Hugh Kennedy, Keynote speaker

We are pleased to announce that Professor Hugh N. Kennedy of SOAS will be the keynote speaker at the 2013 University of Edinburgh Seventh Century Colloquium.  

Kennedy is the author of numerous books on our period, including The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 600–1050; The Armies of the Caliphs: military and society in the early Islamic State; Mongols, Huns and Vikings: Nomads at War; and The Great Arab Conquests. How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In as well as of numerous articles and translations of texts from the period.  Though the bulk of his scholarship has been focussed on the Islamic early middle ages, he has written extensively on the connections of the period with Late Antiquity and on the connections between East and West across the whole era.

We are delighted to host him and look forward to his participation in the Colloquium.

Call for Papers Poster

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Call for papers

The Seventh Century: Continuity or Discontinuity?

The 2013 Edinburgh University Seventh Century Colloquium

28 – 29 May 2013

Call for papers

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for the 2013 Edinburgh University Seventh Century Colloquium, 28 – 29 May 2013. 

The colloquium is a two-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers.  The colloquium brings together scholars from different disciplines studying the seventh century in order to promote discussion and the cross-fertilisation of ideas.  We will explore how wider perspectives can be used to formulate new approaches to source material, drawing out fresh perspectives on both the familiar and unfamiliar.

Our general theme will be an examination of whether the seventh century can be studied as a unit across regions or whether the period represents a break in the longue durée.  What was the level of discontinuity between the ‘long sixth’ and ‘long eighth’ centuries? 

We invite those working in archaeology, art history, history, literature, numismatics, and religion, as well as in fields including Byzantine, Celtic, Classics, Islamic, and Late Antique studies to submit abstracts for papers of approximately 15 to 20 minutes that engage with all aspects of the long seventh century.

Possible topics for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

• The seventh century ‘world crisis’ and its ramifications 
• The development of new economic relations in the North Sea
•  The Christianisation of western Europe 
• The Transformation of the Byzantine Empire 
• The Emergence of Islam 
• The transformation of ancient cities to those of the Middle Ages 
• Historiography of the seventh century

Additionally, poster presentations will be considered.

Our organisational structure is designed to encourage collaboration and cross-fertilisation of ideas; we will have no parallel sessions as we believe that everything will be useful to all of us.  To build collaboration, we will be adopting an innovative structure for the conference.  The sessions will be structured as follows:

• Prior to the colloquium, each speaker will be paired with a respondent with experience of either working on similar issues as the speaker, or using similar research methodologies 
• The respondent will have read a written version of the speaker’s paper in advance and will have prepared a detailed response prior to the colloquium. 
• After the delivery of the paper, the respondent will give a response before opening the floor to general discussion.

We hope that such methods will not only inspire genuine collaboration between the two scholars involved but will encourage a wider and livelier debate and discussion.  Similarly, we hope that all involved will feel encouraged to debate, discuss, and occasionally disagree.  We believe that through such methods all of us will advance as scholars.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to the organising committee at edinburgh7th@gmail.com  

The deadline for submission is 15 January 2013.  Early submissions are encouraged.

Persons interested in attending and serving as respondents only are also encouraged to contact us.

Date finalised: 28 - 29 MAY

Our dates are now 28 - 29 May 2013.  A Call for Papers will be issued shortly.

A DIFFERENT SORT OF CONFERENCE

When we decided to host the Seventh Century Colloquium, we did not want to have just another of those academic gatherings where several papers are read and a few perfunctory questions and comments are made.  We do not want to have something that is simply yet another opportunity to add a line to one’s CV.  We do not intend to have a conference just for the sake of holding a conference.  

Instead, what we hope to do is to bring the best and brightest younger scholars working on the seventh century together in a collaborative setting that will encourage cross-fertilisation of ideas and potential intellectual breakthroughs.  Too many of our sub-disciplines have been walled off from each other so that those of us working on the first century of Islam are barely familiar with those of us studying the foundation of the English Church and neither will know much of recent scholarship on Byzantium.  Language and methodological issues of our areas too often means that we miss the forest for the trees.

To break through these divisions, we want to encourage scholars in disparate fields to converse with each other; we will have no parallel sessions as we believe that everything will be useful to all of us.

To build collaboration, we will also be doing something unlike the usual post-graduate conference.  Each scholar who submits a proposal to us and is accepted for the conference will be paired with someone else who is working either on similar issues or is using similar techniques in parallel.  Those two will be in communication prior to the colloquium.  The second scholar will have read a written version of the first’s paper in advance and will have prepared a detailed response prior to the colloquium.  After the delivery of the paper, the second will give a response before opening the floor to general discussion.  We hope that such methods will not only inspire genuine collaboration between the two involved but will encourage debate and discussion more widely.

Similarly, we hope that all involved will feel encouraged to debate, discuss, and occasionally disagree.  We believe that through such methods all of us will advance as scholars.

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A POSTER FOR THE COLLOQUIUM

A CALL FOR PAPERS

The Seventh Century: Continuity or Discontinuity?

The 2013 Edinburgh University Seventh Century Colloquium,

28 - 29 May 2013

We are pleased to announce a preliminary call for papers for the 2013 Edinburgh University Seventh Century Colloquium, 28 - 29 May 2013. 

The colloquium is a two-day interdisciplinary conference for postgraduate students and early career researchers.  The colloquium brings together scholars from different disciplines studying the seventh century in order to promote discussion and the cross-fertilisation of ideas.  We will explore how wider perspectives can be used to formulate new approaches to source material, drawing out fresh perspectives on both the familiar and unfamiliar.

Our general theme will be an examination of whether the seventh century can be studied as a unit across regions or whether the period represents a break in the longue durée.  What was the level of discontinuity between the ‘long sixth’ and ‘long eighth’ centuries? 

We invite those working in archaeology, art history, history, literature, numismatics, and religion, as well as in fields including Byzantine, Celtic, Classics, Islamic, and Late Antique studies to submit abstracts for papers of approximately 20 to 25 minutes that engage with all aspects of the seventh century.

Possible topics for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

- The seventh century ‘world crisis’ and its ramifications

- The development of new economic relations in the North Sea

- The Christianisation of western Europe

- The Transformation of the Byzantine Empire

- The Emergence of Islam

- The transformation of ancient cities to those of the Middle Ages

-  Historiography of the seventh century

Additionally, poster presentations will be considered.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to the organising committee at edinburgh7th@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is 31 December 2012.