WG2 Ideas in Motion
Workshop on Pandemics and Population Mobility in Early Modern Europe:
Actors, Networks, and Ideas, Tallinn University, 16 March 2021.
This online workshop seeks to revisit the effect of pandemics on population mobility and the emergence of new types of knowledge in pre-modern Europe and across the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea regions in order to explore similarities and differences in connection with the recent outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. We encourage contributions on specific case studies focusing on the links between epidemiological outbreaks, population mobility, and knowledge making, particularly in the early modern European period:
We invite submissions on topics including, but not limited to:
• The relation between the capacity of various organizations to control and
monitor territories and population mobility;
• artistic and intellectual articulations of experiences with pandemics and
population related mobility (or immobility);
• legal, political, theological, philosophical, and emotional arguments used to
justify or prevent pandemic-related population mobility;
• the role of established networks in enhancing or hindering population
mobility, the emergence of new networks related to these functions;
• the role of knowledge-producers in encouraging/averting population
mobility;
• production and destruction of knowledge related to the justification or
prevention of pandemic-related mobility.
A selection of papers presented at the workshop will be chosen for publication either as a special
issue in an international peer-reviewed journal or as an edited volume with an international
academic publisher.
We welcome abstracts of 300 words and a brief bio (100-150 words). They should be sent
to the organizers of the workshop by 25 January 2021. Successful applicants will be notified
no later than February 5th 2021.
The conference is sponsored by COST Action CA18140 – People in Motion: Entangled Histories
of Displacement across the Mediterranean (1492–1923) and the School of Humanities at Tallinn
University.
Organization Committee:
Dr. Tommaso Giordani (Tallinn University): tommaso.giordani@tlu.ee
Dr. Luisa Simonutti (Institute for the History of Philosophy and Science in Modern Age):
luisa.simonutti@ispf.cnr.it
Dr. Vasileios Syros (University of Jyväskylä): vasileios.syros@jyu.fi
Prof. Marek Tamm (Tallinn University): marek.tamm@tlu.ee
