Intercultural Knowledge Transfer

15 June 2011

Organised in cooperation with:
Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL
Research Initiative 'Religion and Society' @ UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction

Europe and Islam in late antiquity and the middle ages

This workshop investigates the role of culture and knowledge transfer between different religious communities, focusing, in this case, on exchanges between mediterranean culture of late antiquity and emerging Islam, Jewish-Islamic cultural transfer, and instances of knowledge transfer from Islamic sources to Jewish communities. Thus, the workshop proposes to understand religious communities as arenas of knowledge production and reception, as cultural contexts stimulating knowledge exchange and transfer.

The workshop thus contributes to the ongoing reflection undertaken by the European Institute at UCL of the complex relationship between Europe and Islam. By deepening our understanding of the complex processes involved in enabling cultural and knowledge transfer, it also contributes to a recent initiative at UCL to investigate the relationship of religion and society.

Speakers:

• Professor Angelika Neuwirth (Freie Universität Berlin), The Kor'an as a text of late antiquity
• Dr François de Blois (UCL), Medieval Islamic Science: Its Achievements, Limitations, and Transmission to Western Europe.
• Dr Ilana Wartenberg (UCL), A late medieval conversion algorithm between the Muslim and Jewish calendars by Isaac Ibn al-Ahdab

Chair: Dr François Guesnet (UCL)