Vincent Debiais
@vincentdebiais.bsky.social
676 followers 526 following 194 posts
Medievalist at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. Visual culture of the Middle Ages, anthropology of images, medieval art history, epigraphy, silence. Writes at devisu.hypotheses.org
![Leeds IMC 2026 Call for Papers:
Things Transcending Time
This session, sponsored by the Haskins Society and the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research, University of Winchester, invites papers exploring objects and their relationships to, through, or against time.
Things never have one life but many, through birth, interference, additions, and even abandonment. This session seeks to understand the many ways that objects transcend time through creating it, holding or shaping it. This session also wishes to challenge the dominating hierarchy of textual studies for history (as a time and place, rather than a discipline) through objects who themselves shape or create history.
‘Object’ is broadly conceived for this session; for example, a manuscript is also an object when the research is its life as an object rather than the textual understanding of it.
Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:
• Multiple or concurrent times understood or embedded in objects
• Objects’ authority and agency with and against time and history
• Microhistories or biographies of objects and their place(s) in time.
• Theoretical or methodological considerations of object-led histories
Papers are warmly invited from any academic field (art history, archaeology, history, etc.), and should be generally focussed on the Anglo-Norman worlds and their surrounds (broadly interpreted), ca 800-1300. Papers presented by ECRs in this session may be submitted for consideration to the Denis Bethell Prize from the Haskins Society.
Please send a 250-word abstract (including key terms) and short CV to Katherine Weikert (Katherine.weikert@winchester.ac.uk) by 15 September. Your subject line should read ‘Things Transcending Time [your surname]’, else it is liable to be missed and unread. If you have any questions, please contact Katherine Weikert.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:reyoejusyevgfe3jr6vl4los/bafkreihoubfcws5rg57rls2aifuh7sufnxputdevuvnhi2oymrt5gapkze)
