The LAGOOS Project (www.lagoos.org) is pleased to announce it’s upcoming workshop “Diaries of Scholarship. Comparative Perspectives on Diary-writing in Early Modern and Modern Europe” The event will take place on 19th September 2025 at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
The workshop intends to explore the role of private diaries in recording and shaping intellectual life in the modern and early modern periods (ca. 1400–1900). Adopting a comparative approach, the workshop seeks to bring together researchers working on scholars’ diaries to allow analysis across historical periods, languages and geographical areas. We welcome contributions that examine the diaries of European intellectuals as tools of scholarly inquiry, expressions of intellectual identity, or as sources that reveal new insights on the cultural and linguistic landscapes of particular historical contexts.
Participants are encouraged to present specific case studies that explore the evolving nature of scholarly self-representation through diary-keeping and journalling in 15-minute presentations, which will be followed by discussion.
The call for papers is now open:
Suggested Themes
Diaries have long served as intimate records of scholarly life, documenting professional obligations, intellectual pursuits, personal reflections, daily activities and all manner of social networks. These rich historical sources often blur the lines between autobiography and academic output raising questions on a series of themes including (but not limited to):
- the ways in which diaries function as forms of self-fashioning within intellectual traditions;
- the extent to which diaries reflect broader academic, political or cultural trends;
- the role of language choice in diaries, especially in multilingual contexts, in the construction of intellectual (and personal) identity;
- the challenges that arise in the process of editing diaries (digitally or otherwise) and other forms of ego-literature;
- the relationship of scholars’ diaries to their other written output (scholarly publications, correspondence, notes etc.).
Abstract Submission
Scholars are invited to send abstracts of around 300 words accompanied by a brief academic biography of no more than 100 words to chiara.telesca@uibk.ac.at by 04.05.2025. The language of the workshop and of discussion will be English.
LAGOOS [λαγωoς] 