The Wiles Lectures 2017 will be delivered by Professor Miri Rubin Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History, School of History, Queen Mary University of London 17-20 May 2017

Strangers into Neighbours: Dealing with Diversity in Medieval European Cities

In the 2017 Wiles lectures, Professor Miri Rubin will explore the challenges and opportunities, responses and experiences associated with the settlement of incomers in urban communities. She will do so by examining the ideas and actions medieval towns and cities took as they settled newcomers. Cities aimed to attract strangers - labourers, artisans and experts, men and women -  but also to keep their communities safe, healthy and thriving. The lectures cover many regions, from the British Isles to Central Europe, and communities ranging from those of capital cities to inhabitants of market towns. Miri Rubin will consider the responses and solutions offered by townspeople to newcomers in the period of greatest growth and promise, around 1100, and show how the Black Death (1347-50) and the recurrent mortalities that followed, affected the willingness of townspeople to make strangers into neighbours. The relevance of past experience of this question to the present has never been more pressing.

Opening Tea Party	Wednesday 17 May, 4pm	Graduate School, Social Space
Lecture 1 - Thinking the City, Thinking the Stranger See video	Wednesday 17 May, 5pm	Emeleus Lecture Theatre (Lanyon Building)
Lecture 2 - Cities of Strangers: The Rules for Reception and Control See video	Thursday 18 May, 5pm	Emeleus Lecture Theatre (Lanyon Building)
Lecture 3 - Cities of Women: Diversity from Within See video	Friday 19 May, 5pm	Emeleus Lecture Theatre (Lanyon Building)
Lecture 4 - Cities of Gods: Strangest Strangers See video	Saturday 20 May, 11am	Emeleus Lecture Theatre (Lanyon Building)	13C Statutes of the city of Agen, swearing in a new citizen Agen, Bibliothèque municipale Ms 42, , fol. 53v

These are public lectures, open to all with an interest in the subject.

For more information on the Wiles Lectures, contact Susan Templeton (s.templeton@qub.ac.uk)

Professor Rubin will also lead a Postgraduate Workshop on using Medieval Sources, on Thursday 18 May, 10am-12pm in The Graduate School. Contact James Davis (james.davis@qub.ac.uk) for details.

 

The lectures were published as Miri Rubin, Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2020).