Tallinn Workshop – final programme

This online workshop will 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. The contributions will explore specific case studies focusing on the
links between epidemiological outbreaks, population mobility, and knowledge making, particularly
in the early modern European period.
Topics covered include but are 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.

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