Late publicity, however, is easier to find. I mentioned below that I was giving a paper this month, as it now is, but as yet had no details: I do now have them, and since I believe, fondly perhaps, that there are some Hispanists reading, I thought I’d put those details here quickly before your calendar fills up :-)
Queen Mary University of London, or Queen Mary and Westfield College as some may remember it, has an active Hispanic Studies department that runs a regular Medieval Research Seminar, to which, to my shame, I have not yet been. They were planning a few papers on Early Medieval Spain for the next one, and it has grown into a full-day symposium full of big names, and, somehow, me. The details that I have go like this:
Symposium on Early Medieval Spain: Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar
Queen Mary University of London
Room 602, Physics Building
- 11.15 coffee
- 11.40 Janet L. Nelson (King’s College London), “Introduction: Early Medieval France and Spain”
- 12.00 Jonathan Jarrett (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), “Centurions, Alcalas, and ‘Christiani perversi’: Organisation of Society in the pre-Catalan ‘Terra de ningú'”
- 12.45 lunch
- 2.15 Wendy Davies (University College London), “Countergift and Suretyship in Tenth-Century Northern Iberia: Alternative or Complementary Guarantee Mechanisms?”
- 3.00 Rose Walker (Courtauld Institute), “Beatus by the Waters of Babylon”
- 3.45 tea
- 4.15 Ralph Penny (Queen Mary), “Early Medieval Iberia: How Many Languages?”
- 5.00 Andrew T. Fear (University of Manchester), “A Visigothic Hypochondriac: The Poetry of Eugenius of Toledo”
- 5.45 general discussion
- 6.00 sherry
How can you say no? When I have details of venue and costs, I’ll put them up too; for now, the sidebar is altered to keep you reminded…
Edit: now updated with venue details and final titles.
A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe 
Right now, I can’t even be mentioned in the same sentence as Janet Nelson and Wendy Davies, much less the same session! Congrats. This is a big opportunity. Alas, the Atlantic prevents me from driving over, but I will be there in spirit.
It’s less impressive than it seems because the connection has been essentially geographical. Wendy admittedly did mark my Ph.D. thesis, because there are very few early medieval Iberianists in the UK and she was the only one in the right university. But Jinty would never have encountered me had I not just been at London.
Likewise, my appearance on this bill, although I flatter myself that my material will stand up next to that of the big names, is basically down to me being local and friends with a member of QMUL’s Hispanic Studies department. So much is who you know, not what you know. In the end you have to have both of course. So I think that it is not as big an opportunity as you may think, simply because both Jinty and Wendy have been in the way of my work before (and also, both retired this academic year just gone). But it will be fun and cool and such things, and portends possible publication which is the real importance…
I shall raise a glass of sherry in the direction of the Atlantic in recognition of your spirit presence :-)
Opportunities are what one makes of them.:) I do look forward to your description of Dr. Nelson’s paper. Anyway, to coin an American phrase, you will knock this one outta the park.