2022 Alumni Lectures

Migrations, real and imagined, in the medieval world

Professor Nora Berend

Many people assume that medieval Europe was characterized by a lack of mobility, especially migrations, apart from the dramatic ‘barbarian’ waves that destroyed the Roman world. In contrast, medieval sources are full of stories of migration. Many of these were invented to procure prestigious ancestry. Others provide religious messages. Some reflect the challenges of real migration. Why was migration so valorized? How did this theoretical view relate to real experiences? This lecture provides some reflections on real and invented migration stories, and what they tell us about the medieval world, then turns to a number of cases studies.  

Presented live on February 23rd, Professor Berend's lecture can be viewed here.

 

 

Land-Grab Universities

Dr Bobby Lee

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, which distributed public domain land to raise funds for fledgling colleges across the United States. In popular memory, this law launched the celebrated land-grant university system with a gift of free land. But the truth is more complicated: The Morrill Act worked by turning land expropriated from tribal nations into seed money for higher education. 

In all, the act redistributed nearly 10.8 million acres from more than 250 tribal nations for the benefit of 52 colleges. This lecture examines the results of a two-year investigation that combined digital tools with archival research to reconstruct the Morrill Act's complete geographic and financial footprint, tying university beneficiaries to the Indigenous nations whose lands underwrote their prosperity. The results have been featured in Times Higher Education, New Scientist, and the New York Times, and motivated a number of land-grant universities to start re-assessing the roots of their prosperity.

Presented live on March 4th, Dr Lee's lecture can be viewed here