XVIII Melammu Symposium:
Knowledge Transfer between and across Ancient Empires

Date: 5–7 September 2025
Location: Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC), Northeast Normal University (NENU), 5268 Renmin Street, 130024 Changchun
CfP deadline: 15 December 2024
Paper confirmation: 15 January 2025
Submissions or questions shall be sent to: Prof. Dr. Sven Günther, svenguenther@nenu.edu.cn

The communicative turn historical studies have seen in recent years has also reshaped the way we understand information flow and knowledge transfer. It is not anymore a simple sender-receiver-model that is applied to examine ancient sources, but a full acknowledgement of the complex dynamics of communication with all the accompanying, enabling, and limiting political, social, legal, economic, and religious-cultural frameworks that matters in transferring, that is, transmitting and receiving formal and tacit knowledge between persons and across times. In the XVIII Melammu Symposium, we aim at connecting the topic of knowledge transfer to the imperial framework. Paper proposals are invited from all ancient studies disciplines and might address, but are, of course, not limited to, questions of the languages, ways, forms, agents, possibilities, ideologies, limits etc. knowledge was transferred through, both between contemporaneous and across consecutive ancient empires; but also those cases where knowledge was not transferred, intentionally or by chance, and potential feedback of these (non-)transfers on the respective systems. 3–4 travel bursaries are available for doctoral students.