Call for Papers

Deadline: 20 September 2026

International Medieval Congress | University of Leeds | 5-8 July 2027

Format: 20-minute paper; in-person
Organisers: Youri Desplenter, Carolin Gluchowski,
Louise Keitsch and Marina Giraudeau

Following the success of PRAYTICIPATE’s programme at the IMC 2026 we invite members of COST Action CA23143 to submit papers for a new set of PRAYTICIPATE-sponsored session proposals at the International Medieval Congress 2027. The 2027 special thematic strand, Communities, offers an especially productive framework for the Action. Medieval prayer was rarely solitary, even when undertaken alone. It linked worshippers to divine and heavenly communities, to the living and the dead, and to households, confraternities, religious institutions, parishes, courts, and other social formations. Shared texts, images, objects, rituals, gestures, sounds, spaces, and memories could create belonging; they could also establish boundaries, hierarchies, exclusions, and conflicts.

Themes and questions

We welcome original papers that investigate prayer as a participatory and community-forming practice. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• religious, monastic, semi-religious, clerical, confraternal, parish, household, courtly, guild, or urban communities of prayer;
• imagined, emotional, textual, devotional, sensory, or embodied communities;
• the circulation, translation, adaptation, and multilingual transmissions of prayers across social, institutional, and geographical networks;
• liturgy, chant, song, gesture, performance, and shared rhythms of prayer;
• the material culture and spatial settings of communal prayer, including manuscripts, prints, images, relics, rosaries, ex-votos, architecture, and landscapes;
• intercession, commemoration, memoria, and relations between communities of the living, the dead, saints, angels, and the divine;
• belonging and difference: inclusion, exclusion, gender, status, language, authority, orthodoxy, dissent, and conflict;
• religious reform, continuity, and innovation in the formation or transformation of praying communities;
• communities of practice and knowledge, including methodological, comparative, network-based, or digital approaches to prayer.

Proposals should make a clear contribution to medieval studies and engage directly with prayer or praying. Work on the later Middle Ages, especially c. 1250-1500, is particularly welcome in keeping with the Action’s remit, but broader medieval and connected comparative perspectives are also encouraged. Contributions may draw on any discipline represented within PRAYTICIPATE and may relate to one or more of its three fields: material realities of prayer; social realities and prayer networks; and immersive realities of prayer.

How to apply

Please send the following information in a single Word document to all four organisers listed below. The internal submission deadline is 20 September 2026. 

Organisers and submission addresses

Carolin Gluchowski: carolin.gluchowski@uni-hamburg.de
Youri Desplenter: youri.desplenter@ugent.be
Marina Giraudeau: marina.giraudeau@unil.ch
Louise Keitsch: louise.keitsch@kunstgeschichte.uni-freiburg.de

Selection and practical information

The organisers will select and group papers according to academic quality, relevance to the call, thematic coherence, and the IMC’s recommendation that sessions reflect diversity across career stages, institutions, countries, and academic backgrounds. A standard IMC session normally comprises three 20-minute papers followed by discussion. Selection through this internal call does not guarantee acceptance by the IMC. All proposed participants must consent to the sharing and processing of their details by the IMC and, if accepted, must register and pay the applicable Congress fee. Participants may apply for a Conference Grant offered by the Action, subject to the applicable eligibility criteria. Funding is competitive and cannot be guaranteed.

Further information

IMC 2027: Call for Papers