Tag: international

Digital Humanities and Global Inequalities: Call for Contributions

Outputs of Humanities and Social Science projects of transnational interest often include some kind of online product: Virtual archives, websites, multimodal publications, and social media presences are intended to digitally bridge what physically could only be reached by a select few. But how do these outputs actually account for global power asymmetries when inspected in detail? How do they include or exclude Indigenous communities? How do digital outputs claiming to be collaborative or participatory consider global inequalities of digital access and literacy? While the digital offers significant possibilities towards achieving interim justice through methods like digital restitution, digitizing can also lead to virtue signalling and neocolonial forms of extraction, exploitation and exoticization.

With this two-day workshop, we invite communities of knowledge producers into conversation, locally in Tübingen and internationally, who are at the cutting edge of fostering digital epistemic justice but who are rarely able to share the same spaces of scholarly discussion: social and cultural anthropology, digital humanities, ethnomusicology, museums, archives, social media content creators, UI/UX design, web development, software architecture and any related fields facing the challenge of reaching audiences often underserved by Humanities and Social Sciences research outputs. Together, we will critically examine practical implications of digital return in collaborative research: Can or should it be a service for, an offer to, or conversation with (non-)academic communities of data providers, co-producers, and reusers, especially in the Global South? What can collaboratively produced digital research outputs achieve beyond buzzwords that merely reproduce academic extractivism? How can they create impact in and beyond digital spaces to assist in actual societal change?

✨ With this Call for Contributions, we aim to move past theoretical reflection. We want to bring together actual practitioners of digital research outputs across all stages of project progression. We invite contributions of upcoming, ongoing and completed projects of all sizes with concrete digital research outputs beyond traditional academic writing geared towards communities of research participants and data (co-)producers by addressing specific digital media habits or challenges of accessibility.

📌 Contributions can touch upon, but are not limited to:

• Digital Archives to Globalize Access

• Artistic Interventions

• Participatory Ethnography

• Multilingualism

• Decolonizing Knowledge Representation

• CARE Principles of Indigenous Data Governance

• Traditional Knowledge Labels

• Collaborative Authorship

• Web / Software Development for austere environments

📝 Modes of submission

Abstract of 300 words. Please describe aims, research questions and methods of your project, how the project is organized, how collaboration or participatory research is understood and practiced in your project, core characteristics of the digital research outputs and how their development relates to the project (required!)

A (working!) hyperlink to your digital research output and your code repository (if applicable). For unpublished, work-in-progress or deprecated digital research outputs, please provide screenshots, screen recordings, concept art, … for a tangible assessment (required!)

Bionote of 100 words (optional, but appreciated)

📅 Deadline: 20 May 2026

📧 Submit via email to: edda.schwarzkopf@uni-tuebingen.de

📂 Larger files can be securely uploaded to this folder:

https://data.mantrams.eu/s/WEys4s5HGPyae4d

✅ Confirmation of Selection: Mid June 2026

🎥 Modes of workshop participation

Participation (in person and online) is free of charge. Travel & Accommodation needs to be organized and funded by you, though we will gladly help. Online presentation is possible.

🤝 Workshop host and Funding acknowledgement

This workshop is organized and convened by the Digital Humanities Center, the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, and the ERC Synergy Grant project MANTRAMS at the University of Tübingen, namely by Edda Schwarzkopf, Prof. Carola Lorea and Dr. Michael Derntl

New Issue: Norsk arkivforum

Norsk arkivforum Volume 32, Issue 1 (April 2026)
(open access)

From Traditional Archival Knowledge to Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. The More Things Change …
Luciana Duranti

40 år med Noark – et tilbakeblikk med noen betraktninger om veien videre
Øivind Kruse

From Parchment to Metal: Printing Plates as Artifacts of Knowledge and Heritage
Juliane Tiemann

