Carolyn Twomey, assistant professor of history, will give a lecture, “Oil and Water: Baptismal Things in the Early Medieval Insular World,” at 5:15 p.m. March 19 in Louise Pound Hall 124 at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Twomey will share insights from research related to her current book project, which examines the places, objects and things of the baptismal sacrament between 600 and 1200 AD. Twomey is the newest faculty member in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies program. Twomey’s research is highly interdisciplinary, focusing on the history of cultural and religious change in the pre-modern world as seen through the ritual objects and physical environments of conversion. Her lecture will be related to her current monograph project, “Living Water, Living Stone: A Material History of Baptism in Early Modern England.” The objects she studies include things like liturgical handbooks, Roman baptisteries, rivers in the landscape, blessed water and oils of anointing, and the stone baptismal font.

The talk is free and open to the public.