New Visions of Julian of Norwich

Summer 2023 update

It’s already just over a year since New Visions of Julian of Norwich took place in Oxford – it’s hard to believe that the time has passed so quickly. Here are a few updates.

First of all, we’re excited to share that we are in the process of putting together a special issue of Medieval Feminist Forum, collecting a selection of the papers from NVJN. MFF is an online, interdisciplinary journal which has previously published some significant work on Julian, so we are really pleased to be working with them to put out into the world some of the groundbreaking research we heard at the conference. Watch this space!

Meanwhile, some of the researchers who presented at NVJN have had related work published elsewhere:

• Daniel Fishley published an article on Julian and John Caputo in Medieval Mystical Theology.
• Claire Foster-Gilbert has released a ‘fictional autobiography’, I, Julian.
• Filming wrapped earlier this year on Caroline Golum’s film Revelations of Divine Love: you can read an update here.
• ‘All Shall Be Well’, a new anthology of poems inspired by Julian, has recently been published and features contributions by Laura Varnam (one of the poems she discussed at NVJN) and Hannah Lucas.

At the conference we had the privilege of premiering CELL, Cindy Oswin’s luminous one-woman play engaging with and meditating on Julian. The play has seen further performances and is due another on the 30^th September 2023, at Christchurch St Leonard’s. If you have a group or venue you think would be interested in the play as it continues to evolve, you can get in touch with Cindy via her website.

A year on, thank you again to all who contributed to and attended the conference. We hope the discussions and presentations have continued to inspire you in your work.

Thank you!

New Visions of Julian of Norwich took place in Oxford on the 14th-16th July. We as a conference committee are really grateful to all who presented their research, took part in discussions, contributed to the performances, and provided assistance to us as we planned and ran the event. We had around 60 in-person attendees and over 40 online attendees.

Special thanks go to Antje E. Chan, who masterminded and ran the hybrid portion of the day with amazing composure and dedication; Nicholas Watson, Laura Saetveit Miles, Barry Windeatt, and Liz Herbert McAvoy, who opened and closed the conference with such rigour and verve; and to Godelinde Gertrude Perk, whose idea the conference initially was, and whose postdoc grant provided the seed funding which enabled us to plan.

Watch this space for details about publication plans as they emerge!

We are really excited and honoured to be the recipients, with playwright Cindy Oswin, of a Knowledge Exchange Grant from TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities): ‘CELL: Exploring New Theatre Visions of Julian of Norwich’.

The grant is enabling us to contribute to the development of the new play ‘Cell’, to be premiered on Saturday 16th July 2022 at the conclusion of the conference.

You can find out more about the grant and our work with Cindy on the TORCH page here.