Ayelet Zoran-Rosen, Doctoral Candidate, New York University

ANZAMEMS Conference Report

The tenth biennial ANZAMEMS conference was my first conference in the southern hemisphere, and it was a wonderful experience. The conference program beautifully manifested the many faces of medieval and early modern life. Panels covered an impressive amount of topics from multiple disciplinary and methodological perspectives, including fear, hostility and violence alongside politics and the production of art; discussions of the aspirations of kings and queens as well as the lives of their humble subjects; analysis of religion and science and many more.

Even though there were not many participants working on the Ottoman Empire in the conference, my paper fit nicely into the panel entitled “the representations of power”, with paper topics ranging from the Vatican and Venice to the Ottoman Balkans. The panel showed that when it comes to power and its reflection outwards, grouping these different rulers and political systems together makes for an interesting and meaningful discussion. I was happy and grateful to have received many thoughtful questions and comments from the audience during and after our panel.

It is a well-known fact that the importance of academic conferences lies not only in the new research that is presented during the talks and panels, but also in the social events before and after them. This was definitely true for this conference as well. Thanks to the efforts of the organizing committee at the University of Queensland, I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of many colleagues from across Australia and New Zealand and learn about relevant research in their home institutions. I am sure that these connections will prove fruitful in the future, and I look forward to meet everybody again in 2017, in Wellington.