“Roots and Networks” Evening Lecture Series 2026/27

"Roots and Networks" Lecture Programme

Doors open at 6pm     |      Lecture begins at 6:30     |     Drinks reception upon arrival

Purchase your tickets (£10) on Ticket Tailor

Malcolm Hebron, “Romanesque Art” 

29th October 2026

Romanesque is the general name given to thousands of buildings and artefacts made across Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. In the DEI we are literally a stone’s throw from the Romanesque (or Norman) towers of Exeter Cathedral. The Romanesque was the first international style since the fall of the Roman Empire, drawing on many roots – Roman, Germanic, Byzantine and others. It is a style that is always on the move, as artistic practices migrated and influenced each other through historical and social events: pilgrimage, the monastic orders, the crusades and other military episodes such as the Norman Invasion. Workshops and individual masters were mobile, creating a rich and complex series of cultural networks. From Pisa to Durham, from the illuminations of the Winchester Bible to the wall paintings of churches in the Pyrenees, the style known as Romanesque includes a remarkable variety of images and techniques.

Sometimes, looking back can help us look at our own times. Considering the art and architecture of the Romanesque helps us to think about the relation between international and national culture, the complex nature of identity – religious, local, social – and the ways in which networks foster and revitalise a cultural language. It prompts questions about the relation of art to power. While historically remote, the art of the period is also strikingly vivid, sharing the non-realist language of much modern art – another kind of network, across the centuries. 

Above all, perhaps, the art of this period is rich, bold, vivid and retains a power to astonish, delight and disturb. The focus will be on a few selected works – to be decided – but a major source will be the collection in the MNAC museum in Barcelona, as it is well known to the speaker and a popular holiday destination!

Malcolm Hebron taught English Literature and History of Art at Winchester College, before moving to Devon. He now lectures and teaches courses for Raw Writing in Exeter. 

Dr Marnie Devereux and Dr Beth-Marie Lockwood, “‘Roots and Networks,” The Importance of Roots in Children’s Literature.”

26th November 2026

This lecture seeks to examine three prominent Devon based authors, Michael Morpurgo, David Rees, and Philip Reeve. In this discussion we will explore the work of these three children’s authors highlighting the importance of roots within the three authors’ writing.

Three prize-winning texts by these authors share a common theme. They highlight issues of home, heritage, displacement, and environmental collapse against a backdrop of war-torn landscapes. Previous Children’s Laureate and author of over 150 children’s books, Michael Morpurgo is known for writing about his home county of Devon with a particular focus on the importance of landscape and war in shaping children’s identity. The idea of home, transience and community is central to many of Morpurgo’s texts, with named places and landscapes appearing in his work. We will discuss how war is portrayed in Morpurgo’s writing and how the importance of our history has shaped and continues to shape children’s literature. 

Philip Reeve is a Dartmoor based author writing several series for both younger children and young adult readers. In this talk we will focus on Reeve’s first novel Mortal Engines published in 2001. This went on to win both the Smarties and Blue Peter prizes and was made into a film in 2018. Using a wholly different perspective on war Reeve explores its environmental impact, using ‘Bare Earth’ as a representation of his homeland of Dartmoor. 

David Rees was a lecturer at St Luke’s College, Exeter, and later at Exeter University. His 1978 children’s novel The Exeter Blitz won that year’s Carnegie Medal for the best children’s book by a British subject. The novel explores themes of displacement, unhoming and cultural heritage as seen through the eyes of a 14- year-old Exeter schoolboy and his evacuee friend during World War Two.

Dr Katie Brown, “Unlocking the secrets of Medieval Europe’s longest universal history: An international and interdisciplinary study of the General e grand estoria”

28th January 2026

Can the desire for knowledge drive collaboration in spite of seemingly insurmountable religious differences? 800 years ago, in Medieval Iberia, though there was conflict and power struggles between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, scholars from the three faiths worked side by side to translate and co-produce what became the foundations of our contemporary knowledge systems. In southern Iberia and across the Mediterranean, a new information highway forged by trade and conflict fostered collaborations that drove innovation across the arts and sciences, from medicine and mathematics to theology, philosophy, and music.

In the 13th Century, Medieval encyclopedism in the form of universal histories reflected a rise in curiosity that involved collaboration, translation, synthesis, analysis, and diplomacy. The General e grand estoria (GGE), a universal history commissioned by King Alfonso X, is a uniquely vast and rich resource, bringing together Christian, Muslim, and Jewish sources, as well as apocryphal and Classical ones, translated into the newly-evolving Castilian language. At over 6000 pages long, the text aimed to tell the entire history of humanity, though it remained unfinished after Alfonso’s death in 1284.

