Fragile Knowledge. Dealing with precarious and contested knowledge in premodern times. (Fragiles Wissen. Zum Umgang mit prekärem und umstrittenem Wissen in der Vormoderne.)
15–17 October 2026, IBZ, Kiellinie 5, Kiel University (Christian Albrechts University of Kiel)

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2026

Organizers: ROOTS Cluster of Excellence, subcluster Knowledge: Andreas Schwab, Gerald Schwedler, Islème Sassi

Dealing with knowledge is an existential driving force of mankind. Knowledge – understood in a broad sense – is not always equally significant: How valuable and useful is fragile knowledge considered to be? Who determines its relevance? Is certain knowledge only recognized by parts of a community, while others question or doubt it? Where does it serve as a driving force for further knowledge production, and where is it accepted as fixed? What role does its fragility play in all these questions?

Following the conference “Knowledge Spaces. Constructions and dynamics of knowledge in antiquity,” held at Kiel University in autumn 2024, which initiated a productive exchange on the spaces of knowledge production and reception, on forms of knowledge, actors, and practices of knowledge transfer (see the report: www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/fdkn-151403), the second Kiel conference “Fragile Knowledge” focuses on the uncertain and indeterminate aspects of knowledge. While the theoretical foundations and their application in contemporary social and scholarly debates have already been the subject of in-depth research, examining this multifaceted phenomenon in the premodern world remains a desideratum.

To submit a proposal, please send an abstract (max. 3,500 characters), a short biography (max. 800 characters), and your contact details by 31 March 2026 to Dr Wong Tsz (wong-tsz@email.uni-kiel.de).
Keynote: Prof. Dr Martin Mulsow—Professor of Knowledge Cultures of the European Early Modern Period and Director of the Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt.
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by mid-April. Accommodation costs can be covered; travel costs will most likely be covered after consultation.
Conference languages: German, English, French, Italian

Organisation
Prof. Dr Islème Sassi, Prof. Dr Andreas Schwab, Prof. Dr Gerald Schwedler (Kiel University)

Contact
Dr. Wong Tsz (wong-tsz@email.uni-kiel.de)

The complete Call for Papers in German and English can be found here as PDF-Download.

URSPRUNG UND ENTWICKLUNG
Sehnsucht und Suche nach den Anfängen, 1750–1850
Zweites Wellhöfer-Kolloquium
Freitag/Samstag, 4./5. Dezember 2026
Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg 

Einreichungsfrist: 28. Februar 2026

Veranstaltet von/organized by: 
Damian Dombrowski (Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg), Ulrich Pfisterer (Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, München)

Der Rückbezug auf ältere Kulturstufen gehört zum Grundinventar jeder Zivilisation. Doch seit dem mittleren 18. Jahrhundert kommt es zu fundamentalen Veränderungen in der Art dieses Rekurses: Nicht nur vermeintliche oder tatsächliche Höhepunkte innerhalb der eigenen Vergangenheit ziehen die Aufmerksamkeit von Forschern, Literaten und Künstlern auf sich, sondern vermehrt auch Frühformen gesellschaftlicher und künstlerischer Formierung. Diesem ‚originistischen Verlangen‘ widmet sich die diesjährige Ausgabe des Wellhöfer-Kolloquiums, das alle zwei Jahre Forschungsfragen zur Kunst- und Kulturgeschichte zwischen 1750 und 1850 aus interdisziplinärer Perspektive adressiert. Es wendet sich an bildgestützte und philologische Wissenschaften gleichermaßen.

Die Einladung zur Tagung ist verbunden mit einer Übernahme der Kosten für Anreise und Übernachtung. Die Veranstalter bitten um Vorschläge für 20-minütige Referate in englischer oder deutscher Sprache. Dazu senden Sie bitte ein Abstract (max. 2000 Zeichen einschl. LZ) und einen kurzen CV (max. 1.500 Zeichen einschl. LZ) bis 28. Februar 2026 per E-Mail an: Ulrich.Pfisterer@lrz.uni-muenchen.de und damian.dombrowski@uni-wuerzburg.de. Die Benachrichtigung über die Teilnahme erfolgt bis 15. März 2026.

Den ausführlichen Call for Papers in deutscher und englischer Sprache finden Sie hier als PDF-Download.

Historical Languages and AI
International Conference
Berlin/hybrid, 5-6 March 2026

The Daidalos team warmly invites you to take part in the two-day conference “Historical Languages and AI”, held in the Auditorium of the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. We look forward to an interdisciplinary exchange with researchers who bring a deep interest in digital methods for text analysis.

