The fourth annual Northern Early Modern Network conference will be held on 11th and 12th June 2024 in Edinburgh, hosted by the University of Edinburgh.

Call for Papers

‘Ipsa scientia potestas est:’ Cultures of Knowledge, Learning, and Imagination in the Early Modern World.

We are pleased to announce that the fourth annual Northern Early Modern Network conference will be hosted by the University of Edinburgh. We are inviting postgraduate research candidates and early career researchers that are studying the early modern period (c.1400-1800) to present a 20-minute paper on their research. The conference will showcase the exciting work from across a broad academic field of art history, history, literature, music, and theology. For this year we are promoting the exploration of knowledge, learning, and imagination, including but not limited to: 

  •  Acquisition and circulation of useful knowledge. 
  • Archives and the early modern world.
  • Humanist scholarship and renaissance learning of arts and sciences. 
  • Imagination and visualisation of the early modern world.
  • Inventions of gender, national, and racial identities. 
  • Marginalised communities and the writing of new histories. 
  • Political and religious thought. 
  • Publication and consumption of material.
  • Reading, languages, and soundscapes.
  • Textual cultures of conspiracy, prophecy, and philosophy. 
  • The early modern professor, student, and university.
  • The role of translation in the acquisition of knowledge.
  • The writing of history and theology in the early modern. 

We welcome individual paper proposals (abstracts of 200 words) and panel proposals (abstracts of 600 words). For lightning papers (max 5 minutes) submit a short expression of interest. Please direct all queries and/or proposals to the Events Committee, via northernearlymodern@gmail.com. All proposals on the early modern will be considered. Proposals should be sent by Friday 15th March 2024 and be accompanied by a short participant biography (max 100 words). All speakers will be informed of the outcome by 28th March 2024, ahead of the full programme which will be published on 26th April 2024.