“Enlightenment Projects” is the first international conference and workshop event organised by The Berlin-Oxford Enlightenment Hub. Constituted in 2018, the Enlightenment Hub is one of the 29 collaborative projects to have been awarded funding as part of the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership in 2018. The Enlightenment Hub brings together Oxford and the Berlin universities and allows them to pool their significant strengths in this area spanning the disciplines of English, History, Philosophy, Theology, Modern Languages, History of Science, Social and Political Sciences. The collaboration also involves institutions such as the Voltaire Foundation and University museums and collections, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, amongst others.
Over three days, “Enlightenment Projects” brings together leading scholars of the Enlightenment and the Eighteenth Century more broadly to discuss the Enlightenment origins of concepts and practices which shaped and continue to inflect our modern worldview, from popular sovereignty, religious toleration, and literary and scientific practices to free markets, resource extraction, and projects for (national) improvement. Alongside smaller workshop sessions on themes like “Networks and Networking”, “Genres and Media” and “Legacies of the Enlightenment”, there will be an evening roundtable event and wine reception, “Writing the Enlightenment(s)”, on Monday 30th September to celebrate the official launch the Hub.
Following this first event in Oxford, there will be a second conference with the theme of “Enlightenment Futures” in Berlin in March 2020, looking particularly at opportunities to develop collaborations between digital humanities projects in both cities and involving the great university libraries in Berlin and Oxford.
Participation is free but registration is necessary. For further information, or to register for the event, please contact: barry.murnane@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.