Annual Aylmer Lecture

The Aylmer Lecture is a highlight of the Department of History's annual programme of events. This year, Professor Mark Ormrod will speak on 'Immigrants: An English controversy, 1250-1500.'

Controversies about immigration to the British Isles are not new: they have been part of our political discourse since the Middle Ages. This lecture looks at a key period in the development of English immigration policy, during the era of the Hundred Years War, the Black Death and the Wars of the Roses. It considers how public attitudes and official positions were affected by major changes in politics, economic life and ‘national’ culture. In such a context, the medieval issues begin to look remarkably familiar to some of the issues at the heart of debates about immigration and identity in the twenty-first century United Kingdom.

Mark Ormrod is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of York. He is the author of numerous works on the politics and political culture of later medieval England, and is the Principal Investigator of the major project 'England's Immigrants, 1350-1550' (www.englandsimmigrants.com)