Photo Credit: Eivind Senneset via Holberg Prize
When I set out to write a history of the Peasants’ War, I was sure that I would find the women my colleagues had failed to find. But I didn’t. Instead I had to take seriously that this revolution was held together by ideals of masculinity and brotherhood.
That didn’t mean, though, that women weren’t involved. Their issues, too, led to the war, but were often what got left out when grievances were written down.
How does ‘gender’ help us understand the Peasants’ War, forty years after Joan Scott’s famous article; and what are its limitations?
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Event Details
Wednesday 30 September 2026
5.30 – 7.30pm AEST
Elisabeth Murdoch Theatre
The University of Melbourne
Registrations close at 4.30pm AEST, 29 September 2026.
About Professor Lyndal Roper
Lyndal Roper is Emeritus Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford. She was the first woman to hold the Regius Chair in History, and the first Australian. Roper’s most recent publication, Summer of Fire and Blood: A History of the German Peasants’ War (1524-6) details the greatest uprising in western Europe before the French Revolution (Winner, Cundill Prize 2025). She has written a biography of the reformer Martin Luther and has published on witchcraft and on gender and the German Reformation. She has lived and worked in Germany (where she held a Humboldt Fellowship and was Fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg). She was a graduate of the University of Melbourne and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Melbourne and the University of Basel. She is the Holberg Laureate 2026.
