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Utopianism and Early Modern Scientific Collaboration

 

NOTCOM is pleased to announce “Utopianism and Early Modern Scientific Collaboration”, a conference taking place on 11 & 12 May 2026. It will be held on both days at the Maison Française d’Oxford.

The conference will discuss various utopian aspects of early modern natural knowledge production, with particular interest in the collaborative institutions dedicated to its advancement.  Papers will include discussions of the relationship between early modern missionary writing and utopian fiction; investigations into the link between seventeenth-century arguments for research specialisation and ideal learned societies; and inquiries into ideas of household economy and common goods in early modern utopianism.

Convenor: Niall Dilucia (niall.dilucia@cnrs.fr)

 

PROGRAMME

(subject to change)

*

DAY 1 (MONDAY 11 MAY)

 

9:30 Welcoming Remarks

9: 45 Professor Richard Scholar (University of Durham): Architectures of Invention in New Atlantis: Bacons Empty Plinths

10: 45 Dr Robert Twiss & Dr Laura Mattioli (University of Durham): Para-topias: the disciplinary environs of utopia

11:45 Break

12:15 Professor Gregory Claeys (Royal Holloway, University of London): Some      Utopian Roads to Sustainability

13:15 Lunch

14:30 Dr Oana Matei (Vasile Goldis Western University of Arad): Innovation and Scientific Collaboration in Seventeenth-Century Natural Historical Plant Projects

15:30 Dr Mirjam Hähnle (German Historical Institute London): Common Goods and the Household Economy in Early Modern Project Making

 16:30 Break

 17:00 (Keynote) Professor Vera Keller (University of Oregon): Footnotes in Paradise: The Individual, the Collective, and the Research Specialty in Early Modern Learned Utopias

 18:30 End of Day 1

 

19:00: Conference Dinner (Invited Guests)

 

DAY 2 (TUESDAY 12 MAY)

 

9:00 Dr Niall Dilucia (Maison Française d’Oxford/CNRS): Life on Mars? Astronomy and the Boundaries of Seventeenth-Century Collective Curiosity

10:00 Dr Honor Jackson (University of Fribourg): Utopian Practice in the Restoration: Intertextuality, Adaptation, and Drama 

11:00 Break

11:20 Professor Chloe Houston (University of Reading): ‘The newe yle, called Utopia’: reading early modern utopias as islands

 12:20 Closing Remarks & Lunch

 

Available to download here

Amelie Berger-Soraruff
Amelie Berger-Soraruff

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
adminnotcom (May 8, 2026). Utopianism and Early Modern Scientific Collaboration. NOTCOM. Retrieved June 17, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15w0c


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