Michael Nightingale Memorial Annual Lecture 2026

CAMEMS is pleased to invite members and friends to the Michael Nightingale Memorial Annual Lecture, to be delivered this year by Mark Bailey on Tuesday 22 September 2026 at 7.00 pm (with a wine reception from 6.30 pm). The lecture will take place in the Templeman Lecture Theatre, University of Kent Library, Canterbury. Entry is free and all are welcome.

Professor Bailey is one of Britain’s leading historians of the later Middle Ages. A Professor of Late Medieval History at the University of East Anglia, he was appointed James Ford Lecturer at the University of Oxford in 2019, and his acclaimed Ford Lectures were subsequently published by Oxford University Press as After the Black Death.

In his lecture, “English Agriculture in the Age of the Black Death, 1350–1500,” Professor Bailey will explore the profound effects of plague on the English countryside. Far from being solely a story of demographic catastrophe, the period witnessed significant economic and social change. The lecture will examine how successive outbreaks of plague transformed the lives of landlords, tenants and agricultural workers, creating new opportunities for some while contributing to shifts in landholding and a gradual movement from arable to pastoral farming.

The annual lecture commemorates the distinguished medieval historian Michael Nightingale and is sponsored by the Brook Rural Museum and CAMEMS in association with Kent MEMS. It promises to be of interest not only to specialists in medieval history but also to anyone interested in the origins of England’s rural landscape and the long-term consequences of the Black Death.

Date: Tuesday 22 September 2026
Reception: 6.30 pm
Lecture: 7.00 pm
Venue: Templeman Lecture Theatre, University of Kent Library, Canterbury CT2 7NZ
Admission: Free (voluntary retiring collection to Brook Rural Museum)
Parking: Free in University of Kent car parks after 5 pm.

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