Nåla i høystakken
Arkivbeskriving gjennom 140 år
Synøve Bringslid

Den lille arkivaren med svovelstikkene og jakten på bedre alternativer
Martin Ellingsrud and Leiv Bjelland

Kampen mot løsgjengeriet etter Kristian 5.s Norske Lov
Tine Berg Floater

Kvinnebevegelsens arkiv
Ulla Lise Johansen

Camilla Wergelands reise til Stockholm høsten 1830
Torjus Moland

Den skrivende Emilie Diriks. Om flammer, svik og udødelighet
Nina Mauno Schjønsby

New Issue: Archives and Records

Archives and Records, Volume 47, Issue 1 (2026)

Research Articles

Enhancing healthcare records management: a blockchain-based system for secure and efficient handling of electronic health records
Ahmed Aloui, Samir Bourekkache, Meftah Zouai, Oussama Mekhatria & Okba Kazar

AI-driven transformation of audio archives: from speech recognition to NLP-based summarization and metadata generation
Muslum Yildiz & Fatih Rukancı

Epistemic violence towards the mothers of colonial Métis children: evidence from Belgium’s ‘Africa archives’
John D. McInally, Nicki Hitchcott & Alice Urusaro U. Karekezi

A model of coordination and collaboration for the protection and recovery of archives affected by natural disasters
Jonas Ferrigolo Melo, Juliano Silva Balbon & Moisés Rockembach

Climate change impacts on the recordkeeping practices of community organizations in Bangladesh: toward an adaptive recordkeeping framework
Md Khalid Hossain, Viviane Frings-Hessami, Gillian Christina Oliver, Joy Bhowmik & Jemima Jahan Meem

Recovering women: a case study in academic-archive collaboration
Tom Furber & Patrick Wallis

Book Reviews

Futures of digital scholarly editing, edited by Matt Cohen, Kenneth M. Price and Caterina Bernadini, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2025, 312 pp., 31 b&w illustrations, £20.13 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-5179-1668-8
Alex Healey

Pioneering women archivists in early 20th-century England
by Elizabeth Shepherd, Abingdon, Routledge, 2025, 197 pp., £34.39 (eBook), ISBN 9781003640479.
Arunima Baiju

The Methodist Archivists’ Handbook
by the Methodist Church, 2025, https://media.methodist.org.uk/media/documents/Methodist_Archivists_Handbook.pdf [accessed 11 October 2025]
Daniel Reed

CFP: Symposium – Papering Over the Audiovisual Archives

The FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission together with the Entangled Media Histories invite you to a two-day international symposium to be held at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision on 19-20 November 2026.

The symposium focuses on paper archives and their uses in media historical research. The aim is to foreground these discussions as points of departure for showcasing the value of paper archives in media historiography and their indispensable contributions to appraising and valorising audiovisual archival records.

Call for Papers

The symposium is open to media historians, archivists, artists and media professionals doing archive-based work. We invite papers that shine a light on the use of paper archives in the writing of media histories. Papers that showcase the theoretical and methodological versatility of paper archives in media historical research are particularly welcome. We are interested in contributions that deal with archived paper (paper preserved as historical records) as well as archival paper (catalogues, index cards, maps, etc.). The following topics can serve as a point of inspiration, however proposals do not need to be limited to these:

  • paper archives as signifiers of archiving politics;
  • (re)orientations towards politics of digitisation, preservation and archival
    access;
  • practices of appraising historical records and their archival value;
  • intermediality in archive-based media histories;
  • archival precarity;
  • the gendering of paper archives;
  • paper archives and women’s media histories;
  • paper and (gendered) archival labour;
  • embodied approaches to archives;
  • archival paper (catalogues, inventories, memos, etc.) and its digital afterlives;
  • materiality of paper records;
  • silences in the archives as orientations towards re-sounding and re-visioning the archives;
  • polyvocality in the archives and imaginative processes of historical meaning-making;
  • paper archives as grounds for self-reflexivity in institutional media archives.

