Chantelle Saville, Doctoral Candidate, University of Auckland

ANZAMEMS Report 2015 – Reflections on an inspiring week.

When you find your flight home preoccupied by a swarm of ‘highly important ideas’ that you really must jot down on paper, you know for sure that you have attended a splendid conference. That is exactly what the experience of the ANZAMEMS Conference 2015 was like for me.

There was a real global atmosphere to the conference this year, with presenters attending from Scotland, Russia, Israel and the South Pacific. The theme of the first Round Table session was, in fact, ‘The Global Medieval’, discussing the prospects for future research aimed at bridging the gaps between continents and outlooks during the medieval and Early Modern period. With a number of conference panel presentations focused outside of Medieval Europe – such as “Japanese Political Thought in the 17th and 18th Centuries” – I would say that we are already on our way to achieving some great research with a ‘global’ perspective.

It was a pleasure to finally meet Samuel Baudinette (Monash University), and Prof. Yossef Shwartz (Tel Aviv University), both of whom spoke on the same panel as myself. Academics with an intellectual commitment to medieval philosophy and Dominican theology are few and far between in the South Pacific, so the opportunity to engage with a network of scholars outside the University of Auckland who share an interest in this area was greatly welcomed. I found that the discussion during and after, my panel session was very insightful, especially the challenging questions put to me following my presentation. Further, I found that listening to and observing how others presented their papers got me thinking hard about how I might present my own research more effectively, giving me models for future conference presentations.

Other papers that caught my interest included Prof. Andrew Lynch’s presentation “Reading ‘Violence’ in Later Medieval Narrative”, in which he interrogated the meaning of ‘violence’ as a medieval concept, arguing that ‘violence’ was understood more as an ’emotional force’ than a ‘physical force’. I also enjoyed Dr Diana Jefferies paper “Making Meaning of Mental Illness”, which presented a brilliant interdisciplinary approach to making meaning of mental illness in The Book of Margery Kempe and Thomas Hoccleve’s Complaint. Drawing upon her skills and expertise in the field of contemporary nursing, she emphasised the need to try to understand how the authors of the Middle English texts conceptualised and thought about the conditions they were suffering, rather than giving them a ‘post-diagnosis in hindsight’. Especially interesting was Diana’s descriptions of the kind of ‘care’ Margery and Thomas received, and the kind of ‘care’ that an individual suffering from mental illness might expect to receive today.

It is worth noting that I am a doctoral candidate in the late stages of thesis completion, so my decision to attend the ANZAMEMS conference this year was not automatic and I was not completely at ease in my environment due to the constant anxiety of finishing my work. However, the members of the ANZAMEMS community whom I talked with during lunch and tea breaks were entirely supportive and empathetic towards my position, offering advice on how to cope and manage the pressure of completing a large research project. This, I feel, is one of the very valuable aspects of the ANZAMEMS organization. As the generational spectrum of members stretches from MPhils to senior research academics, there is great opportunity for those with advanced experience to offer their personal insights to the members of the community on the first rungs of the academic ladder.

On behalf of the graduates who received travel bursaries this year I would like to thank those who enabled us to attend the conference. It was a truly rich and productive collaborative experience.