The Centre's inaugural conference was a great success, with many excellent papers including those from the plenary speakers, Leah Price and Peter Stallybrass. For details of the conference, and ongoing activities of the CMT, including its blog, see the conference website.

Professor Peter Spufford FBA is the leading medieval monetary historian of the day. His work has transformed our understanding of money in later medieval Europe and inspired and stimulated a generation of historians and numismatists. In particular, his Money and its use in Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1988) was the first full-scale study of the history of money, not merely coinage, to have been written for medieval Europe, and it remains the standard work in this field. In its preparation he created the innovative Handbook of Medieval Exchange (Royal Historical Society, 1986). He continued to explore some of the main themes further in Power and Profit. The Merchant in Medieval Europe (Thames and Hudson, 2002).

His colleagues Nicholas Mayhew, Martin Allen, Lucia Travaini and Arent Pol seek to celebrate his contribution at a Symposium in Cambridge, the proceedings of which we plan to publish subsequently as a Festschrift. The meeting and its subsequent publication will be tightly focussed on the subject matter of Spufford's work, and will take as its theme a reconsideration of the principal strands in his Money and its Use book.

The Symposium will be held over two days (16-17 Sept. 2010) in Professor Spufford's own College, Queens';. There will be 13 papers, each of 30 minutes plus 10 minutes of discussion. The papers will cover a variety of topics including minting and mint organisation, mint output and money supply, financial networks and trade, the role of Italian bankers, merchants and mint masters elsewhere in Europe during the Commercial Revolution and later, the effects of the 'silver famine'; of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the use of commodity money in Northern Europe.

Accommodation can be arranged in Queens'; College at £42.65 per night en suite (£33.10 per head in a double room en suite). Two lunches, and tea and coffee throughout the proceedings will be provided at £50.00 a head. A special dinner will be held in Queens'; on 16 September to honour Peter and Margaret Spufford, and is open to all at a cost of £45.00. Students of Cambridge University will be able to attend free of charge, without lunch or dinner provided.

Bookings for ths Symposium are now open and online or by contacting the Symposium organizer Martin Allen to pay by cheque (made payable to the 'University of Cambridge'). Bookings will close on Monday 6 September 2010. Please address any queries about booking and payment to Laura Cousens at the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge (lc360@cam.ac.uk). Any queries about the Symposium are to be addressed to Dr Martin Allen, Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge CB2 1RB, tel. 0044 (0)1223 332915; mra25@cam.ac.uk.