Renaissance and Reformation at the University of Canterbury

Chris Jones and the Canterbury Roll

This site highlights a selection of the material used in the Macmillan Brown Library rare book seminars that supported the Renaissance and Reformation Europe courses (HIST253 / HIST373).

These seminars, designed and taught by Dr Chris Jones (1977 - 2024) and the Heritage Collections Librarian, were an opportunity for UC History students to explore items connected with the Renaissance and the Reformation held in the University of Canterbury Library’s Special Collections.

Working in groups students from HIST253 selected an item from each of the seminars to contribute to a short oral presentation introducing the item to their fellow students. HIST373 students individually provided a more in depth response to an item from each seminar. These presentations were graded by Dr Jones and contributed to the students final grade.

Rosamund Oates of Manchester Metropolitan University, was a visiting academic (Canterbury Fellow) at UC in 2024. Dr Oates arrived at Canterbury before the courses were cancelled due to the sudden passing of Dr. Chris Jones,

Along with Renaissance and Reformation (HIST 253/373) an Independent Course of Study (ICOS), was planned for 2024. This ICOS  would provide students an opportunity for more in-depth bibliographic research into a selection of the material used in the Renaissance and Reformation course. This option was also unfortunately cancelled. Despite this Dr Oates, Damian Cairns (Heritage Collections Librarian) and the ICOS students decided to proceed with voluntary sessions.

The following pages on this site show the items used over the years in the Renaissance and Reformation tutorials at the Macmillan Brown Library, as well as a series of reports, written by Dr. Rosamund Oates and the 2024 ICOS students, Jasmine Ryan and Harriet Thompson .