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.
