‘Multilingualism and Exchange’, a Research Group taking place in 2014-15, will conduct seminars and roundtables throughout the academic year. It will unite scholars of different disciplines to discuss the intellectual and commercial trajectories of goods, travellers and texts which enabled contact between early languages in western Europe and the Mediterranean (c.1000 B.C. – c.1500 A.D.). We intend to explore how far multilingualism was affected by mobility and exchange, considering the phenomenon in the light of the varying international structures of trade, religion, scholarship,and diplomacy which underpinned it. The seminar series will interrogate the nature and extent of linguistic contact involved in the transmission of material culture, seek to reconstruct the networks which permitted this transmission to take place, and examine the impact of mobility on cultural identity.

Convenors:

Tekla Bude (Junior Research Fellow, Newnham, Faculty of English) Sara Harris (Junior Research Fellow, Sidney Sussex, Faculty of English) Philippa Steele (Bristish Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Magdalene, Faculty of Classics)

Webpage:

http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/multilingualism-and-exchange-in-the-ancient-and-medieval-world