History and Commemoration: Cycling the German Peasants’ War of 1525 | AAH & Holberg Prize Lecture Series
Description
Join the Australian Academy of the Humanities, in partnership with the Holberg Prize and The University of Sydney, for History and Commemoration: Cycling the German Peasants’ War of 1525, delivered by Emeritus Regius Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA.
Lyndal Roper is the 2026 Holberg Prize Laureate, for recognition of her pioneering work on early modern European history.
To write the history of the Peasants’ War of 1525, I decided to visit every major site of the War, because I was convinced that the landscape had to play a role in the history of this Revolution. We needed an environmental history of the Peasants’ War. And so I bought a bike and set off…
What I discovered, too, was how differently the Peasants’ War was understood in the former Communist East Germany and in West Germany, 35 years after ‘reunification’.
Light refreshments will be provided prior to the lecture.
Friday 25 September 2026
12.30 - 2.30pm AEST
The Law Foyer, New Law Building
The University of Sydney
The event is in association with the University of Sydney School of Humanities
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Professor Lyndal Roper FAHA FBA
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 is 'Summer of Fire and Blood, a history of the German Peasants’ War (1524-6') 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. Image: Historian Lyndal Roper FAHA, photographed by John Cairns via the Holberg Prize.
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