Kemble Lectures
The Kemble Lectures are delivered annually by distinguished academics in the inter-disciplinary field of Anglo-Saxon studies. They commemorate the pioneering scholar John Mitchell Kemble, who died in 1857 in the Gresham Hotel on O'Connell Street, Dublin, and was buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery.
The Kemble Lecture for 2026 will be delivered on Wednesday 25 November by Prof. Susan Irvine, University College London.
John Scattergood, ‘Introduction: John Mitchell Kemble (1807-1857)’
Previous lectures
- 2005 Jane Roberts ‘On the Disappearance of Old English’
- 2006 Eric Stanley ‘Fear, mainly in Old English’
- 2007 Tom Shippey ‘Kemble, Beowulf, and the Schleswig-Holstein Question’
- 2008 Martin Carver ‘Reading Anglo-Saxon Graves’
- 2009 David Dumville on the Durham Liber Vitae
- 2010 Simon Keynes, 'John Mitchell Kemble (1807-58): Apostle, Revolutionary, and Anglo-Saxonist'
- 2011 S.A.J.Bradley, ‘John Kemble’s curious acquaintance: N. F. S. Grundtvig and his remarkable reception of Anglo-Saxondom’
- 2012 Janet Bately, ‘The Dating of Old English Prose: Some Problems and Pitfalls’
- 2013 Hans Sauer, ‘Kemble’s Beowulf and Heaney’s Beowulf’
- 2014 Dáibhi Ó Croínín, ‘Engaging Mr Kemble’
- 2015 Hugh Magennis, ‘Anglo-Saxon Studies and Religion, 1540-1850’
- 2016 Elizabeth O’Brien, ‘Anglo-Saxon Burials in an Insular Context’
- 2017 Daniel Anlezark, ‘Old English Poetry and the Problem of History’
- 2018 Andy Orchard, 'The Poetic Craft of Cynewulf’
- 2020 Clare Lees, 'Poetry and History in the 1850s: Ann Hawkshaw and John Mitchell Kemble'
- 2021 (delivered 2022) Chris Jones, 'Each His Own Lord: Anglo-Saxons, neo-Old English, the New English Nationalism and Brexit'
- 2023 Joanna Story, ‘The Calf and the Codex: Insular Manuscripts and the Use of “Vellum”’
- 2024 Elaine Treharne, ‘Mundane Matters: Early English Manuscripts, 700-1200, and the Aesthetics of the Ordinary’
- 2025 Richard Dance, ‘Myths and Monsters: Beowulf and the Etymologists’