Human/Animal Studies in Classics. Aisthesis/Aesthetics
Kiel, 2–3 October 2026

Deadline for submission: 12 December 2025

The perception and assessment of beauty is a defining characteristic of the human species. Whether we like a person or an object significantly affects our reaction: we are either attracted or repelled; we either want to possess the object or despise it; we either feel proud or ashamed of our connection to the person. Our conference explores the role that perceptions of beauty (or the lack of it) played in human-animal-relations in antiquity.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we welcome contributions from various fields such as ancient history, classical philology, philosophy, religious studies, and archaeology which focus on the visual or literary representation of aesthetic aspects of human-animal relationships in antiquity. The conference languages are German, English, French and Italian. The publication of the contributions is planned. Researchers at all qualification levels are invited to submit an abstract.

Please send your proposal (max. 1 A4 page) by 12 December 2025 to isleme.sassi@email.uni-kiel.de and bettina.reese@uni-potsdam.de. We are seeking funds to contribute towards the speakers' (train) travel expenses.

Organisation
Prof. Dr. Islème Sassi
Fachdidaktik der Alten Sprachen
Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel
Leibnizstrasse 8; Büro 415
24118 Kiel

Dr. Bettina Reese
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
Professur Geschichte des Altertums
Historisches Institut | Universität Potsdam

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

Fluid Spaces – Mobility, Networks, and Encounters in Pre-Roman Italy
24th Meeting of the dArV Network ‘Etruscan and Italic Communities’
Vienna, 13 to 15 February 2026

Deadline for submission: 15 November 2025

We invite submissions discussing all aspects of mobility, networks, and encounters in pre-Roman Italy. The conference will cover the entire Italian peninsula, including Sardinia and Sicily, as well as the Greek coastal cities, from the early Iron Age throughout the entire first millennium BCE, up to the Roman expansion.

This Call is open to early-career researchers, including advanced graduate students, as well as senior colleagues. Contributions can be delivered in German, English, or Italian and should last approximately 20 minutes, allowing for 15 minutes of discussion. Interested colleagues are warmly invited to submit the title and brief abstract (100–200 words) of a potential conference paper to the following email addresses by 15 November 2025:
raffaella.da.vela@univie.ac.at; matthias.hoernes@univie.ac.at; robinson.peter.kraemer@univie.ac.at.

Organisation
Petra Amann – Raffaella Da Vela – Matthias Hoernes – Robinson Krämer
University of Vienna, Department of Ancient History, Papyrology and Epigraphy – Institute of Classical Archaeology
dArV Network ‘Etruscan and Italic Communities’

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

Gefahrstoffe in der Archäologie und angrenzenden Disziplinen
Jahrestagung 2025: CIfA Deutschland
8. November 2025
online

In der archäologischen Praxis begegnen Fachleute immer wieder Gefahrstoffen, die Risiken für Gesundheit oder Umwelt bergen – etwa Kampfmittel, Asbest, arsenhaltige Bronzen, Belastungen in Baudenkmälern oder Schadstoffe im Boden. Der richtige Umgang damit ist anspruchsvoll und oft fehlt es an Wissen, Erfahrung oder gezielter Schulung.

Unsere Onlinetagung informiert über Risiken und den fachgerechten Umgang mit Gefahrstoffen. Dabei beleuchten wir nicht nur die archäologische Perspektive, sondern auch angrenzende Bereiche wie Restaurierung, Museumsarbeit oder Osteoarchäologie

Anmeldung
Jetzt zur Tagung anmelden auf Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1720690765399

Das vollständige Programm und weitere Informationen finden Sie auf der Veranstaltungswebsite.
 

Neue Wege alter Fächer: Lehre gestalten in den Altertumswissenschaften
Block 1 | Bestandsaufnahme: Innen- und Außenperspektiven
30. Oktober 2025, 14.00–16.00 Uhr

Der erste Veranstaltungsblock beleuchtet den Stand und die Entwicklung der altertumswissenschaftlichen Fächer bzw. Studienangebote aus der Außen- und Innenperspektive. Zum Auftakt der Veranstaltungsreihe geben die Beiträge einen über die einzelnen Fachstandorte hinausgehenden Überblick.
Wir fragen uns:

• Wie hat sich die Lehre in den einzelnen altertumswissenschaftlichen Fächern mit der Umsetzung der Bologna-Reform und seither in den letzten Jahren entwickelt?
• Welche Rückwirkungen auf die Lehre hatten die Zusammenlegung einzelner Fächer und Verbundstrategien in Studiengängen?
• Welche Veränderungen auf die Lehre in den altertumswissenschaftlichen Fächern haben sich in Folge der Digitalisierung, aber auch der Corona-Pandemie ergeben?

