With the appointment of Lindy Grant to the chair of Medieval History at the University of Reading many will wish to congratulate her but will be acutely aware of the many gaps that her elevation will cause. This is particularly true for all those who have participated in the Medieval Work-in-Progress Seminar that has flourished under Lindy’s stewardship for over 20 years. Lindy has drawn in talent from around the world; no innocent enquiry about medieval material in the Conway has escaped her eye. Many correspondents have subsequently found themselves addressing the seminar. Along with being a forum for fascinating papers, the seminar has been a meeting-place for medievalists from home and abroad, as a rite depassage for doctoral students under Lindy’s kind but exacting watch, and has been the starting-point for many valuable contacts and friendships.

Continuity: Lindy returns to give a paper on her own work-in-progress on Blanche of Castile on Thursday 22 June.
Change:Our new e-mail address will be medievalseminar@courtauld.ac.uk. John Lowden will oversee the running of the seminar, and Joanna Cannon, Paul Crossley and Antony Eastmond will chair papers as appropriate.

The title of the 11th annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium (4 February 2006) was Peregrinations: Art and Architecture in the Middle Ages. Speakers came from: the Courtauld (five); Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore; the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven; Trinity College, Dublin (two); Wolfson College, Oxford. Congratulations are due to Beatrice Keefe and her team for a thoroughly professional and stimulating event. Click here for programme details.

Continuity: The annual 12th Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium is scheduled for Saturday 3 February 2007.

Change: The organisers, who are already at work, are looking for new speakers from British and overseas institutions.

The 6th annual lecture sponsored by the International Center for Medieval Art, New York, was held on 9 March. The series promotes transatlantic contacts among medievalists from the university and museum worlds. Professor Annemarie Weyl Carr (Southern Methodist University) delivered a lecture entitled Cyprus and Jerusalem’s Long Shadow: Building Holy Sepulchres in the Holy Isle. The reception following the lecture was sponsored by the Courtauld Research Forum. Professor Carr’s visit was appreciated not only for her excellent lecture but also for her generosity with her time in talking to many students and colleagues during the three days that she spent in London. An abstract will shortly be posted on the Courtauld web site. For the ICMA see www.medievalart.org.

Change ensures continuity: We are delighted to acknowledge a new benefaction that has secured the continuation of the series. Dr. William M. Voelkle, Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, is generously supporting the transatlantic travel and the accommodation of the speaker. He has also proposed a welcome change: the series is now named ‘ICMA at the Courtauld’.

Dr Joanna Cannon