AGM and Winter Symposium
Society of Medieval Archaeology AGM and Winter Symposium
Each year the Society hosts its Annual General Meeting followed by the Winter Symposium. The latter includes three lectures highlighting new and emerging topics of interest to our members at a free event, either online or in person.
After the Symposium, the lectures are available online in our Members’ Area. To watch these videos, and avail yourself of other SMA Member benefits, join here.
This year’s AGM and Winter Symposium
In a departure from recent years, the Society is delighted to be holding its Annual General Meeting and Winter Symposium as a hybrid event.
Please join us at the Society of Antiquaries London on the 11th of December from 14:00-18:00 for our AGM, followed by some fantastic research highlights from three speakers at the Symposium, rounded off with a drinks reception. While this is a Members event, we would strongly encourage and welcome non-members and lapsed members to attend and encourage members to bring along students, postdoctoral and project researchers to meet and network. Attendees will be able to join the Society on the day if they wish.
Attendance is also available online via Teams. Please see the information/link below:
Microsoft Teams meeting
Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/359040915423604?p=21PyNorLazcQTFWs1x
Meeting ID: 359 040 915 423 604
Passcode: dM2h8nb9
The programme for the event can be viewed here.
Previous Events
The 2025 AGM was held online on Monday, December 1st 2025. The AGM Agenda can be viewed here: AGM 2025.
The three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries were:
Steve Rippon (University of Exeter): Hidden kingdoms: The south-west of Britain in Late Antiquity
Sam Leggett (University of Edinburgh): Nun the Wiser? – the ‘lost’ early medieval nuns of Iona, Martyr’s Bay
Rebecca Boyd (IAC Archaeology): Drumclay Crannóg – finding its place and its people
The 2024 AGM was held online on Monday, December 2nd 2024. The AGM Agenda can be viewed here: AGM 2024.
The three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries were:
Sarah Semple (Durham University): People and Place: Revisiting the early medieval royal site of Yeavering, Northumberland
Craig Cessford (Cambridge Archaeological Unit): The Nunnery of St. Radegund, Cambridge: A community of negligent, thoughtless, dissolute and incontinent spiritual harlots?
Tomás Ó Carragáin and Diarmuid Ó Riain (University College Cork): The Digital Atlas of Early Irish Carved Stone (DAEICS): Scope, access and potential
The 2023 AGM was held online on Monday, December 4, 2023m 12.00-12.30, followed by the Winter Symposium at 12.30. The AGM Agenda can be viewed here and the programme for the Winter Symposium can be viewed here.
The three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries were:
Craig Cessford (Cambridge Archaeological Unit): After the Plague: Health and History in Medieval Cambridge
Michael Lewis (Portable Antiquities Scheme): Reform of Treasure Law: What it Means for Protecting Medieval Finds
Sarah Kerr (University College Cork): Late Medieval Lodging Ranges: The Architecture of Identity, Power and Space
The 2021 AGM and Winter Symposium was held on online at 12:00 on Monday, 6th December. The AGM Agenda and Winter Symposium full programme are here: SMA AGM and Winter Symposium 2021.
The three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries were:
Prof. Duncan Sayer (University of Central Lancashire): New ancient DNA from multiple early Anglo-Saxon cemeteries
Dr. Dawn McLaren (AOC Archaeology): Recent discoveries at the Bon Accord site in Aberdeen
Prof. Gordon Noble (University of Aberdeen): The CITADEL Project: Rescue- and Research-led Investigations at a Pictish Elite Centre
Watch the lectures here.
The 2020 Annual General Meeting of the Society was held on 7th December, online at midday rather than at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Please find the Agenda and symposium abstracts here.
The AGM was followed by the Winter Symposium, also online. There were three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries:
Ben Jervis (Cardiff University) and Lizzy Craig-Atkins (University of Sheffield): The dietary impact of the Norman Conquest: a multiproxy archaeological investigation of Oxford
Duncan Wright (Newcastle University): Laughton-en-le-Morthen, Yorkshire: an archaeology of elite residence
Fiona Beglane (Institute of Technology Sligo): Forests, chases and rights of free warren in medieval Ireland,1169–c. 1399
The 2019 Annual General Meeting of the Society was held in the Sorby Room, Wager Building, University of Reading. See the Agenda here: Society for Medieval Archaeology AGM 2019. The AGM was followed by the Society for Medieval Archaeology’s Winter Symposium with three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries:
Prof. Michelle Brown (University of London): Letters from the Past: the inscriptions from Tintagel and what they tell us of its early medieval inhabitants
James Fairclough (Museum of London Archaeology): Great Ryburgh: The excavation of rare Anglo-Saxon coffins and a Saxon Church
Nathan Wales (University of York): DNA from archaeological seeds illuminates medieval grapevine production
The 2018 Annual General Meeting of the Society was held at 18:00 on Monday 3 December 2018 in the Philip Rahtz Lecture Theatre (K/133), The King’s Manor, University of York, YO1 7EP.
The AGM Agenda can be downloaded here.
The AGM was followed by three lectures on recent archaeological discoveries:
Dr Sarah Croix: Revisiting a ‘Northern Emporium’ – about recent excavations in Viking-Age Ribe
Dr Adrian Maldonado: Reassembling Iona
Dr Gabor Thomas: Building early medieval identities: Lyminge and the agency of post-Roman elite centres
