Helen J. Nicholson's Blog, page 13

I’ll be at the Hay Festival

This year, for the very first time, I’ll be attending the Hay Festival. I’ll be talking about the Hospitallers and their churches in the Gower Peninsula, in a session entitled: ‘A Place in Welsh History’. There are eight of us speaking in the session: those of us arguing for our special place get 4 minutes each! The session is event 54 at 4pm on Saturday in the Google big tent. We each get paid in wine, but as it’s a long drive home (some cad closed the railway), we won’t be drinking it straight after the show.

Rhossili church in the Gower: a long way from Jerusalem

We’ve been to the ‘zoo

After a long and gruelling term and catching an evil bug so that I lost my voice, the end of term came at last. Postgraduate students and I crossed the Atlantic ocean to Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies (known as the ‘zoo). Theresa Vann, Joseph S. Micallef Curator of Malta Study Center at Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, St John’s University, Collegeville MI, had organised sessions at the ‘zoo to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the Hospitallers’ receiving papal recognition as a religious order.  Six of us presented papers on the Hospitallers’ regulations and interpretation of their statutes; other colleagues from Cardiff University also gave papers in other sessions. The photo shows the participants in Theresa’s sessions at the ‘zoo, and a fellow Cardiff participant from another session.

Group photo from Theresa Vann’s ‘Hospitaller 900th anniversary’ sessions