Abstracts of 250 words should be sent to msc@fiatifta.org by May 31st, 2026.

Queries can be sent to Alec Badenoch (Utrecht University) or Dana Mustata (University of Groningen).

CFP: Playing with History

PLAYING WITH HISTORY, 15 – 16 JULY

The Centre for Historical Studies at the University of Northampton welcomes submissions for our interdisciplinary and panhistorical conference Playing with History. This event brings together scholars, educators, and practitioners interested in examining how play—across its many forms—shapes, reflects, and reimagines the past. Play is often framed as leisure or diversion, yet it has long been central to cultural expression, technological innovation, learning, and socialization. From ancient board games to contemporary digital worlds, from childhood toys to serious games in education, play offers a rich archive for historical inquiry and creative engagement.

We welcome papers that address (but are not limited to) the following themes:

1. Histories of Games, Toys, and Play

  • Archaeologies and material cultures of play
  • Play and identity (gender, class, race, age)
  • Collecting, preserving, and curating play artefacts
  • Performance as play (acting, dressing up, theatre)

2. History and Gaming

  • Historical representation in tabletop, board, and role-playing games
  • Video games as sites of historical storytelling and memory
  • Game mechanics as historiographical tools
  • Histories of gaming technologies and industries

3. Pedagogy and Play

  • Game-based learning in history education
  • Role-playing and experiential learning in the classroom
  • Designing educational games and playful curricula
  • Critical perspectives on gamification
  • Play as a method of engaging with difficult or contested pasts

We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including history, archaeology, anthropology, education, media studies, game studies, museum studies, theatre studies and more. If you have something to say about play, you are welcome!

We welcome 200-word abstracts for traditional 20-minute papers, but also welcome submissions for more creative formats, such as game demonstrations, poster presentations and workshops. We warmly welcome abstracts from practitioners outside higher education and postgraduate students. 

Please email Rachel.Moss@northampton.ac.uk and Tim.Reinke-Williams@northampton.ac.uk your abstract and contact details by Monday 11 May.

Contact Information

Rachel.Moss@northampton.ac.uk and Tim.Reinke-Williams@northampton.ac.uk 

CFP: 2026 OHA Biennial Conference

Proposals are now being accepted to present at the 2026 OHA Biennial Conference to be held in Tardanya/Adelaide, South Australia, on the lands of the Kaurna people, from 3-6 December. The deadline for submission is 11 May 2026.

The conference is being presented jointly by Oral History Australia (OHA) and Oral History Australia SA/NT. The theme is the very timely ‘Human voices, modern technology: Oral history & authenticity’ and features world-leading oral history and technology expert Doug Boyd as keynote speaker.

Professor Doug Boyd PhD is the Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky Libraries and is a recent president of the Oral History Association. Boyd  envisioned, designed and implemented the open source and free OHMS system, which synchronizes text with audio and video online.  In 2019 Boyd received a Fulbright Scholars Research Grant to collaborate with the National Library of Australia on innovative access to online oral history. He is the author of Oral History: A Very Short Introduction  published by Oxford University Press in 2025. 

For further information go to:

Please note that concession rates will be available for members of Oral History Australia state associations and the National Oral History Association of New Zealand (NOHANZ) who wish to attend the conference.

Contact Information

Conference organisers

Contact Email

conference@oralhistoryaustralia.org.au

URL

https://oralhistoryaustralia.org.au/biennial-conference-2026/cfp/

CFP: 2026 OHA Biennial Conference, Human voices, modern technology: Oral history & authenticity

Deadline  11 May 2026

Oral history is ‘history built around people’ (Paul Thompson). Its methodology is embedded in humanity—it is a person-to-person communication through which the experiences and memories of one are recorded for posterity by another, using best practice tools and techniques. Through oral history, voices are preserved and accents, nuances, vernacular speech, emotive expressions and silences are captured. By recording these very human reactions we can analyse the stories and experiences of diverse groups, including those who in the past have been absent in the historical record.

