About Borderlines

Borderlines provides an ideal occasion for postgraduate medievalists to present early reports on their research in a relaxed, friendly and supportive atmosphere: indeed, one of the conference’s distinctive features is the fact of being organized for and by postgraduate students.

A loose postgraduate community in the north and south of Ireland and the UK now exists under the auspices of the Borderlines group. The group is dedicated to promoting Medieval Studies as an area of thriving and exciting scholarship.

Origins

The concept of the ‘Borderlines’ conferences is to provide a forum for postgraduate medievalists to present early reports on their research in an atmosphere that is relaxed, friendly and supportive. Organised for and by postgraduates. A loose postgraduate community in the north and south of Ireland and the U.K. now exists under the auspices of the ‘Borderlines’ Group. The group is dedicataed to promoting medieval studies as an area of thriving and exciting scholarship.

History and Evolution

The ‘Borderlines’ series of conferences was established in 1996 by Stephen Kelly and Jason O’Rourke, then PhD candidates at Queen’s University of Belfast. The original aim was to consolidate the culture of postgraduate medieval studies in Ireland and the U.K, through the crossing of institutional, geographical, and disciplinary borders.

Conferences have been held on a rotational basis at Queen’s University of Belfast, University College Cork, University College Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin. Each year the conferences have had a strong representative sample of papers from all of these universities, from a number of English universities, and have hosted papers from as far away as Missouri, New York, Belgium and Bulgaria.

1997 Borderlines in Medieval Culture
QUB (Belfast)

1998 Borderlines II: Texts and Identities in Medieval Culture
QUB (Belfast)

1999 Borderlines III
UCC (Cork)

2000 Borderlines IV: Visions of the Medieval World
UCD (Dublin)

2001 Borderlines V: Imagining the Pre-Modern Book
QUB (Belfast)

2002 Borderlines VI: Gossip, Grafitti, and Marginalia
TCD (Dublin)

2003 Borderlines VII
UCC (Cork)

2004 Borderlines VIII: Performance
QUB (Belfast)

2005 Borderlines IX: (Re)Interpretation
UCD (Dublin)

2006 Borderlines X: Between the Lines
NUIG (Galway)

2007 Borderlines XI: Minds and Mentalities
QUB (Belfast)

2008 Borderlines XII: Past Structures, Present Constructs
UCC (Cork)

2009 Borderlines XIII: Building Breaches: the negotiation of boundary in premodern culture
UCD/TCD (Dublin)