Leeds IMC is Europe’s largest annual gathering in humanities, drawing over 2,000 participants each year. This year, take a sneak peek at Leeds IMC from Oxbow’s point of view!
We’re currently at Leeds International Medieval Congress, along with several thousand books, from our own brand new published titles, to a great selection of bargains, and books from Archaeopress, Toronto University Press, Cornell University Press, Four Courts Press and more.
With over 2,100 participants attending the conference, three and half full days of selling, receptions and a book launch, it’s a busy old week for us. If you’re at the conference, we’d love to see you stop by, and we’re pretty sure we’ll have something, somewhere that will interest you…
What we do at Leeds IMC
For us, Leeds IMC starts on Sunday.
We arrive at about lunch time, and then it’s setting up stands and shelves and unpacking boxes and boxes of books – nearly 4,000 of them (at best guess – we don’t count them!). With everything set up and ready to go, we come back first thing on Monday for the main event: books galore for everyone!
Events like Leeds IMC are a great opportunity for us to see familiar faces, and to put new faces to familiar names. We meet people we’ve tweeted with, people whose names we recognise from orders, people we’ve exchanged email correspondence with, people we recognise from previous years at the IMC and from other conferences entirely. We also tend to see a few of our authors, and also the editors of journals or magazines with whom we’ve had contact. And of course there’s all the new faces and new names that we don’t recognise – yet!
(We’re a friendly bunch, we love it when people come for a chat as well as their books!)
We stick around until Thursday lunch time. And then it’s all the remaining books back in boxes, and home again, content in the knowledge that the Leeds IMC attendees have some wonderful new books sitting on their bookshelves, just waiting to be read.
Sometimes, we also have other things to take part in…
The Anglo-Saxon Fenland Book Launch
This year, we are joined by the author of the newly-published and highly anticipated The Anglo-Saxon Fenland, Susan Oosthuizen, celebrating the launch of the book. It’s a great opportunity for people at the Congress to come and find out more about the book and to chat to the author. There’s also the opportunity to buy a copy of the book at a special launch discount!
Using existing and new evidence and arguments, this new interdisciplinary history of the Anglo-Saxon fenland offers a new interpretation of the archaeology and history of the fens of eastern England – namely,that the fen islands and the silt fens show a degree of occupation unexpected a few decades ago. The rich and complex history of the development of the region shows, it is argued, a traditional social order evolving, adapting and innovating in response to changing times.
The book launch takes place on Wednesday 5th July at 5.30pm. If you’re at Leeds IMC this year, we’d love to see you there!
Our favourite things about Leeds IMC
❛ This is my first year at Leeds IMC, and it’s a fantastic atmosphere. It’s great to see everyone getting involved on twitter – we’re on twitter through the whole Congress, reading what people have to say about the sessions. I love it when people get in conversation with us on twitter too – especially when they stop by the stand later! ❜ Becca Watson, Marketing Executive
❛ It’s always nice to meet some of our customers in person. Everyone’s so enthusiastic and chatty. ❜ Helen Boyd, Marketing Manager
❛ This is my twelfth year at Leeds, and the scale of it always impresses me. It’s great to have so many Medievalists in one place. Plus the disco is always a highlight! ❜ Mike Schurer, Direct Sales Manager
Are you at Leeds IMC this year? We’d love to hear what your favourite part is – let us know via twitter, @oxbowbooks!
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