Underpinning the relationship between interviewer and interviewee are issues of ethics, privacy, permission, informed consent, personal safety, and representation—all principles grounded in authenticity and truth. Rapidly advancing technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be useful and time saving. By incorporating new technology into our practice in a considered and balanced way, we can streamline oral history processes and improve accessibility. Yet AI may also erode the very human connectivity that is integral to oral history interviews and outputs. As AI changes the world around us, oral history practitioners face distinctive challenges: ensuring the security and integrity of data; protecting the personal privacy and safety of interviewees; ensuring copyright, ownership and the authenticity of voice.

We invite papers that consider how new applications, techniques and changes in technology are being used by practitioners in planning, recording, transcribing, archiving, and sharing oral histories. Papers might consider (but are not limited to):

  • ethical considerations
  • transcription technologies
  • challenges underpinning podcasting and videography
  • the long-term storage of interviews, and the
  • potential consequences of hosting projects online.

Alternatively, we are also looking for papers that reaffirm the values that have always been inherent to oral history as a methodology necessitating human interactivity and authentic storytelling, which recognise the importance of continuing to forge connections and safeguard oral histories for the future.

Requirements

All proposals to present at the conference must be submitted using the conference EasyChair submission portal (see details below) no later than 11 May 2026.

We welcome proposals for presentations in a variety of formats and media, including standard paper presentations (typically 20 minutes); short ‘lightning’ accounts of work in progress (typically 5 minutes); participatory workshops; performances; or thematic panels comprising several presenters. Presentations should involve oral history.

If you would like to discuss the format or focus of your presentation before you submit, please send an email to conference@oralhistoryaustralia.org.au and we will send your details to the chair of the Conference Program Committee.

Proposals for presentations / papers / panels / posters should be no more than 200 words (single space, 12 point font in Times New Roman) and must include at the top of the page, your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), postal address, phone number and email address, the title for your presentation/panel, the sub-theme/s your work best connects to, and the presentation format (standard 20 minute paper; 5 minute ‘lightning’ account of work in progress; thematic panel; performance; or participatory workshop).

Presenters will be encouraged to submit papers to the refereed, online Oral History Australia journal, Studies in Oral History.

Submission

New proposals should be uploaded to EasyChair via this link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=oha2026.

To use this online conference management system, you will need to create an author account (a simple process that we have used in previous conferences) and then submit your proposal by uploading it as a PDF document (with full details as listed above).

If you are unfamiliar with EasyChair, please follow the instructions available at: https://www.easychair.org/docs/how_to_submit.

If you are unable to use this system, please email your proposal as a PDF attachment to conference@oralhistoryaustralia.org.au.

CFP: Reimagining “Modern” Heritage in Africa, Nsibidi: A Journal of African Heritage

Background to the Theme

The historiography of 20th-century modernism has historically marginalized the Global South, frequently framing Africa’s modern heritage as derivative, or strictly a product of exogenous colonial and post-colonial interventions (Le Roux, 2003; Uduku, 2006). For our inaugural issue, we turn our attention to a critically under-theorized and rapidly disappearing subset of the continent’s history: the Modern Heritage of Africa.

The material and socio-cultural realities of this heritage are vast and complex, ranging from the Afro-Brazilian typologies of West Africa and the brutalist university campuses of the independence era (Herz et al., 2015), to colonial railway networks, early industrial mining towns, and the mid-century cinemas and radio stations that gave birth to new urban cultures. Currently, mainstream heritage discourse often struggles to adequately conserve or interpret these sites, largely due to an over-reliance on Eurocentric conservation frameworks, such as the Venice Charter, which traditionally prioritize static material authenticity.

