09/10/2026
Join us at 11:30am on 28 October for a Roundtable Discussion on "The Relevance and Modernity of the Middle Ages"! Sign up now: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/events/lectures
Participants: Eva Haverkamp-Rott (LMU Munich), Nora Berend (Cambridge) and Emma Bermond, Timur Guselnikov, John Hinderer, Isabel Kimpel, Davide Polito, Astrid Riedler-Pohlers, Cynthia Stöckle
The humanities in general, and history in particular, are increasingly written off as useless, unlike the natural sciences, or at best seen as providing “transferable skills”. The Middle Ages at once suffer from neglect and the wrong kind of relevance.
Medieval history has an especially bad reputation as arcane and futile, and in everyday language, particularly brutal or horrific events are referred to as “typically medieval”. Despite high-quality research on diverse topics, there is a tendency to severely restrict or even omit the teaching of the Middle Ages in schools in the UK. Distorted medieval history is used for political purposes, witness, for example, the rhetoric of Putin about Ukraine, Viktor Orbán about the “millennial role” of Hungary, and countless misuses of medieval examples by neo-Nazis on social media.
Therefore, the tasks and responsibilities of medievalists for society today and in the future are many. These include debunking medieval myths that play an increasingly important role in the political arena; providing relevant material that could inform social policy; communicating the realities of the Middle Ages to the general public – including politicians – that can change their views and actions in today’s world. Thus, the study of migration; the integration or exclusion of minorities; strategies of legitimation; or ideas of gendered roles illuminate the possible dynamics in society, and point to policies that work or that predictably lead to disasters.
