Become a Part of Cultures of Knowledge

Cultures of Knowledge is not conceived as a self-contained enterprise. It arises in part from the manuscript collections accumulated by the Bodleian Library, and is firmly rooted in that institution’s commitment to collecting and preserving digital as well as scribal and printed materials, and to placing them all at the disposal of international scholarship. Yet just as the correspondence networks which it studies stretched out from any one fixed point in all directions, the Project aspires to help build a broader community and to facilitate multilateral cooperation within it. 

We have therefore sought from the outset to pursue our objectives in collaboration with interested individuals and partner institutions elsewhere, and aim to broaden these partnerships in coming years. The need for such cooperation is great, and the opportunities for pursuing it numerous: amongst other things, international cooperation is needed to help develop standards for the accumulation, organization, and preservation of digitized data in this field; to use those standards to pool unprecedented quantities of data in a unified system; and to use that data to help generate new ways of exploring and understanding the networks of communication they represent, the geographical conditions which gave rise to those networks, and the kinds of knowledge-making cultivated within them. At every stage in this process we are eager to join forces with interested scholars and institutions at home and abroad.

If you work in a related area, there are therefore several ways in which you can involve yourself in our activities and contribute to the evolution of both individual strands and the Project as a whole. On this section of the site, you will find Calls for Papers inviting participation in some of our collective discussions; news of Project Vacancies; and above all a range of Other Opportunities for pooling data and additional resources relevant to the Project. We encourage you to Contact Us with suggestions and ideas.