From medieval pigs to cathedrals and chronicles: the Leiden Medievalists Blog reaches its 200th article
For almost nine years, the Leiden Medievalists Blog has been one of the university’s most widely read blogs. Its 200th article was published recently. ‘We have so much excellent research; it needs a platform.’
The initiative for the blog was originally taken by lecturer Marlisa den Hartog, who is still on the editorial team today. ‘As a PhD student, I regularly came across things that didn’t quite fit into my thesis, but which would make for a nice short article,’ she explains. ‘That was one of the reasons I wanted to start blogging, but I wasn’t sure how sustainable it would be if I started a blog on my own. That’s why I approached Thijs (Associate Professor Thijs Porck, ed.) with my colleague Jerem van Duijl to join forces.’
The rest is history. ‘We’re doing so much wonderful research on the Middle Ages in Leiden; naturally, that needed a platform,’ says Porck, who is the only member to have been part of the editorial team continuously since the beginning. ‘A shared platform is useful in that respect: it allows you to showcase the diversity of the discipline much better than if everyone were to start their own little blog. Because of that diversity, we also wanted someone from the Faculty of Archaeology on the editorial team.’
At the moment, that’s PhD student Cynthia Kromotaroeno. ‘Every two to three months, you’re on duty for a while: that’s when you edit all the blog posts,’ she explains. ‘Of course, I have a soft spot for archaeology, but I also find it enriching to read all those other perspectives. Every researcher deserves a platform. So it’s great that we have such a well-designed blog that’s also easy to find. For example, I’ve been approached by a documentary maker who’d seen some lovely images and could use them for something.’
Millions of page views
In total, the two hundred articles have generated more than 2.6 million page views over the past few years. Blogs about the portrayal of the Middle Ages in video games went viral, whilst others were picked up by the media. ‘My personal favourite blog is also about those video games,’ says Porck. ‘Alexia Kerkhof investigated the extent to which the representation of pigs in them is realistic. With the surname “Porck”, that subject is naturally close to my heart. I’ve also written thirteen blogs myself about medieval pigs.’
For Den Hartog, a topical angle often adds something extra to a blog post. ‘Elizabeth den Hartog – who, by the way, is not related to me – wrote a really interesting piece during the pandemic about face-covering veils in churches. I was familiar with those images, but she made me really think about them.’ Porck: ‘Elizabeth is definitely one of the blog’s secret weapons; she’s written fourteen pieces. You need people like that to keep it going for so long.’
With a deadline every two weeks, the editorial team is constantly on the lookout for authors. Kromotaroeno: ‘Nowadays, whenever I come across a Leiden archaeologist specialising in the Middle Ages, I always ask if they’d like to write a blog post.’
Other projects
An unintended side effect of this is that the researchers have now built up a good overview of all the medievalists at Leiden University. Den Hartog: ‘At the start, we went through all the profile pages on the website so that we knew who we could approach.’
Porck: ‘We now organise meet-ups for those medievalists and have created a podcast, Middeleeuwse toestanden. So the blog has brought us together not only online, but also in person.’
Read more on the Leiden Medievalists Blog.