The third History of Knowledge Conference will be organized in Utrecht on 25–27 August 2027. The conference follows the successful first international History of Knowledge Conference in Porto in 2023, and the second edition, hosted by the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge in 2025. Utrecht University is home of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of Sciences and the Humanities, and the field’s flagship Journal for the History of Knowledge.

In recent years, history of knowledge has developed into a vibrant field of interdisciplinary research and scholarship around the globe. The History of Knowledge Conference will gather scholars with a diversity of backgrounds to further develop the field and its impact on other disciplines and society. Fostering inclusivity, we welcome all scholars working on the history of knowledge in the broadest sense.

The central theme of the conference will be: Decentering the History of Knowledge. What does it mean to decenter the history of knowledge? We understand it to mean:

• Decentering the geography of knowledge, adopting a global approach by comparing and connecting different geographical areas around the world.
• Include different forms of knowledge without privileging academic or written knowledge, while paying attention to shifting epistemic hierarchies.
• Dealing even-handedly with knowing and not-knowing, by shifting focus to ignorance, failure and error as inherent to knowledge practices.
• Embracing epistemic diversity in different guises, by concentrating on the role of virtues and vices in shaping the identity of knowledge actors.
• Developing a more-than-human history of knowledge, including a variety of actors including non-human animals, plants, minerals or instruments.
• Adopting transdisciplinary approaches to develop the history of knowledge, historicizing formal and informal knowledge institutions such as universities and societies, households and families.

The conference is explicitly global in scope, and its time span is antiquity to the present. We encourage contributions moving beyond specific geographies and chronologies; we aim at a structure for the conference that is not a division in terms of geographies or chronologies. A call for papers will be published in the Fall of 2026.

If you wish to be kept informed, register with: hokconference27@uu.nl