In response, and guided by the decentering mandate of the Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage (2022) alongside the recently adopted Nairobi Outcome on Heritage and Authenticity (2025), this issue argues that preserving the memory of these sites requires a profound epistemological shift. The Cape Town Document underscores the imperative to untether the concept of the “modern” from its Eurocentric origins, advocating for equitable, expanded definitions that account for plural modernities and multiple narratives. Complementing this, the Nairobi framework establishes that African heritage is dynamic, community-centered, and intricately links the tangible with the intangible. Consequently, we must re-examine these contentious structures not as inert, fossilized relics, but as active sites of socio-spatial negotiation whose authenticity is continuously evolving.

The “Nsibidi” Approach

We challenge the prevailing notion that “Modern” heritage is strictly a Western phenomenon or a direct import. Contributors from across disciplines: history, anthropology, architecture, urban studies, and cultural heritage are invited to analyze these sites critically through the lens of African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), the Cape Town Document, and the pluralistic framework of the Nairobi Outcome.

We ask scholars and practitioners to consider questions such as:

  • How do we interpret the “authenticity” and integrity of modernist structures when their spatial meaning and utility have been entirely reimagined by local communities?
  • How do modernist structures and infrastructural networks interface with the spiritual geography and traditional land-use practices of their contexts?
  • How have communities indigenized colonial spaces and technologies through ritual, informal urbanism, or adaptive reuse?
  • What do oral histories and archival research reveal about the indigenous labor, vernacular craftsmanship, and lived experiences that built and sustained these modern spaces?

“When the music changes, so does the dance.” — Hausa Proverb

In the spirit of this proverb, we seek to understand how African heritage practice dances with modernity, adapting to and transforming the physical and cultural remnants of the 20th century.

Sub-Themes

We welcome original research articles, case studies, conservation reports, and critical essays that engage with the following sub-themes:

  • Evolving Authenticities & Decentered Modernities: Applying the Cape Town Document and the Nairobi Outcome to the preservation, reconceptualization, and interpretation of 20th-century built heritage.
  • Architectural & Spatial Realities: Critical assessments of “Tropical Modernism,” civic monuments, and the indigenization of 20th-century architecture.
  • Infrastructural Memory: The social and cultural histories of colonial railways, ports, industrial sites, and segregationist urban masterplans.
  • Sites of Cultural Production: The legacy and preservation of mid-century cinemas, radio stations, printing presses, and post-independence cultural hubs.
  • Difficult Heritage: Managing, interpreting, and decolonizing sites associated with pain, apartheid, or colonial extraction.
  • Intangible Modernities & Oral History: Documenting the voices, labor narratives, and newly forged urban traditions associated with 20th-century modernization.

Language Policy

Nsibidi is committed to epistemic justice and encourages the use of indigenous languages for key theoretical, spatial, and cultural concepts. Terms without direct English equivalents should be retained in their original language and explained contextually within the text.

Submission Guidelines

All submissions will undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review process. We encourage submissions from academic researchers, heritage practitioners, and spatial designers.

  • Abstract Submission: Please submit an abstract (approx. 250–300 words) outlining your proposed paper, methodology, and relevance to the theme, along with a brief author bio.
  • Final Paper: Accepted abstracts will be invited to submit full manuscripts. Manuscripts should be formatted according to the journal’s style guide (provided upon abstract acceptance) and stripped of all identifying information to ensure a blind review. High-resolution archival photographs, maps, and diagrams are highly encouraged.

