.4K following 180 posts
JAEMA is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal specialising in the history of the early medieval period - from late antiquity to the early eleventh century.

https://aema.org.au/journal/
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jaema.bsky.social
Lookin good!
Our logo, featuring the words "Australian Early Medieval Association" around a green medieval bird
November 15, 2025 at 6:50 AM
jaema.bsky.social
MFW I'm being arrested for enjoying a succulent Chinese meal and the copper knows his judo well
Detail of a Woodwose, or wild man, from the Luttrell Psalter (c. 1330)
November 13, 2025 at 11:50 PM
jaema.bsky.social
Group expedition today to see the Galloway Hoard! Absolutely glorious.
Brooch from the Galloway Hoard, featuring stylised horses(?) and impressive filigree work
October 3, 2025 at 1:05 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Amazing! All about that early medieval ass:
Manuscript detail depicting a donkey playing a harp, from Getty MS44
October 1, 2025 at 3:13 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Always wanted my name on a gig poster (even if only in the tiny print)

Registration for AEMA 2025 is now open, with online registration starting from just $10 AUD (that's just £4.88, €5.59, or $6.54 US):

aema.org.au/conference-r...
A gig-style poster for AEMA 2025. It shows a night sky tinted green, with a silhouette of a ruined castle and evergreen forest. The text reads: AEMA 2025 Tempestuous Times ACU Melbourne Oct 2–4 Featuring a keynote from Prof. Michael Champion (ACU) And a performance of Beowulf By Dr Felix Nobis (Monash) And the names of everyone speaking at the conference in the small print.
September 28, 2025 at 5:15 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Registration for our conference is open!

We offer both in-person and online registration (at very reasonable rates).

Here's the link to register: aema.org.au/conference-r...

And here's the link for the abstracts of this year's papers: aema.org.au/conference-a...
A quote from Burchard of Worms' Corrector, over a picture of dark storm clouds. The quote reads 'Hast thou ever believed...in this perfidy, that enchanters...can let loose tempests...through incantation of demons?'
September 26, 2025 at 11:54 AM
jaema.bsky.social
One week until the Australian Early Medieval Association's twenty-fifth annual conference!

This year we're meeting around the theme of "Tempestuous Times"!
Our logo, superimposed over the full moon, with sunset-lit cumulus clouds below. The words Tempestuous Times 2025 are in between.
September 25, 2025 at 8:15 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Finally, Christopher White (hey, that's me!) discusses some eleventh century ghost stories from Thietmar of Merseburg's Chronicon, in "The ghosts of our ancestors: Reading religious anxieties in the ghost stories of Thietmar of Merseburg":

search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/...
This photograph shows the crypt of the cathedral of Merseburg, constructed during Thietmar's reign, and the only remaining part of the cathedral from the eleventh century.
September 12, 2025 at 5:41 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The fourth article here is actually the third in the journal (slight mix up on my part!) in "Gildas and the 'Age of Arthur'", Stephen Joyce writes about the role of King Arthur in Gildas's views of kingship and England:

search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/...
A photograph of a statue of Gildas (c. 450/500 – c. 570), in Morbihan, France. The statue is tucked into a cleft in a rocky wall, with long grass seeming to almost engulf the saint.
September 12, 2025 at 5:37 AM
jaema.bsky.social
In the third article, "Eleventh-century climate change in the context of eschatological themes", Christine Grundy discusses medieval climate change and the end of the world:

search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/...
An image from the fourteenth century Cloisters Apocalypse, showing the Antichrist attacking Jerusalem.
September 12, 2025 at 5:31 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The second paper, by Geoffrey D. Dunn, discusses "The natural and the supernatural in book 1 of Paul the Deacon's 'Historia langobardorum' and their impact upon Lombard identity formation":

search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/...
This is a manuscript image of Paul the Deacon, a detail of fol. 34r of Laurentian Plut. 65.35. It shows Paul in a white robe, holding a copy of his writings.
September 12, 2025 at 5:25 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The first paper in the most recent volume of our Journal is "The 'castrum superius' in Salzburg and the Roman roots of early medieval geography", by Eva Weiler, examining the foundation of the nunnery of St Erintrudis in 700CE:

search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/...
A photograph of the statue of St Erintrudis at the Nonnberg in Salzburg. Depicting a middle aged woman, Erintrudis holds a model of the nunnery in her left hand and holds a crozier in her right. She is dressed in the black robes of her order, with a golden halo about her head.
September 12, 2025 at 5:20 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The latest issue of The Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association has just been released!

search.informit.org/toc/jaema/20/2
An image of our logo, on a green background, with the word "Today" written beneath it.
September 10, 2025 at 12:55 AM
jaema.bsky.social
While the Call for Papers for our annual conference may be closed, we are still open to submissions for our Journal!

JAEMA publishes scholarly articles on the Late Antique and Early Medieval world, see our website for details: aema.org.au/journal/
This call for submissions states that the Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association seeks submissions of scholarly articles on the early medieval period and late antiquity, from anywhere around the globe, between the fall of the Roman Empire and the end of the eleventh century. The Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association publishes articles that appeal to those interested in our period, whether these are focused on the historical, political, social, literary, cultural, religious, ethnic, geographic, and interpretive crossovers between.
August 23, 2025 at 10:57 PM
jaema.bsky.social
We had a huge response to our Call for Papers on the theme of "Tempestuous Times"!

