Annual Julian Lecture: Julian’s Sensory World
13:00-14:30 9 May 2026 | Free | Dragon Hall | Margit Thøfner
The writings of Julian of Norwich often hinge on small but powerfully evoked sensory details. She invites us to hear rain dripping from eaves, to feel enfolding textiles, to see shiny herring-scales, to smell the sulphurous reek of evil and to weigh in our hands the smallness and fragility of a hazelnut. This lecture explores Julian’s sensory world through works of art and music from medieval Norwich and beyond, works that allow us to grasp something of how Julian’s knowledge of her world was fundamentally embodied, rooted in lived experiences rather than just in contemplation. The central aim is to show how medieval art and music offers fresh perspectives on Julian’s explorations of what it was and still is to be human in a troubling and troubled world.
Margit Thøfner is a senior lecturer in art history. She took her BA and MA in this subject at the Courtauld Institute in London and her DPhil at the University of Sussex. Since then, Margit has taught at the universities of Sussex, St Andrews, Bristol and East Anglia before joining the Open University in 2021. Her research interests focus on the later medieval and early modern period in the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia and the British Isles. They include painting, print, architecture, sculpture, textiles and metalwork and range across the histories of religion, politics, gender, court culture, public rituals, urban spaces and musical culture.
Find out more at https://nationalcentreforwriting.org.uk/events/julians-sensory-world-embodied-knowledge-in-medieval-norwich/ or https://julianofnorwich.org/
Julian of Norwich Annual Lecture
King Street
