On 29–30 April 2021, the digital workshop “Language in the Global History of Knowledge” is organized at the Centre for the Historiography of Linguistics, KU Leuven.

The workshop discusses various ways in which language and the study of language figured in the global history of knowledge, from the 16th to the early 20th century. In the expanding network of mercantile, missionary, and colonial relations, language was both a vessel and a barrier for the transmission of knowledge. Moreover, languages became an object of knowledge and theory-formation in themselves, in ways that diverged from how their speakers knew their language and their world. The aim is to address the interrelations between these different kinds of knowledge. The emergence of the language sciences has to be understood both in relation to traditions of textual scholarship within different cultures, and to developments in other fields of science (broadly understood).

For more information see https://relicta.org/lghk/index.html

Photo by Eriks Abzinovs on Unsplash