Thank you to everyone who has submitted, we are going through the emails and responding to everyone - if you haven't heard back from us by the end of this coming week, let us know!
The full moon (with our logo inside) looms over clouds stained red, with our conference theme (Tempestuous Times) for this year
August 10, 2025 at 8:26 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Then there's "Rapture", which I've heard described as "knights vs zombies", although the poster features a monk.

"Rapture" is set in 1348, and takes place in a remote (fictional) abbey in Yorkshire. Seems to be an alternate history where Black Death makes people into revenants.
The poster for Rapture is mostly black, with a monk in off-white robes centred. He has a conical hood concealing his face, and holds a small jar - possibly a reliquary.
July 26, 2025 at 8:48 PM
jaema.bsky.social
In addition to King and Conqueror, the next two years or so seem to be stacked with medieval film or telly.

Firstly, I recently saw @28yearslater.bsky.social - an intensely medieval film. I think I'm going to shoot both Danny Boyle and Alex Garland emails to see if it was all deliberate.
A still from the film 28 Years Later, showing Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Alfie Williams carefully climbing a green, grassy hill. They are carrying bows, with arrows nocked.
July 26, 2025 at 8:48 PM
jaema.bsky.social
Referencing the howdahs, but somewhat lost in translation/transmission!

There are some gorgeous South and South-East Asian illustrations of them in action, like this one from the Bayon-temple at Angkor Wat:
12/13th century carved stone relief of a war elephant in action against the Cham: S section, E gallery. It shows a large figure mounted atop an elephant "saddle" or howdah, armed for battle. He is surrounded by warriors on foot, the background depicting stylised jungle plants.
July 25, 2025 at 11:40 PM
jaema.bsky.social
The deadline for abstract submission for our annual conference has been extended by two weeks, out to August 1!

We're looking for papers dealing with "Tempestuous Times", whether real, imagined, or allegorical - see our CfP for details here: aema.org.au/2025-confere...
An image of the mountains of Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, with the Chinese proverb "The wind sweeping through the tower heralds a storm rising in the mountains"
July 19, 2025 at 11:59 PM
jaema.bsky.social
The excellent @anzamems.bsky.social "Documenting Medieval and Early Modern Women: Accessing and Analysing Historical Sources" two days workshop has just wrapped up.

Portrait of the Social Media guy attached:
A cartoon of a man, whose shirt is emblazoned with the word "Sickos", and is saying "Yes...ha ha ha...YES!", with the legend "Me when the conference got a paper on early medieval hagiography"
July 18, 2025 at 4:20 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The official call for papers for our 20th annual conference is here!

This year's Australian Early Medieval Association conference is on the theme of Tempestuous Times!

Get those proposals ready!
AEMA20 – Call for Papers Tempestuous Times Crisis, Change, and Allegory in the Early Medieval and Medieval World 2–4 October 2025, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus and Online Tempests – violent, disruptive, elemental – have long served as metaphors for crisis and transformation. From divine wrath and natural catastrophe to invasion, exile, and eschatological dread, medieval sources often cast upheaval in stormy terms. This conference aims to explore the tempest as historiographical lens, symbolic structure, and cultural diagnosis. We seek to examine how crises, whether political, environmental, social, or spiritual, were imagined, recorded, and interpreted in the medieval world. As such, we invite proposals that interrogate how such narratives were constructed, how they functioned, and how metaphor of tempest might shape our understanding of medieval change, continuity, and crisis. We welcome papers that engage with the concept of the tempest in a broad sense, including (but not limited to): • Political or dynastic collapse, or social unrest. • Storms as allegory in sermons, chronicles, and visionary texts. • The sea as space of danger, displacement, or testing. • Iconographies of turbulence in medieval art and manuscript culture. • Theological or philosophical responses to chaos and disorder. • Historiographical models of crisis and recovery. • Environmental disaster and its cultural representations. • Affective histories of fear, awe, or dislocation. Papers may approach these topics from a range of disciplinary angles, including history, theology, art history, literary studies, environmental humanities, manuscript studies, and archaeology. We also encourage historiographical reflections on how tempestuous frameworks shape our interpretation of medieval pasts. In keeping with the inclusive spirit of AEMA’s annual international conferences, submissions may be thematically tempestuous – or not. There are n… A quote from Burchard of Worms, about demonic tempests: "hast thou ever believed...in this perfidy, that enchanters...can let loose tempests...through the incantation of demons?" The background is of dark black storm clouds
June 22, 2025 at 2:41 AM
jaema.bsky.social
Announcing the theme of the twentieth annual conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association - Tempestuous Times!
May 6, 2025 at 12:03 AM
jaema.bsky.social
The image shows the popular meme format "Knows what sex is/has f*cked", edited to show Augustine of Hippo (Knows what sex is, has f*cked) and Thomas Aquinas (knows what sex is, has never even considered it)
May 2, 2025 at 10:34 PM
jaema.bsky.social
Today's the day! The submissions window for the first issue of this year's Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association closes today.

If you're anything like me, my that means you're frantically checking footnotes...😅😅😅
Our logo, on an image of green paint that goes from a dark, almost black green to a much lighter shade from left to right. The word "Today" is prominently featured.
April 30, 2025 at 1:48 AM
jaema.bsky.social
A reminder to all our members - our Annual General Meeting is tonight, from 6pm!
Our logo sits atop a painted green background, with the text "AGM tonight at 6pm EST".
April 28, 2025 at 4:49 AM