On 30 June-1 July the SSCLE held its first online Postgraduate/Early Career conference, hosted by Royal Holloway, University of London. Over 240 people registered for the event, participants from 20 nationalities spoke in 16 panels and we had audience members from South America, the Middle East and Australia, as well as Russia, Europe and North America. The conference provided a fascinating platform for younger scholars to broadcast their research to their peers and to a wider audience, including the senior scholars who chaired the sessions. The chronological, thematic and geographical range of the papers was similarly huge – a testimony to the energy and diversity of the event; for the full programme see here. Gordon Reynolds (University of Edinburgh), winner of the Bernard Hamilton Prize for best Postgraduate/Early Career essay submitted to Crusades opened the event, chaired by Professor William C. Jordan (Princeton). Professor Nick Paul (Fordham University, New York), chaired by Professor Benjamin Z. Kedar (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), gave a closing plenary by way of showing a senior scholar’s own ‘work in progress’ and sending us on our way towards our next planned meeting, the postponed 10th quadrennial SSCLE conference, now scheduled for 27 June - 1 July 2022.
