UCL Early Modern Exchanges

Croatian Renaissance Drama in Translation
7-8 October, 2026
A rare opportunity to see a performance of Renaissance comedies by the Croatian playwright Marin Držić, with a symposium discussing problems and approaches to Renaissance drama in translation. Details of the performance in the Bloomsbury Studio here, with more on the symposium to come!

The Works of Marin Držić: Croatian Renaissance Drama in Translation This event will showcase two rehearsed readings that offer a rare opportunity to see Držić’s work in performance.

Early Bodleian Donations Online
The Centre for Editing Lives and Letters are pleased to announce the launch of Early Bodleian Donations Online, a digital resource which tracks the donors and donations to the Bodleian Library in the years 1600-1620. The searchable database contains bibliographical information about the items donated and biographical detail about the donors.

EBDO The Project Figure 1. Bodleian Library, Oxford: bird’s eye view (detail), line engraving. Image credit: Wellcome Library, London. This AHRC-funded 3-year project seeks to uncover the stories behind the books on the shelves at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Our focus is on the first two decades foll...

MHRA Research Associate: Oxford Correspondence of John Donne
Closes: 9th July 2026
The postholder will undertake stylometric, corpus-based, and computational authorship-attribution analysis of selected materials from the Burley Manuscript, working from existing transcripts and in dialogue with an already assembled corpus of Donne’s prose correspondence.

MHRA Research Associate at King's College London Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a MHRA Research Associate on jobs.ac.uk!

Historical Health & The Body Primary Sources ‘Show and Tell'
2 July 1-2pm
Join us at Wellcome Collection for our Historical Health & The Body Reading Group for PhD, ECR & interested historical researchers.

Historical Health & The Body Primary Sources ‘Show and Tell' Join us at Wellcome Collection for our Historical Health & The Body Reading Group for PhD, ECR & interested historical researchers.

⚠️POSTPONED DUE TO HEAT ⚠️
Old Materialism: making gold and performing money in pre-modern London and Venice
26 June 2026, 5:30pm–7:30pm
Join this 'Marxism in Culture' seminar with Alison Wright (UCL). Her paper questions the adequacy of new materialist ethics in the face of the all-too-human assertion and coercion at play in ‘making’ gold.

Old Materialism: making gold and performing money in pre-modern London and Venice Join this 'Marxism in Culture' seminar with Alison Wright (UCL). Her paper questions the adequacy of new materialist ethics in the face of the all-too-human assertion and coercion at play in ‘making’ gold.

Phantoms in the Classroom: Midwifery Training in Enlightenment Europe
18 June 2026, 1pm-2pm
Join us at Wellcome Collection for our Historical Health & The Body Reading Group for PhD, ECR & interested historical researchers.

Phantoms in the Classroom: Midwifery Training in Enlightenment Europe Join us at Wellcome Collection for our Historical Health & The Body Reading Group for PhD, ECR & interested historical researchers.

TOMORROW!!
IAS Book Launch: Body Size in Early Modern Germany
The IAS is pleased to welcome author Holly Fletcher, whose book overturns false assumptions that concern with body size is a modern phenomenon or that in earlier societies fatness simply signified wealth while thinness indicated poverty.
9 June 2026, 6pm–8pm

IAS Book Launch: Body Size in Early Modern Germany The IAS is pleased to welcome author Holly Fletcher, whose book overturns false assumptions that concern with body size is a modern phenomenon or that in earlier societies fatness simply signified wealth while thinness indicated poverty.

Coffee, Currants, and Sherbets: The ‘Exotic’ World of Cross-Cultural Food-Making in Early Modern Europe and the Middle East
19 Jun 2026, 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm
Online and at Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London
This public event explores the relationship between migration and food history in the Renaissance and early modern period (1500-1800).

Coffee, Currants, and Sherbets: The ‘Exotic’ World of Cross-Cultural Food-Making in Early Modern Europe and the Middle East Limited funding is available towards travel expenses, enabling attendance from community groups, low-income participants, and those with childcare needs. Please book your place and apply in writing to [email protected]. 

Reading Group: Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies: Language, Sense and Proof
27 May 2026, 2:30pm–4pm
Join IAS Fellows, Rana Banna & Mary Newman, to explore how early-modern writers connected linguistic encounters with sensory encounters of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling in the production of evidence.

IAS Reading Group: Evident Tongues, Evident Bodies: Language, Sense and Proof Join IAS Fellows, Rana Banna & Mary Newman, for their reading group, which explores how early-modern writers connected linguistic encounters with sensory encounters of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling in the production of evidence.

The Spanish-English Translations Database, 1500 – 1640
This database records translation activity between England and Spain in the early modern period up to 1640 with detailed title page transcriptions, copy specific details, an index of dedicatees and printers to allow scholars to explore the manifold cultural translations taking place in the period. Originally published in 2005 by King’s College London, this Carnegie funded project based originally at the University of St Andrews has been ported across to UCL and is now freely accessible.

spanish-english-translation.ucl.ac.uk