Now, thanks to a Partnership Grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, an international and interdisciplinary team of over 50 researchers across eight countries are collaborating to unlock the secrets of this enormous text. Combining traditional humanities skills with digital innovations, we are producing a digital edition of the text complete with annotations; translations into English, French and modern Spanish; educational materials and interactive resources.

In this talk, Katie will establish the significance of the General e grand estoria, introduce their  collaborative research practice and share insights from our research so far.

Maisie Corkhill, “Roots and Boundaries: Enclosure and Belonging in Hardy’s Wessex”

25th February 2027

What does it mean to be rooted in a place that is shaped by forces far beyond the local? Maisie’s research explores how 19th century Parliamentary enclosures shape land, communities and narrative in Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. Hardy’s rural world is often read through the lens of the local, with romantic and social dramas played out amongst contained communities. But the landscape that provided the stage for Hardy’s novels was one subject to privatisation, which in turn defined the narrative possibilities for Hardy’s world: who can own land, who can work it, who can move through it, and, ultimately, who can belong.

Enclosure (literally the ‘enclosing’ of land arranged by Acts of Parliament) reorganised not only the physical landscape but also the relationships between people within it. My research has shown that the South-West of England was a hub of nineteenth-century enclosures, and I explore how this transforms Hardy’s idea of Wessex. Puddletown, which inspired Weatherbury in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) was enclosed between 1828-1844. An enclosure award and map of Marnhull, which corresponds to Marlott in Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) reveals that in 1859, eighty-one acres of the parish were enclosed. Changes in ownership are often at the root of local tragedy in Hardy’s novels, from the Durbeyfield’s eviction from their cottage to Giles’s loss of his life-holds in The Woodlanders (1887).

This talk will ask who gets to put down roots in an increasingly privatised landscape, and what happens to those who lack secure claims to land. It will explore how rootedness – and its absence – frame Hardy’s characters and narratives, from itinerant workers and tenants to lifeholders. While the literal boundaries of enclosure reshaped fields, roads and footpaths, this talk reveals how it also defined Hardy’s narrative pathways through Wessex.

Chiedozie Obia, “Networks of Impunity: Native Courts, Sexual Violence, and Colonial Governance in Nigeria, c.1916”

25th March 2027

This paper examines the Native Court system in colonial Eastern Nigeria as a critical node within the networks of power, authority, and accountability that shaped colonial governance during the First World War. While historians have primarily examined Native Courts in relation to indirect rule, local administration, and socio-economic transformation, this paper shifts attention to the gendered dynamics embedded within their judicial and administrative operations. Drawing on court proceedings, petitions, and colonial correspondence, it argues that Native Courts created conditions in which sexual coercion and abuse could occur with limited oversight and significant barriers to accountability.

Focusing on 1916, the paper reconstructs encounters between women and court authorities, tracing how warrant chiefs, court clerks, messengers, and British colonial officials participated in overlapping networks of judicial and administrative power. Petitions and complaints provide rare evidence of women’s attempts to seek redress, while court records and official correspondence reveal how cases were processed, minimised, redirected, or absorbed into the colonial bureaucracy.

The paper situates these encounters within the wider pressures of wartime governance. During the First World War, British officials in Eastern Nigeria prioritised political stability, revenue collection, and administrative efficiency, often at the expense of meaningful judicial oversight. It argues that administrative inaction and institutional silence helped reproduce a broader culture of impunity. By following complaints across courts, petitions, and colonial correspondence, the paper demonstrates how colonial justice operated through interconnected British and Indigenous actors whose relationships could facilitate governance, mediate access to justice, and shield abuse from scrutiny.

Sir Denis Pereira Gray,  “The History of University Medicine in Devon and Cornwall”

29th April 2027

Today there are two medical schools in Devon, one in Exeter and one in Plymouth. Yet as late as 1963 there was not a single doctor in the two counties with a university post. At that time half the medical schools were in London as well as all 12 of the postgraduate medical institutes. Unusually, reform was achieved by locally led initiatives, by a few Exeter doctors. They were supported by the Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust (now the Nuffield Trust), which funded a Postgraduate Medical Institute (PGMI) within the University of Exeter. Dr David Mattingly, a physician with a distinguished research record at the Hammersmith Hospital London, was appointed Director. A funding crisis led to a decision by Exeter University, which was unique in the UK.

In 1973 a postgraduate university Department of General Practice was established within the PGMI, the first in Europe and just ahead of one in Copenhagen. David Mattingly was promoted to be the first Professor of Postgraduate Medical Education in Britain and the Postgraduate Medical Institute became the Postgraduate Medical School of the University of Exeter. Several innovative professorships followed, including general practice, vascular medicine, and the world’s first Professor of Complementary Medicine. The University of Plymouth also developed a Postgraduate Medical School. These two schools combined in 2002, led by Professor John Tooke, to form a new undergraduate medical school across Devon and Cornwall. In 2013, this was divided into the current two separate medical schools.