Due to COVID-19 we have decided to cancel our conference. We are currently considering digital opportunities for delegates to present their papers and will update you via our usual media channels.

Domneva, Mildred and Edburga. Tapestry, Minster-in-Thanet Abbey (reproduced with the kind permission of Mother Nikola)

H-WRBI Conference, 2 and 3 July 2020

Women Religious and Life Stories

Margaret Beaufort Institute, University of Cambridge

#HWRBI2020

The annual conference of the History of Women Religious of Britain and Ireland addresses the broad theme of Women Religious and Life Stories. We welcome paper proposals and panel proposals that engage with any of the following, from a range of disciplines and in any period from medieval to modern:

– Documenting and remembering the lives of women religious: records and memorialisation practices

– Writing the lives of women religious: daily activities, community life, silence & absence in narratives

– Oral histories

– Genres of life writing: life histories, (auto)biographies, and hagiographies

– Dramatic representations: women religious and fiction, film, and music

– Convent publications and convent writing: letters, accounting, necrologies

– Health and disability; body and mind

– Sibling-, widow- and motherhood in convents and monasteries

– The female life cycle, ageing and death, and their representations

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a short biography to hwrbi.conference@gmail.com before Friday 17 January 2020. Proposals from postgraduate students are particularly welcome.

Download the Call for Papers here.