Keynote Speakers

First Panel- Monday 12th July 2027

The Inequalities of the Enlightenment/Les inequalités des Lumiéres

Mónica Bolufer Peruga

European University Institute and University of Valencia, Spain

Mónica Bolufer Peruga is Professor of Early Modern History at the European University Institute (Florence), specializing in eighteenth-century cultural, intellectual and gender history of the Spanish world in European and global context. Her books include Arte y artificio de la vida en común (Art and Artifice of Life in Common, 2019), La vida y la escritura en el siglo XVIII (Life and Writing in the Eighteenth Century, 2008) and, as co-editor, The Routledge Companion to the Hispanic Enlightenment (2020), European Modernities and the Passionate South (2023), and Gender and Cultural Mediation in the Long Eighteenth Century (2024).

Devin Vartija

Utrecht University, Netherlands.

Hailing from Canada, Dr. Devin Vartija completed his undergraduate education at McMaster University and his PhD at Utrecht University. His book, The Colour of Equality: Race and Common Humanity in Enlightenment Thought, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press 2021. He has held visiting research positions at UCLA and Princeton University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of the Enlightenment. He is conducting research at the crossroads of intellectual history and the history of emotions, shifting focus from the ideas of in/equality to the experience of equal and unequal treatment across the eighteenth century.

Minchul Kim

Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea

Minchul Kim is a historian of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He is Associate Professor of History in Sungkyunkwan University (Seoul). He is Director of Global Intellectual History Unit and Research Fellow of the Voltaire Foundation. He serves at the boards of History of European Ideas, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, and the Institute of Intellectual History at St Andrews. He has recently published in The Historical Journal, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and Modern Intellectual History, and is working on a book manuscript in Korean: The Impossible Republic: Commercial Society and the French Revolution.

Nilanjana Mukherjee

University of Delhi, India

Nilanjana Mukherjee is Professor of English and Director of Centre of Border Studies at Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi. Currently, she is the serving Vice-President of India International Society for Eighteenth Century Studies. Her work involves questions of space, place, landscape and cartography in literary narratives and visual cultures. In the past, she was the Bajaj Visiting Fellow at the Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University (2024-5), Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh (2017) and a doctoral fellow at King’s College, London (2009).

Second Panel- Wednesday 14th July 2027

Internationalising the Enlightenment. 60 Years ISECS Between Scholarship and Contemporary Citizenship

« Under construction »

First Dialogue

L´égalité au Siècle des Lumières : quelles leçons pour les sociétés contemporaines?  (I) –

Céline Spector

Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

Ancienne élève de l’École normale supérieure de Paris, Céline Spector est Professeure de philosophie à Sorbonne Université. Spécialiste de la philosophie des Lumières et de son héritage, ses recherches sont surtout consacrées à la question de la souveraineté, de la démocratie et de liberté politique. Lauréate de la Médaille d’argent du CNRS (2024), elle a créé avec Christophe Martin le Pôle « Europe des Lumières » de Sorbonne Université. Elle est notamment l’autrice de Montesquieu. Pouvoirs, richesses et sociétés (2004), Montesquieu et l’émergence de l’économie politique (2006), Rousseau et la critique de l’économie politique (2017), Rousseau (Polity Press, 2019), Émile. Rousseau et la morale expérimentale, (Vrin, 2022) et de Servitude et Empire. Montesquieu, des Lettres persanes à L’Esprit des lois (Vrin, 2024).

Antonio Trampus

Università Ca’ Foscari, Venezia, Italia

Antonio Trampus est professeur en histoire moderne à l’Université Ca’ Foscari de Venise. Il est membre de plusieurs réseaux internationaux de recherche, ainsi que du conseil de direction de la revue « Rivista Storica Italiana » et du comité éditorial des revues « Mediterranea » et « Casanoviana – International Review ». Ses travaux de recherche portent principalement sur le XVIIIᵉ siècle et s’articulent autour de deux grands axes : d’une part, la culture des Lumières (avec une attention particulière portée à Gaetano Filangieri, Karl von Zinzendorf, Gianrinaldo Carli, Emer de Vattel, Giacomo Casanova et Benjamin Constant) ; d’autre part, les pratiques politiques entre le XVIIIᵉ et le XIXᵉ siècle, notamment le constitutionnalisme, la citoyenneté et les ports francs.

Second Dialogue

Equality in the Age of Enlightenment: What Lessons for Contemporary Societies?

Susanne Lachenicht

University of Bayreuth, Germany.

Susanne Lachenicht is professor of Early Modern History at Bayreuth University, Germany. She works on Europe and the Atlantic World with a special focus on the Age of Revolution, media, diasporas, religious migrations, knowledge transfer and transformation as well as temporalities in the early modern world. She has been a visiting fellow/professor at the Université de Toulouse II, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, the Université d´Angers and at All Souls College, Oxford.

Richard Whatmore

University of St Andrews, United Kingdom

Richard Whatmore is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Fellow of the British Academy. He co-directs the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History and edits the journal History of European Ideas. His single-authored books are: Republicanism and the French Revolution (Oxford, 2000), Against War and Empire (Yale, 2012), What is Intellectual History? (Polity, 2015), Terrorists, Anarchists and Republicans (Princeton, 2019), The History of Political Thought. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2021) and The End of Enlightenment (Allen Lane, 2023).

