of the Middle Ages to the general public – including politicians – that can change their views and actions in today’s world. Thus, the study of migration; the integration or exclusion of minorities; strategies of legitimation; or ideas of gendered roles illuminate illuminate the possible 7/8

Therefore, the tasks and responsibilities of medievalists for society today and in the future are many. These include debunking medieval myths that play an increasingly important role in the political arena; providing relevant material that could inform social policy; communicating the realities 6/8

of the Middle Ages in schools in the UK. Distorted medieval history is used for political purposes, witness, for example, the rhetoric of Putin about Ukraine, Viktor Orbán about the “millennial role” of Hungary, and countless misuses of medieval examples by neo-Nazis on social media. 5/8

Medieval history has an especially bad reputation as arcane and futile, and in everyday language, particularly brutal or horrific events are referred to as “typically medieval”. Despite high-quality research on diverse topics, there is a tendency to severely restrict or even omit the teaching 4/8

The humanities in general, and history in particular, are increasingly written off as useless, unlike the natural sciences, or at best seen as providing “transferable skills”. The Middle Ages at once suffer from neglect and the wrong kind of relevance. 3/8

Participants: Eva Haverkamp-Rott (LMU Munich), Nora Berend (Cambridge) and Emma Bermond, Timur Guselnikov, John Hinderer, Isabel Kimpel, Davide Polito, Astrid Riedler-Pohlers, Cynthia Stöckle 2/8

🖼 © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. 3/3

Our third anniversary post explores the history of the GHIL’s home at 17 Bloomsbury Square. 🏛️ Laid out in the mid-seventeenth century as one of London’s first formal garden squares, the corner house at No. 17 was remodelled by John Nash in 1777–78. 1/3

In the next part of our anniversary series, we will take a look at the GHIL'searly years (1976–1982), from the appointment of its first directors to the acquisition of its permanent home at 17 Bloomsbury Square in 1982. 1/2

At a time when literacy was limited, many people encountered religious texts and ideas through hearing, whether in sermons and hymns, during processions or through the ringing of church bells. Yet the appropriate use of sound and music in worship was also fiercely debated. ⛪️ 🔔 2/4

Today is #InternationalMusicDay, a celebration of the place of music in societies around the world. But how did people experience music in the past? 🎶 In the Middle Ages, sound was a fundamental part of religious and everyday life. 1/4