While the Daidalos project primarily focuses on Classical Philology, we are excited to welcome contributions that reach beyond Latin and Ancient Greek as part of this enriching exchange, for example on Old and Middle French or Old Church Slavonic.

Contributions from several disciplines, including Computational Literary Studies, Digital Classics, and Computational Linguistics, will address topics such as the application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods, the training and fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs), their evaluation for historical languages, and additional tasks such as LLM-based translation.

Alongside a panel on LLMs and one on specific NLP applications, the programme includes two panels on datasets and data augmentation and a final panel on applications beyond research. There will be ample space for networking and discussion, with refreshments provided during the breaks.

The breadth of topics represented in the programme explicitly addresses participants from the Digital Humanities, English Studies, Classics (Greek and Latin), Romance Studies, Slavic Studies, Library and Information Science, and the GLAM sector.

Researchers from text-based disciplines and neighbouring fields who are interested in digital methods and the scholarly use of AI are also very welcome to join us — either on-site or online.

Venue
Auditorium of the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Center at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Please note that the interactive formats, such as the speed-dating session and the workshops, take place on-site only. Please bring your own laptop if you plan to attend a workshop.

Registration
Participation in the conference is free of charge. To help us plan and keep you informed, please proceed to the registration form.

Organization 
Daidalos Projekt: https://daidalos-projekt.de/projectDetails/ 

Contact
daidalos-projekt@hu-berlin.de 

The complete program and further information can be found at the conference website.

Intelligence in historical perspective 
Concepts of human cognition, imagination, and wisdom in historical and intercultural comparison 
Interdisciplinary conference at the Department of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Nuremberg (UTN) 
Nuremberg, November 19–21, 2026

Submission Deadline: April 1, 2026

From a historical and cross-cultural perspective, the conference asks how human cognition and judgment have been understood, described, and evaluated in different eras and cultures—and what these historical concepts can contribute to today's debates on intelligence. The conference puts forward the thesis for discussion that what can be described as intelligence is not something that is given, but something that differs and develops historically and culturally. A particular focus is on the alterity of pre-modern and non-European concepts that challenge common modern models of intelligence or contribute to their historicization.

The conference is aimed at scholars from the fields of pre-modern philology, literary and cultural studies, the history of philosophy, science, and religion, and related areas. Contributions from scholars in the early stages of their careers are welcome.

For the plenary lectures, we are looking for contributions that raise central questions about the understanding of human intelligence from a historical or cross-cultural perspective and stimulate interdisciplinary discussion. The plenary lectures are scheduled to last 30 minutes with 15 minutes for discussion.
For the afternoon workshops, we particularly invite early-career scholars (doctoral candidates and postdocs) to present their ongoing work or conceptual considerations in short presentations of 15–20 minutes. We welcome philological or cultural-historical text analysis or comparative contributions that focus on historical concepts of cognition and mental faculties.
Abstracts (approx. 300 words) should outline the research question, context, and approach. In addition to purely historical contributions, we also welcome submissions that open up a dialogue between historical perspectives and current debates on human and artificial intelligence.
Please send abstracts with a short CV by April 1, 2026, to gyburg.uhlmann@utn.de.

Organisation
Prof. Dr. Gyburg Uhlmann
Founding Chair
Department of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and Full Professor of Classics with Special Focus on Greek Studies
University of Technology Nuremberg
Technische Universität Nürnberg
Phone +49 911 9274 – 0
https://www.utn.de

The complete Call for Papers can be found here as a PDF-Download.

Archaeology of "Lost Places”. Abandonment – Afteruse – Change from the Medieval Period to the Present
International Conference of the Austrian Society for Medieval and Modern Archaeology
Stadtschlaining (Burgenland/Austria), 7–10 April 2026

Registration deadline: 16 February 2026

"Lost place" is a term generally understood to refer to recently abandoned places or buildings left to decay, such as industrial ruins, decommissioned train stations, deserted villages, or disused hospitals and hotels. Such places exert a special fascination for many people. This interest ranges from "dark tourism" to short-term repurposing as an event venue or as a space of interaction for subcultures, such as the graffiti or rave scenes. In a broader sense, a "lost place" is also a place that is barely or no longer anchored in the collective memory, but which, through this forgottenness, can also lend itself to new uses and interpretations.

Conference Site
Friedensburg Schlaining, Rochusplatz 1, A 7461 Stadtschlaining, Austria

Registration
Online-Registration is by February, 16^th, 2026 the latest (please note: only those persons who have paid the conference fee are considered "registered").

