Enlightenment Decentred: Networks, Media, Practices

Enlightenment Decentred: Networks, Media, Practices

Magdalen College, Oxford

(Summer Common Room)

30 September – 2 October 2026

Convenors:

Avi Lifschitz (Oxford) & Anita Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)

A pdf of the programme can be found here.

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
	Berlin – Venice – Madrid – Lisbon – Recife: making the Portuguese 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.