2025 Conference

Gender: Charity and Care

Christ Church University, Canterbury
2nd – 5th July 2025

Call for Papers (deadline 5th April)

Celebrate GMS’s great reputation for kindness, inclusivity and friendliness at next year’s
conference with the theme of Gender: charity and care in the global Middle Ages. Be inspired by love, charity and care to consider gendered literary, political/historical, and theological texts
and responses, all forms of religious belief and none, and social/socio-economic, and
environmental explorations of the subject from caring to apocalyptic climate emergency.

Topics might include:

  • Religious devotion and almsgiving globally (including generosity in Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism (d̄āna),
  • Jewish philanthropy (tzedakah) and Islamic charitable giving (sadaqa)
  • Gift-giving and donations in texts, documents, material culture, drama and depictions (e.g., Master of Alkmaar, fl.1504, Seven Works of Mercy, oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, above), from saints to chuggers, lay piety, and non-normative medieval beliefs, including the opposites of charity and care – cupidity and neglect.
  • Charitable locations: leperhouses, hospices and hospitals, and the care of the sick and dying, childbirth and childcare.
  • Charity in urban and rural domestic settings and gardens, guilds, church ales and help ales.
  • Charity and care for bodies, feelings and nature: emotions, senses, sensualities, sex, chastity, and inclusive genderings.

Abstracts should be 200 words max (+ bio) for 20 minute papers.  Panels, poetry, performance, posters and art also welcome

Send abstracts and questions to GMS 2025 Liaison Dr Diane Heath, (Diane.Heath@ScienceMuseum.ac.uk).  Please put ‘GMS ABSTRACT’ in the email subject heading. 
Deadline: 5th April

Convenor:  Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh, Centre for Kent History & Heritage, Canterbury Christ Church University

And ECR travel bursary is available on receipt of tickets (post attendance) via the Kate Westoby Fund.
The conference begins Wednesday 2 July, with a dinner on Thursday, and ends Saturday am.

Extra Special Afternoon: Saturday 5 July: Canterbury Medieval Pageant and Family Heritage Trail 11-5, with free visits to 20+ medieval heritage sites.