Please contact Marijn Nieuwenhuis with any inquiries. The workshop is on 17 June 2014. Poster here.

What is Space: a Post-Disciplinary Workshop on the Return of an Old Debate

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me (Pascal, Thoughts, 1964)

Space is the everywhere of modern thought. It is the flesh that flatters the bones of theory. It is an all-purpose nostrum to be applied whenever things look sticky. (Crang and Thrift, Thinking Space, 2000)

The question of space has in both the humanities and the social sciences recently regained prominence on academic agendas. The so-called ‘spatial turn’, initially set in motion by geographers, has allowed historians, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, artists and others to return to the long abandoned, albeit fundamental, question of what space is. This reengagement has resulted in a gradual, ongoing questioning and re-opening of the great debates that earlier characterised the European Renaissance. Contemporary…