Virtual IMC Announced - Save the Date: Monday 6 - Friday 10 July 2020

We were delighted to receive nearly 800 responses to our survey regarding a possible virtual event to replace IMC 2020, including around 500 fellow medievalists interested in presenting their papers virtually.  The overwhelming majority of respondents keen to deliver their papers as live via video conferencing software.

At present, we envisage virtual IMC will run during the same week that IMC 2020 was scheduled, from Monday 6 July – Friday 10 July 2020, 09.00-18.00 British Summer Time.

We are currently working with colleagues in our conferencing team and University IT to develop the best way to deliver a virtual event. We intend that the virtual event will be free of charge to attendees, though it is possible that a small (under £25.00) charge may be necessary in order to cover various costs associated with facilitating online delivery of a large multiplatform event.

If you have let us know via the survey that you wish to take part in virtual IMC 2020 either as a presenter or moderator, please bear with us while we put together a programme. Our small team are currently working remotely and without access to our usual programming systems, so it may take us a while to bring together a coherent digital programme.

If you let us know via the survey that you are unable to participate in digital IMC, we understand completely. These are very difficult times and digital participation can be daunting. Similarly, not all papers, sessions, or other activities scheduled in the 2020 IMC programme naturally lend themselves to virtual delivery. We hope that you will be able to join us as a member of the audience for some or all of the virtual sessions.

If you are no longer able to participate in digital IMC in the ways you indicated in the survey, please let us know as soon as possible by emailing imc@leeds.ac.uk so that we can withdraw your paper and ensure the accuracy of our draft schedule.

Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate any changes to your paper or session titles or other details at present as we are working without access to our central programming system.  It may be that we can facilitate a small number of essential changes and will provide details of how to submit these in due course. Regrettably, technical limitations  also means that late additions to the virtual programme will not be possible.

In order to facilitate workable digital sessions, it is likely that we will need to compress series of sessions together, or create entirely new sessions by combining papers originally scheduled in different sessions together. This means that if not all your scheduled participants agreed to present digitally and let us know via the survey, we will put other speakers in their place. If you have any problems with this, please let us know right away.

We will be in touch with more details of proposed presentation methods, alongside support and guidance to access virtual IMC, in due course. If you are unable to present as-live, please let us know as soon as possible as capacity for non-live presentation is likely to be limited.

Please let us know as soon as possible if you have any prior commitments which may prevent you from taking part in virtual IMC. We cannot guarantee that we can accommodate scheduling requests, we will do our best to accommodate your needs.

We hope that you are keeping safe in these challenging times and will be providing updates via email and our website shortly, including the confirmed programme of sessions, details of how to register, and more information on other activities taking place as part of virtual IMC 2020.