Important Dates

  • Abstract Submission Deadline: May 15, 2026
  • Notification of Acceptance: June 1, 2026
  • Final Paper Submission Deadline: August 15, 2026

Contact & Inquiries

Please send all abstracts, full manuscript submissions, and inquiries to the editorial team at:

journal@nsibidi.institute

References

  • Folkers, A. (2010). Modern architecture in Africa. Springer.
  • Herz, M., Frei, I., Hunt, M., & Ritz, C. (Eds.). (2015). African modernism: The architecture of independence. Ghana, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Zambia. Park Books.
  • Le Roux, H. (2003). The networks of tropical architecture. The Journal of Architecture, 8(3), 337–354.
  • MoHoA (Modern Heritage of Africa). (2022). The Cape Town Document on Modern Heritage. University of Cape Town / UCL.
  • Ndlovu, S. (2014). African heritage and the limits of traditional conservation charters. Journal of Heritage Stewardship, 11(2), 45–62.
  • Uduku, O. (2006). Modernist architecture and ‘the tropical’ in West Africa: The tropical architecture movement in West Africa, 1948–1970. Habitat International, 30(3), 396–411.
  • UNESCO & African World Heritage Fund. (2025). The Nairobi Outcome on Heritage and Authenticity. International Conference on Cultural Heritage in Africa, Nairobi, Kenya.

Contact Email

journal@nsibidi.institute

URL

http://journal.nsibidi.institute

Recent Issue: Archeion (Poland)

Archeion, 126, 2025
(English and Polish)
(open access)

Konarski Lectures

Getting to Digital
Anne J. Gilliland

Archiwa – Pamięć – Zaufanie

Memory, archives and the Web
Jeannette A. Bastian

State Archives in the digital environment: the essential reconfiguration of the modus operandi
Daniel J. Caron, Pierre R. Desrochers

Zaufanie, wrażliwość i delikatność w perspektywie archiwum społecznego na przykładzie Centrum Badań Mniejszości Niemieckiej w Opolu
Magdalena Wiśniewska-Drewniak, Adriana Kapała, Agnieszka Rosa, Kamila Siuda

Studia i materiały

Service-learning jako metoda dydaktyczna wspierająca kształcenie archiwistów w zakresie reagowania na potrzeby otoczenia społecznego instytucji archiwalnych: możliwości i wyzwania
Agnieszka Rosa, Anna Pieczka-Węgorkiewicz, Monika Cołbecka

Działalność popularyzacyjna i edukacyjna Archiwum Narodowego Katalonii – przegląd wybranych inicjatyw
Zuzanna Jaśkowska-Józefiak

Wielopoziomowe archiwa cyfrowe jako narzędzie zrównoważonego zarządzania zasobami cyfrowymi
Aneta Januszko-Szakiel

Shadrack KatuuLocally grounded competency framework for records and archives management in Kenya
Shadrack Katuu

Tematyka archiwalna na łamach czasopisma „African Journal of Library, Archives and Information Science” w latach 2000–2024
Magdalena Niedźwiedzka

Omówienia i recenzje

Victoria Hoyle, The Remaking of Archival Values, ISBN: 978-1-03236-121-5, Routledge, London 2023, pp. 242
Zilong Zhong

Robert Stępień, Archiwa narodowe w Wielkiej Brytanii. Współczesna organizacja, zasób i działalność, ISBN: 978-83-227-9809-6, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej, Lublin 2024, ss. 335
Marcin Smoczyński

Archiwistyka Bohdana Ryszewskiego. Prace wybrane, wybór, wstęp i opracowanie A. Żeglińska, ISBN: 978-83-8206-671-5, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, Gdańsk 2024, ss. 484
Robert Stępień

Cristina Vatulescu, Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and their Challenges, ISBN: 9781503641020 (paperback), Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 2024, pp. 291
Christopher M. Laico

Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives, eds. G.E. Kirsch, R. García, C. Burns Allen, W.P. Smith, ISBN: 978-0-8093-38955 (paperback), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 2023, pp. 321
Tiah Edmunson-Morton

Kronika naukowa

36. posiedzenie Europejskiej Grupy Archiwalnej i 49. posiedzenie Europejskiej Rady Archiwistów Narodowych Warszawa, 3–4 kwietnia 2025
Kamila Pawełczyk-Dura

DLM Forum Members’ Meeting, Gdańsk, 4 June 2025
Ludovic Delépine

CFP: Edinburgh Bibliographical Seminar and Workshop: Catalogues and Registers as Evidence in the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology

The inaugural Edinburgh Bibliographical Seminar and Workshop (EBSW) seeks proposals on the theme of ‘Catalogues and Registers as Evidence in the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology’. The event will occur at the University of Edinburgh from 20 July to 24 July, 2026, the week after the joint meeting of the History of Science Society and the European Society for the History of Science.

