UCL Centre for Early Modern Exchanges Launch Event

29 April, 5pm
Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre
Wilkins Building
University College London
Followed by a drinks reception
Download the flyer here.

On 29 April, UCL will celebrate the launch of its new interdisciplinary Centre for Early Modern Exchanges with a talk by Professor Brian Cummings (Sussex) on 'Shakespeare and the Inquisition'. The event will be followed by a drinks reception.

EME

The Centre for Early Modern Exchanges has been created to promote the study of the diverse cultural, historical, economic and social exchanges between England and Europe, European countries, the Old World and the New in the period 1450-1800. The work of the Centre focuses on the complex intercultural interactions underlying the emergence of national identities and vernacular literatures in this period, interrogating labels such as  ‘England’ or ‘Britain’, ‘East’ and ‘West’, the ‘New World’ and ‘Europe’.

Themes addressed by the Early Modern Exchanges Centre will include:

  • travel, exile and migration in early modern Europe and the New World
  • trade and flows of material as well as cultural goods within and beyond Europe
  • translation, translators and language learning
  • literary influences across national, provincial and linguistic borders
  • representations of intra- and extra-European ‘others’ in literature and art
  • religious and political interactions in the wake of the Reformation
  • occasions of significant cultural contact and/or heightened intranational anxiety
  • the production, circulation, and collection of books and manuscripts across Europe, the emergence of libraries and the book trade
  • dissemination and development of scientific and medical knowledge, spread and transfer of technology
  • Old worlds and New worlds, from botanical and medicinal exchanges to pathogens, people and practices, colonialism and ethnography
  • interplay between past and present, historiography, the archaic, nostalgia and the newfangled, classical and medieval pasts, archaeology and material cultures


As a hub for sharing information and ideas, it will not only raise the profile of UCL research in the early modern period but also foster dialogue and collaboration between specialists in different disciplines. The Centre draws on UCL's strengths in early modern studies found in departments from English to Spanish, Italian, French, and German, School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, Centre for the History of Medicine, Law and History of Art. PhD enquiries are welcome and an MA programme is being developed to reflect the interests of the Centre.

One of the core activities of the Centre will be an annual seminar series with guests.

For further information, see www.ucl.ac.uk/eme.

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