Project News


September 2021
The Gersum Project was awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize by the British Academy

October 2019

The Gersum Project was awarded Follow on Funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council

June 2019
Sara Pons-Sanz delivered a talk on the ‘Systematicity in the Classification and Study of Norse-Derived Terms in English’ at the Faculty of English Philology, University of Seville, 4 June 2019.

March 2019
Sara Pons-Sanz spoke on ‘The Lexical Legacy of Anglo-Scandinavian Contacts in the Early Middle Ages’ at ‘The Permanent Way: Europe, Britain and Cultural Exchanges, Medieval and Modern’ conference in Bristol

February 2019
Sara Pons-Sanz presented ‘Terms for FEAR in the Gawain-Poet’s Texts: An Etymological and Semantic Exploration’ at the Historical Linguistics Seminar, Institute of English Studies, University of London

September 2018
The Gersum Conference was held at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge. Speakers included Lesley Abrams, Jayne Carroll, Philip Durkin, Nik Gunn, Judith Jesch, Jane Kershaw, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, David Parsons, Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Sara Pons-Sanz, Brittany Schorn, Matthew Townend, Thorlac Turville-Petre and George Walkden.

July 2018
Richard Dance delivered a keynote address at the Leeds Medieval Congress on ‘Do Words Remember? The Etymologist vs the Vikings’.
Sara Pons-Sanz spoke on ‘The Gawain-Poet’s Terms for speech in the Context of the Gersum Project’ and the 15th International Society for the Linguistics of English in London

June 2018
Sara Pons-Sanz gave a paper on ‘Classifying Norse-Derived Terms in English: An Update on the Gersum Project’ and the 9th International Conference on Historical Lexicology and Lexicography in Santa Margherita Ligure

March 2018
Sara Pons-Sanz spoke on ‘The Gersum Project: Classification and Analysis of Norse-Derived Terms in Middle English’ at the University of the West of England

February 2018
Sara Pons-Sanz delivered the Helen Thirza Addyman lecture in York.
Brittany Schorn spoke at the Viking Society Student Conference in Nottingham.

January 2018
New blog post by Richard Dance on ‘Vikings in Your Vocabulary’! Check it out here.

November 2017
Brittany Schorn spoke at Charles University in Prague on ‘Gersum: Identifying Old Norse Lexis in the Poetry of the Alliterative Revival’ as part of the lecture series Digital Humanities and the Study of the Past.
Sara Pons-Sanz gave a paper on ‘Terms for Speech in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ at the International Workshop on Medieval Northern English and the University of Seville

October 2017
Richard Dance and Brittany Schorn spoke to the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society and the Yorkshire Dialect Society on ‘Tykes and Vikings: Looking for the Old Norse Influence on Northern English Vocabulary’.
Gersum held a quiz evening at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas

July 2017
Gersum team collaborated on Pearson History apps on the Anglo-Saxon and Vikings, now available here.
Brittany Schorn spoke at the Viking Society for Northern Research summer meeting at the University of Cambridge.
The Gersum Team spoke in two sessions on ‘Lexicography and Loanwords’ at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds.

May 2017
Richard Dance spoke at the 10th International Conference on Middle English at the University of Stavanger.
Brittany Schorn spoke at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Western Michigan.

February 2017
Richard Dance spoke at the Cambridge History Festival.

November 2016
Richard Dance and Brittany Schorn spoke at the Medieval Graduate Seminar in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge on November 9.
Brittany Schorn spoke on ‘Buried Treasure: Old Norse Loan Words in the Works of the Gawain Poet’ at the University of Westminster.

August 2016
The Gersum team gave papers at the 19th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics in Essen, Germany. 

July 2016
Sara Pons-Sanz spoke on ‘The Gersum Project: A New Approach to the Identification of Norse-Derived Terms in English’ at the 8th International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology in Bloomington, Indiana.

12 March 2016
Sara Pons-Sanz spoke at the Fifth London Anglo-Saxon Symposium on ‘Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact and its Impact on English’ 

22 January 2016
Gersum joined Twitter: https://twitter.com/GersumProject

18 January 2016
The Gersum Project begins!