Enlightenment Decentred: Networks, Media, Practices
Conference
30 September – 2 October 2026
Magdalen College, Oxford - (Summer Common Room)
Convenors: Avi Lifschitz (Oxford) & Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
WEDNESDAY, 30 September
| 9.00 | Welcome & Introduction Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) & Avi Lifschitz (Oxford) |
| 9.15 | Session 1 Paris – Potsdam – Lausanne: the incomplete rehabilitation of Emperor Julian - Avi Lifschitz (Oxford) Caracas – London – Istanbul: cosmopolitanism and patriotism in the life and readings of an Enlightened, revolutionary criollo - Mónica Bolufer Peruga (European University Institute, Florence) |
| 11.15 | Session 2 Rome – Beijing – Seoul: a knowledge network and its media, 1644–1783 - Eun-Jeung Lee (Freie Universität Berlin) A methodology for intellectual independence: Enlightened strategies for modern knowledge in Guatemala, 1790s–1820s - Nicola Miller (University College London) |
| 13.30 | Session 3 Europe – the Sinosphere: the Eurasian Enlightenment in two keys - Chenxi Tang (University of California, Berkeley) An English Enlightenment from Lausanne and Göttingen to St Petersburg and Pennsylvania: Gibbon and Bentham in Venturi’s shadow - Brian Young (Oxford) |
THURSDAY, 1 October
| 9.15 | Session 4 Oviedo – Polling – Parnassus: alternative routes to an Enlightened ars critica - Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin) Eger – Vienna – Rome: Catholicism and improvement across borders in the Enlightenment (1750s–90s) - László Kontler (Central European University) |
| 11.15 | Session 5 Making the Sephardi Jewish Enlightenment in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic - Alicia Montoya (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen) Pierre Bayle: global history as Christian apologetics. Rotterdam – St. Andrews – Paris – Göttingen – Calcutta - Dmitri Levitin (Oxford) |
| 14.15 | Session 6 When the nomads met the naturalists: knowing and narrativizing the steppe from the Volga to the Amur - Shiru Lim (Leiden) Florence – Châlons – Basel: Enlightenment projects of poor relief - Damiano Bardelli (Oxford) |
| 16.15 | The Voltaire Foundation: an introduction - Tom Wynn (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford) |
Friday, 2 October
| 9.15 | Session 7 Berlin, Copenhagen and beyond: educational reform, public Enlightenment, and authority - Jonas Thorup Thomsen (Oxford) & Olivier Higgins (Oxford) Enlightenment by comparison: Scotland and Naples revisited and continued - John Robertson (Cambridge) John Pocock’s decentred Enlightenments - Richard Whatmore (St. Andrews) |
| 12.00 | Concluding discussion |
Generously supported by the John Fell OUP Fund, University of Oxford, and the Division of International Affairs, Freie Universität Berlin.