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IMC 2025

Postcard advertising Leeds International Medieval Congress 2025. Text reads: Leeds International Medieval Congress. Special Thematic Strand: Worlds of Learning. 7-10 July 2025 - Call for Papers. the IMC seeks to provide an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Features the University of Leeds logo and a number of images from medieval manuscripts. For information on attribution of image and full description, email imc@leeds.ac.uk.

Conference Programme

In 2025 the special thematic focus of IMC was 'Worlds of Learning'.

The IMC Programme Book contains details of all academic sessions, the Bookfair, as well as all events, excursions, workshops, and other IMC activities alongside essential information about attending IMC 2025 both online and in-person.

To view and download the PDF Programme, please use the button below.

View and download the IMC 2025 Programme [PDF]. (pdf), File Download

Alternatively you can access and browse the online interactive programme here.

Accessible Programme

You can find a plaintext, screenreader-friendly version of the IMC Programme introductory pages here.

Please get in touch by emailing [email protected] if you have any queries, or would like to request an accessible version of the IMC 2025 Programme in an alternative format.

About the conference

Histories of learning have transformed fundamentally over the last generation: older research mainly investigated educational institutions or specific intellectual traditions, typically privileging forms of learning which could be connected to modern Western institutions and disciplines. More recent scholarship takes a broader approach, historicising the production and circulation of different forms of knowledge, including many non-Western cultural traditions, as well as practical knowledge, oral traditions, and types of technical or artisanal expertise not represented in the modern canon. As a result, new interdisciplinary research fields have broadened the thematic and geographical scopes of investigation and developed new comparative frameworks.

Perhaps most importantly, different cultural traditions and historiographies of learning across the globe are increasingly discussed in relation to each other or on the basis of interdisciplinary exchange on methodologies. The increasingly global scope of academic exchange enables us to think more productively towards connected histories of learning, whether global or regional in scope, and including non-elite and non-traditional forms of learning.

Processes of learning and resulting written traditions have also been re-situated in their social and material contexts, deepening our understanding of the cultural embeddedness of knowledge. Various recent approaches question the meaning of institutional descriptors like ‘schools’ and challenge the dividing lines between ‘scholarly’/’expert’ or ‘elite’ and ‘popular’ cultures. Frameworks discussing ‘communities of learning’, ‘communities of interpretation’, or ‘communities of practice’ highlight the role of exchange and conflict between different communities and social strata in the production of knowledge. They also allow for a much broader integration of different forms of practice, performance, and oral communication into the study of intellectual production.

On a methodological plane, our understanding of the use, distribution, and long-term differentiation of specific bodies of knowledge profits greatly from a greater appreciation of their mediality and materiality, with new approaches to genre, communicative uses, and the circulation of manuscripts and printed books, but also to a variety of images, objects, and (architectural) landscapes. A growing toolkit of digital approaches has proved to be both a boon and a challenge, as the gathering, analysis, and visualisation of relevant data promises innovative new insights, but also raises questions about standardisation and access to costly infrastructures.

Against this background, IMC 2025 invited a plurality of viewpoints investigating the manifold social, intellectual, and geographical ‘worlds of learning’ shaping pre-modern societies. Seeking to stabilise the trend of the previous years, the strand particularly encouraged sessions focusing on non-European worlds of learning. It also invited sessions which address the challenges inherent in the highly diverse disciplinary landscape and the asymmetries shaping extant historiographies of learning, which come from both different global regions and separate disciplines with different emphases.

The Special Thematic Strand 'Worlds of Learning' was co-ordinated by Sita Steckel (Historisches Seminar, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt).