Ozmoot 2024 – Above All Shadows: Tolkien & uncertain futures

The Australian Tolkien smial, Hern Ennorath, along with Signum University and The Tolkien Society, invites you to join with Tolkien fans from all over the country in the second Australasian Moot: Ozmoot 2024.

If you can't attend in-person, please join us online.

The conference will include papers, panels, workshops and other creative expressions on Tolkien's work, as well as sharing evening meals and fellowship with a quiz and masquerade.

We are excited to announce that our keynote speaker will be Corey Olsen (longtime Tolkien podcaster and Signum University founder).

Our theme this year is ‘Above all shadows’: Tolkien and uncertain futures.

J.R.R. Tolkien’s legendarium evolved over his lifetime, during which he simultaneously enjoyed the happiness and fulfilment brought by his family, career and love, while enduring the darker challenges of being an orphan, traumatic war service and the loss of his close friends.

His stories resonate with us because of Tolkien’s implicit message that life offers ‘hope without guarantees’. We can never know how things will turn out, nor what the future will hold. However, Tolkien repeatedly compels us to presume that to despair is a mistake in the face of the unknown, from Sam on the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, to Húrin at the Fens of Serech, from Aragorn’s dilemma at Parth Galen to Turin’s lifetime struggles.

Register to attend in-person or online

We invite delegates (both online and in-person) to propose papers, panels, workshops, and creative expressions by December 1 2023. Submit your proposal