Third Dialogue

La igualdad en el siglo XVIII: ¿Existen lecciones útiles para las sociedades contemporáneas?

Catherine M. Jaffe

Texas State University (USA)

Es Catedrática emérita (University Distinguished Professor Emerita) en Texas State University. Es especialista en Literatura Moderna española y comparada. Su investigación se centra en las escritoras del siglo XVIII, la Ilustración, la traducción, y el quijotismo. Jaffe es co-editora, con Elizabeth Lewis, de Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment. Ha publicado en colaboración cinco libros sobre la Ilustración hispánica, entre ellos, The Black Legend of Spain and its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century (2024) y Society Women and Enlightened Charity in Spain: The Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito, 1787-1823 (2022).

She is University Distinguished Professor Emerita at Texas State University, specialising in modern Spanish and comparative literature. Her research focuses on eighteenth-century women writers, the Enlightenment, translation, and Quixotism. Jaffe is the co-editor, alongside Elizabeth Lewis, of Dieciocho: Hispanic Enlightenment. She has co-authored five books on the Hispanic Enlightenment, including The Black Legend of Spain and its Atlantic Empire in the Eighteenth Century (2024) and Society Women and Enlightened Charity in Spain: The Junta de Damas de Honor y Mérito, 1787–1823 (2022).

Javier Fernández Sebastián

Universidad del País Vasco (España)

Es catedrático emérito de Historia del Pensamiento Político en la UPV/EHU. Ha sido profesor e investigador visitante en numerosas universidades de Europa y de las dos Américas, y ha dedicado una parte significativa de su trabajo al estudio de la Ilustración y el liberalismo. Entre sus publicaciones recientes se cuentan los libros Los pilares de la historia (Taurus), Historia conceptual en el Atlántico ibérico (FCE) y Key Metaphors for History (Routledge), así como los volúmenes colectivos Metafóricas espacio-temporales para la historia (Pre-Textos), Tiempos de la Historia, tiempos del Derecho y Tiempos de la Historia, tiempos de la Justicia (M. Pons).

He is Professor Emeritus of the History of Political Thought at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Having served as a visiting professor and research fellow at numerous universities across Europe and the Americas, he has dedicated a significant portion of his research to the study of the Enlightenment and Liberalism. His recent publications include Los pilares de la historia (Taurus), Historia conceptual en el Atlántico ibérico (FCE), and Key Metaphors for History (Routledge), alongside the edited volumes Metafóricas espacio-temporales para la historia (Pre-Textos), Tiempos de la Historia, tiempos del Derecho, and Tiempos de la Historia, tiempos de la Justicia (M. Pons).

Plenary sessions

Manuel Llorca-Jaña

University Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile, Chili.

Manuel Llorca-Jaña ha publicado diversas monografías, entre las que destacan The British Textile Trade in South America in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press) y The Globalization of Merchant Banking before 1850 (Routledge). Asimismo, es autor de más de sesenta artículos científicos en revistas especializadas, entre ellas: Business History, Business History Review, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, International Journal of Maritime History, Cliometrica y Economics and Human Biology. Forma parte de los comités editoriales de varias revistas académicas, entre las que se encuentran Enterprise & Society y Economic History of Developing Regions.

Manuel Llorca-Jaña has published several monographs, including The British textile trade in South America in the nineteenth century, CUP; and The globalization of merchant banking before 1850, Routledge. He has also published over 60 journal articles, including journals such as Business History, Business History Review, Bulletin of Latin American Research, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, International Journal of Maritime History, Cliometrica, Economics and Human Biology. He is member of the editorial board of several journals including Enterprise & Society and Economic History of Developing Regions.

Joëlle Weis

Trier Center for Digital Humanities

Joëlle Weis is Head of the research area Digital Literary and Cultural Studies at the Trier Center for Digital Humanities and Principal Investigator of the research project  Princesses’ Libraries and Knowledge Practices in Eighteenth Century Germany, which aims to digitally reconstruct more than 100 historical libraries. She holds a PhD in Early Modern History. Her research focuses on the Early Modern  history of knowledge, collection studies, and digital humanities methods, with a particular interest in Linked Open Data and the digital reconstruction of historical knowledge networks.

Darrin M. McMahon

Dartmouth College, USA

Darrin M. McMahon is the David W. Little Class of 1944 Professor and Chair of the Department History at Dartmouth.  He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Enemies of the Enlightenment (Oxford); Happiness: A History (Atlantic); Divine Fury: A History of Genius (Basic), and Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea (Basic), which received the 2024 Jacques Barzun prize.   McMahon is the editor of the University of Chicago book series, The Life of Ideas.  He is currently working on a book on illumination and lighting practices in the Age of Enlightenment.

Cécile Vidal

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Ehess), Paris, France

Cécile Vidal est directrice d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), à Paris. Elle est spécialiste d’histoire sociale de l’impérialisme, du colonialisme et de l’esclavage dans les mondes atlantiques à l’époque moderne. Parmi ses publications les plus récentes figurent Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society (2019) et Les mondes de l’esclavage. Une histoire comparée (2021), ouvrage codirigé avec Paulin Ismard et Benedetta Rossi. Elle travaille actuellement à un nouveau projet d’ouvrage sur suicide, traite et esclavage dans les empires britannique et français, du milieu du XVIIIᵉ siècle au milieu du XIXᵉ siècle.

« Under construction »