Link to Online-Registration

Contact
tagung@oegmn.or.at 

The complete program and further information can be found at the conference website.

Blood, water or DNA? Family beyond (biological) relatedness
Session of the AG Geschlechterforschung at the Archäologiekongress
Bonn, 24 September 2026

Deadline for submissions: 31 March 2026

Family, ancestry, and marriage have always been subjects of archaeology and are also a recurrent theme in archaeological gender studies. Over the last two decades particularly archaeogenetics, but also other scientific methods, have reveald promising new results on kinship in archaeologically accessible populations. However, kinship and family usually supersede purely genetic descent, and parenthood, marriages and partnerships have taken place in many more forms than those that have long been discussed in our field.

There is growing awareness that a family can be constituted by social relationships just as well as descent. Adoptive parents, foster siblings, wet nurses, alloparenthood, education in institutions such as monasteries or in trusted families are just some of the possibilities of kinship and family that genetic methods cannot identify.

The subject of gender plays an important role in the investigation of family and kinship as well. In the upcoming session of the AG Geschlechterforschung we will explore this intersection. 

Additionally, we also welcome presentations dealing with current research in the field of gender archaeology.

We are planning presentations in German or English of 20 minutes each. Please send your abstract of approximately 250 to 400 words to the following email address: AGGender2026@gmx.de). Submission deadline: 31.3.2026.

Organisation
Jana Esther Fries, Clara Schaller

Contact
AGGender2026@gmx.de

The complete Call for Papers in German and English can be found here as PDF-Download.

CHAT Hope
Annual Conference of the Contemporary und Historical Archaeology in Theory group (CHAT)
Innsbruck, 29-31 October 2026

Deadline for submissions: 28 February 2026

In times of permanent crisis – political, ecological, social, economic and existential – it is urgent to talk seriously about the idea of hope. Whether we believe the “doomsday clock” is at 89 seconds to midnight or already five minutes past, the monumental path of destruction ahead appears overwhelming. It is easy to feel lost – yet, hope persists, rooted in past and current successes that envision genuine alternatives, both in defiance and care.

We seek archaeological case studies, theoretical reflections, and creative formats that trace the material and emotional geographies of hope in sites such as: peace, disarmament and anti-nuclear protests, anti-deportation and abolition activisms, environmental action, utopian and communal settlements, workers’ and unemployed movements, queer and crip activism, indigenous empowerment, resistance in contexts of mass violence, youth camps, or countless other contexts where people envisioned alternative worlds. We invite submissions that explore these themes and current approaches to the contemporary past, from both known and new CHAT participants.

Submissions
Please send us an email with your name / affiliation / country / Email and a title and abstract with max 300 words (or images, video, urls) that explore HOPE through presentations, panels, discussions, films, performances, or collaborative sessions and more.
Please email chat2026.innsbruck@gmail.com

Conference Committee
Attila Dézsi Schlingmann
Barbara Hausmair
Stefanie Heim

Contact
chat2026.innsbruck@gmail.com

Hosted by
CHAT (Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory)
and the DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGIES at University of Innsbruck

The complete Call for Papers can be found at the conference website.

Zwischen Eindeutigkeit und Vielfalt. Der Umgang mit kultureller Ambiguität in der Antike
Tagung zur Alten Geschichte
Regensburg, 26.-27. Februar 2026

Im Rahmen der Tagung „Zwischen Eindeutigkeit und Vielfalt: Der Umgang mit kultureller Ambiguität in der Antike“ soll das Phänomen kultureller Ambiguität – verstanden als strukturell angelegte Mehrdeutigkeit, als produktive Unschärfe und kulturelle Schwebe zwischen verschiedenen, mitunter widersprüchlichen Deutungsmustern – eingehend untersucht werden. Im Zentrum steht dabei nicht allein die Frage, wo in der Antike Ambiguität auftrat, sondern vor allem, wie mit ihr umgegangen wurde und welche Funktion die Verarbeitung von Ambiguität für das jeweilige soziale System ausübte.

Veranstaltungsort
Haus der Begegnung, Hinter der Grieb 8, 93047 Regensburg

Organisation
PD Dr. Oliver Grote
Adrian Linz

Kontakt
Oliver.Grote@geschichte.uni-regensburg.de 

Das vollständige Programm und weitere Informationen finden Sie auf der Website des Veranstalters (Reiter Tagung).