Society for Medieval Archaeology Conference 2025

This year’s conference will take place at the Attenborough Arts Centre, University of Leicester on the 13th and 14th September 2025, with a keynote lecture on the evening of Friday 12th September. The theme for the conference is Fresh thinking and new ideas in the archaeology of medieval urban lives (c.600-1600).

The core themes of the conference are:

• New findings: How has research on existing archaeological archives, finds and datasets, as well as new excavations resulted in new insights into medieval urban life?

• New methods: How have new scientific and field methods opened new directions in medieval urban archaeology?

• New ideas: How do developments in archaeological theory encourage us to think about medieval towns and cities differently?

The registration fees are:

• Waged (non-member) £85

• Waged (member) £50

• Student/Unwaged (non-member) £30

• Student/Unwaged (member) £20

These are inclusive of lunch and refreshments on Saturday and Sunday (please indicate dietary requirements when you register).

It is intended that the conference will run from 9:00-17:30 on Saturday 13th September and from 9:00-16:00 on Sunday 14th September.

We are pleased to announce 2 keynote speakers:

Stephanie Wynne-Jones (University of York): Imagined Cities and Worlds Otherwise: Exploring Medieval Concepts of the Global TAKING PLACE FRIDAY EVENING

Søren Sindbæk (Aarhus University): Ten Years’ of Urban Archaeology with UrbNet: Methods and Exploring from Rome to Ribe. DIURING SATURDAY CONFERENCE

NOTE: The Friday Keynote will be taking place at Leicester Catherdral at 6pm.

The full line-up of confirmed speakers is as follows:

• Brandon Fathy: Vibrant Ipswich: New Perspectives on Urban Emergence in the Early Middle Ages

• Victoria Ziegler: A New Methodology for the Study of Urban Development in Early Medieval London AD850-1100

• Ivo Stefan: Continuities and Discontinuities of Urban Lives in “Slavic” Central Europe in the 8th - 13th Centuries

• Rachèl Spros: Urban Life in the Medieval Industrial City of Ypres

• John Lawson et al: Edinburgh’s First Burghers: New Scientific Research into Medieval Burials from St Giles Cathedral

• Blair Nolan: Regional Mobility and Survivorship in Medieval Lund, Sweden

• Rebecca Boyd: Women’s Work and Women’s Worlds in Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns

• Craig Cessford: Gender and the Archaeology of Later Medieval Cambridge

• Luisa Radohs: Individual Lifestyles in Late Medieval Cities – Archaeological Studies on the Material Dimensions of Urban Plots

• Abby Antrobus & Alejandra Gutierrez: Excavations at Redcliff Quarter, Bristol (2016–18): Living and Working in a Medieval Suburb

• Lennert Lapeere: Living in the suburbs: Reconstructing the Outskirts of Late Medieval Ypres (Flanders, Belgium)

• Alice Forward & Matthew Morris: Beyond the Wall: Life in Leicester’s Northern Suburb

• Kate Evetts: Forgotten Spaces: The Importance of Gardens in Medieval Urban Ecospheres

• Gwen Maurer: Navigating Urban Transformations: Zooarchaeological Insights into English Medieval Small Towns

• George Ellison: Rerunning the Rat Race: Assessing and Reconstructing the Settlement History of Viking-Age Towns through Micromammal Remains

• Paweł Cembrzyński: City of Stocks and Flows: Urban Ecology of a Medieval Mining Town

• Lars Morten Fuglevik: Imported Wares, Local Affairs: Pottery, Social Practices, and Urban Life in Medieval Oslo, Norway

• Wlim de Clercq et al: The Urban Outport System of Medieval Bruges

• Nigel Baker: Urban Shropshire: Growth and Contraction c.1100-1600

• Caroline Bourne: Urban Creation or Adaptation? Reassessing the Early Development of Swansea

• Paul Duffy: Dublin’s Scandinavian Churches – New Insights into the Lost Architecture of the City

• Monika Baumanova: Constructing Permanence in East African Urban Landscapes

• Arthur Redmonds: Keeping Time: Castles, Temporalities and the Urban Taskscape

• Kirstine Haase: New Life to Old Data – Exploring Urban Deposit Models Using Voxel Modelling