This interdisciplinary seminar aims to investigate the significant potential of historical registers of commodities, books, and borrowing as sources for the study of the history of mathematics, science, and technology, as well as intellectual history. Beyond their practical applications, catalogues and registers of books can reveal the intellectual landscape of a particular time and place. They can show which books were available, what was considered important, and how knowledge was organised and categorised. By examining these registers, catalogues, and records, we can track the circulation of ideas across disciplines and regions. This examination can provide context for understanding the development of scientific and mathematical thought. As the Books and Borrowings, 1750-1830, project has demonstrated, careful attention to the social context of registers of borrowing can thicken our descriptions and enrich our understanding of how knowledge has been used. Linked to the vision of the great or universal library, the concept of secular universalism has long been thought to spread its legitimisation through the globalisation of modern mathematics. Building on Kant, universalist logicians and philosophers lay claim to a secular universal mode of reasoning that is common to all minds, displacing previous evangelical universalist modes such as those associated with Leibniz, and non-universal epistemes. Becoming widespread from the globalisation of curricular reforms like William Whewell’s or the Madras system, this secular universal conception demanded a way to address the accumulated knowledge and traditions of the past to clear space for its own epistemic break. That is, modern, global mathematics is a site where ideas must somehow contend with the past before secular universalism can become universal.

In a collaborative and hands-on set of workshops, EBSW participants will be invited to examine the books and registers at the University of Edinburgh that shaped the intellectual landscapes of the Enlightenment to modern eras, with a particular emphasis on the changing relationships between mathematics, natural history, and theology. Participants will pre-circulate drafts of a work in progress of around 2,000-3,000 words, which the group will discuss and refine in seminar meetings during the week. Based on these meetings, we will develop a communal sense of the methodologies for using catalogues as evidence for the histories of mathematics, science, and technology. Selected contributions will be invited for an edited conference volume addressing larger methodological questions in these areas.

Proposals should demonstrate, investigate, complicate, or challenge the use of catalogues or registers as a kind of historical evidence around a specific corpus or text. Papers will ideally benefit from the materials in the University of Edinburgh libraries, which have strong books and with catalogue evidence from the 16th century to the present day. Potential topics may include:

  • natural theology, religious history, or early modern thought and their relationship to mathematics, science, and technology or the history of ideas
  • near and far east, ancient and contemporary history or orientalizing images or practices as related to the image of modernity
  • mathematical models, specimens, and exhibits as pedagogical and research tools in and outside of libraries
  • technical, professional and literary texts: reading modes and evidence of political and social change as they relate to the formation of disciplines
  • global library history, collectors and collections, and contemporary library use
  • re-considerations of texts, truth, objectivity, and meaning during the interwar period particularly regarding mathematics, science, and technology

Adrian Johns will deliver an opening talk ‘Registers and the Dream of Universal Information: A Selective History’ which is co-sponsored by the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society.

Applications are due by 21 April, 2026, and should include a proposed title and abstract, a brief two to three sentence bio, and an indication of the applicant’s financial needs for travel. With funding from a UKRI-ERC Horizon grant, the EBSW expects to be able to support travel expenses for many of the participants.

The application form is forthcoming and will be linked at https://sigma.mathsworlds.org/activities/ebsw/ 

Contact Dr J.P. Ascher with questions at jascher@ed.ac.uk

Contact Information

Dr J. P. Ascher, UKRI-ERC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh

Contact Email

jascher@ed.ac.uk

URL

https://sigma.mathsworlds.org/activities/ebsw/