Project

Global material intellectual histories.

Code
bof/baf/4y/2024/01/1006
Duration
01 January 2024 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Promotor
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Social and political philosophy
  • Social sciences
    • Other political science not elsewhere classified
    • Social theory and sociological methods not elsewhere classified
Keywords
Material history Social Theory Global Intellectual histories
 
Project description

Global Material Intellectual History (GMIH) examines the intersection of intellectual traditions, material culture, and global exchanges throughout history, exploring how ideas, knowledge, and technologies travel across geographical and cultural boundaries. This interdisciplinary field integrates insights from social sciences and humanities to challenge Eurocentric models of intellectual history that focus primarily on written texts and "great ideas" in isolation from their material contexts. GMIH highlights the role of objects, commodities, texts, technologies, and infrastructure in shaping the flow of knowledge and influencing power structures, cultural transformations, and intellectual movements worldwide. It reorients the study of intellectual history by emphasizing the intertwined nature of material and immaterial worlds in the development of human thought and civilization.