Registrierung für Block 1:
https://univienna.zoom.us/meeting/register/BbPzcKY4SiCsPd224x6XJA

Idee und Konzept
Katharina Bahlmann, Arbeitsstelle Kleine Fächer, Universität Mainz
Matthias Hoernes, Institut für Klassische Archäologie, Universität Wien
Peter Kruschwitz, Institut für Alte Geschichte und Altertumskunde, Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Universität Wien
Hannes Weichert, Arbeitsstelle Kleine Fächer, Universität Mainz

Kontakt
kleinefaecher@uni-mainz.de 

Einen Überblick über die gesamte Veranstaltungsreihe finden Sie im entsprechenden Blogbeitrag. Das ausführliche Programm mit den Registrierungslinks finden Sie hier als PDF. Die Abstracts zu den einzelnen Blöcken und Vorträgen finden Sie hier als PDF.

BernBabylon 2025
Bern, 23.-25. Oktober 2025

Language in Crisis, Crisis in Language, Language on Crisis: Interdisciplinary Perspectives From Antiquity to Modern Times
November 20th-21st, 2025
online (University of Cologne)

Deadline: October 13th, 2025

The online conference “Language in Crisis, Crisis in Language, Language on Crisis. Interdisciplinary Perspectives from Ancient to Modern Times” explores this mutual influence between historical moments of crisis and the usage of language across different ancient cultures and is particularly interested in how insights in the ancient thoughts about the intersection of crisis and language can help us to better understand the role of language in our own societies. Besides, we would like to inspire a discussion upon potential common traits across cultures in their reactions to internal strife by and through language that might reflect universal human experiences.

Outline of the Program
The conference will be held online on November 20th/21st, 2025. On the first evening, a keynote lecture given by a guest speaker will introduce the conference. On the second day, six contributions of 30 minutes each (25 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for discussion) will take place from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. CET (including an hour-long lunch break), concluding in a panel discussion led by the organisers from 4 P.M. to 5 P.M. CET. The language of the conference will be English.

Abstracts
Proposals for contributions are welcomed from every scholarly level: submissions by early career scholars are particularly encouraged. A distinctive character of this conference is its comparative and intercultural approach. We are therefore looking for contributions covering a wide range of ancient cultures, among others, Egyptology, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Classics, Mesoamerican Studies, Indoeuropean Linguistics and others. 

Proposals for contributions should not exceed 500 words (excluding bibliography) and should be emailed as anonymized PDF to Isabel Caspar (icaspar1@uni-koeln.de) and Margherita Coughlan (margheritacoughlan@gmail.com) no later than October 13th, 2025. Applicants will be informed about the outcome of their submission ca. 15 days after the deadline.

Contact
For further inquiries, please contact Isabel Caspar (icaspar1@uni-koeln.de) or Margherita Coughlan (margheritacoughlan@gmail.com). We look forward to your submissions and to an engaging conference!

The complete Call for Papers can be downloaded as PDF.

International Symposium on the Metallurgy of the European Iron Age II (SMEIA II)
Mainz, 28-30 October 2025

Deadline for registration: 10 October 2025

The Iron Age with its new economic system is characterised by innovations such as the development of iron metallurgy and the processing and further engineering of precious metals and copper alloys. A “1^st International Symposium on the Metallurgy of the European Iron Age (SMEIA I)” was held in Mannheim in 2010. In 2025 it will be 15 years ago and numerous interesting studies have been performed in recent years, so it is time to organize a second conference on the topic of Iron Age metallurgy. We are therefore already looking forward to the “2^nd International Symposium on the Metallurgy of the European Iron Age (SMEIA II)”, which will be held at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie in Mainz from Tuesday, 28^th to Thursday, 30^th of October 2025.

We are looking forward to contributions on European Iron Age iron and non-ferrous metallurgy, research on gold, silver, copper alloys and iron, smelting furnaces and technical ceramics.

Venue
Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA)
Ludwig-Lindenschmit-Forum 1
55116 Mainz
Germany

Registration
Please register at SMEIA2025@leiza.de until 10 th October 2025.
Please note that there is a conference fee of 60,- €.

Contact
E-mail to SMEIA2025@leiza.de

Organisers
Roland Schwab (LEIZA), roland.schwab@leiza.de 
Martin Schönfelder (LEIZA), martin.schoenfelder@leiza.de

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

Third Space and Ancient World Studies
International conference
Innsbruck, October 29-31, 2025

This conference seeks to develop the research on spatial perception in ancient languages and societies by gathering scholars of any discipline in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Sciences and from any stage in their career to discuss spatial concepts from their own disciplinary perspective. 

Venue
Ágnes-Heller-Haus, Innrain 52a
4th floor, room nr.: 04K100
6020 Innsbruck

Concept and Organisation
Sina Kazemirashid | Alexander Steiner

Contact
Alexander Steiner
Department of Ancient History and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
University of Innsbruck
Alexander.Steiner@uibk.ac.at

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

The 33rd Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference, TRAC-TiDA 2025
22-24 October 2025
online