The International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies invites early-career scholars active in eighteenth-century studies to apply to take part in the ISECS ECS seminar, to be held over one week in central Barcelona. The Seminar, which is held yearly, is known for its role in fostering and consolidating scholarly vocations in eighteenth-century studies, as well as for attracting participants from all around the world. The 2024 seminar, to be chaired jointly by Dr John Stone (Universitat de Barcelona) and Prof Fernando Durán (Universidad de Cádiz), will be sponsored by the Spanish association for eighteenth-century specialists, the Sociedad Española de Estudios del Siglo XVIII. In addition to lectures by senior scholars and talks by early-career scholars, the seminar will feature an opening reception, a dinner, and a guided tour of a number of Barcelona’s significant eighteenthcentury buildings. The main venue for the seminar over the course of five days (8-12 July 2024) will be the Faculty of Philology and Communication on Plaça Universitat in the city centre. Participating senior scholars include Prof. Thomas O’Connor (Maynooth), Dr Daniel Múñoz Sempere (KCL/U Cádiz), Prof Ananya Kabir (UCL), Prof Susanne Lachenicht (U Bayreuth), and Dr Nicolás Bas (U València).

In its 2024 edition, the seminar will focus on Diasporic Networks in the Long Eighteenth Century.

If early modern European exile is characterised primarily by religion, and exile after the French Revolution by politics, in the long eighteenth century religious and political exile exist alongside other, perhaps less obvious, displacements: from the mobility of military and political elites to the articulation of extended family networks around trade, creating stable, multi-generational bi-national communities. While it is true that local and transnational phenomena have conditioned each other in many periods, in the long eighteenth century the growth of trans-oceanic trade—together with the increasing sophistication of financial instruments designed for travellers’, improved postal services, nascent tourism, and the targeted recruitment of foreign talent in the skilled trades and the arts—took place alongside changes in the roles and institutional lives of older diasporas (Huguenots in London, British and Irish Catholics in France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal; Sephardic Jews in Amsterdam). Thus, exiled or diasporic individuals were better connected to their homelands, and to their analogues in other locations. The cultural work of diasporic networks in the long eighteenth century, though less studied than its sixteenth- and seventeenth-century counterparts, was arguably more diverse, more abundant, and more productive. Our focus on exiles and diasporas is informed by the work of such scholars as Peter Burke, in Exiles and Expatriates in the History of Knowledge, 1500-2000 (2017)—the active, creative reception of knowledge brought by diasporic individuals—and Niall Fergusson, in The Tower and the Square (2018), on the factors contributing dynamism to networks.

To work up a model of diasporic history is to study the circulation of ideas transnationally, to question the traditional consignment of diasporas to a periphery, to gauge the dynamism of particular networks, and to identify and assess the factors fostering or hindering the opportune reception modelled by Burke. Thus, the three suggested, but not exclusive, foci of the seminar will be the role of culture in the cohesion of diasporic communities; the uses to which diasporic communities were put by their host societies and their institutions; and the means by which diasporic culture was created, or by which diasporas circulated culture transnationally in patterns distinct from those of translation and review culture. More specifically, we invite participants to consider:

• the consequences for source cultures of the formation of diasporic communities, with a special emphasis on those cases in which links to the homeland were of great importance
• diasporic institutions
• gender perspectives on both diasporic communities, their cultural work, and their reception
• the performance and reflexiveness of diasporic sociabilities
• diasporic book history: the circulation of print beyond or without a political homeland, especially in languages not perceived in the period as linguae francae
• manuscript production and printing associated with diasporas
• renewed theoretical frameworks for book history (for example, how can Darnton’s “communication circuit” be adapted to make sense of the diasporic experience)
• diasporas as resources: recruiting and retaining foreign talent; the interaction of diasporic populations and their institutions with the political and intellectual classes of hosting polities; diasporas and economic development
• diasporic identities: strategies employed in keep us distinctiveness and cohesion in a diasporic population

A maximum of fifteen early career scholars will be chosen to take part in the seminar. Applications should be based on an original research project (e.g. a PhD thesis), whether underway or recently completed, broadly related to the seminar’s focus. As a seminar rather than a conference, participants will have one hour over which to present their work. The official languages of the conference will be English, French, and Spanish. Participants should have a working knowledge of at least two of these three languages. That said, participants will be provided with translations of summaries of talks, and of proposed readings, that are not in English. The organisers will see to the cost of lodging from Monday to Saturday, as well as that of lunches and dinners from Tuesday to Friday (excluding dinner on Friday). The organisers will likewise reserve rooms in postgraduate halls of residence on behalf of participants. Participants will cover the cost of, and make arrangements for, their own travel. For their part, the organisers will provide participants with tips to ensure that travel to and from Barcelona’s El Prat airport and around the city is straightforward. As has been the case in past years, the Paris-based publishing house Honoré Champion will publish the proceedings of the seminar in its “Lumières internationals” series. Applications should include a brief CV (including the year the applicant’s PhD was awarded, and select publications, as well as notable conference presentations); and an abstract of no more than 1,000 words, with a special emphasis on both the proposal’s relevance to the seminar’s focus and its relationship to the applicant’s main lines of research. Applications will be assessed using the following criteria:

• relevance to the seminar’s focus
• the rigour, importance, and originality of the applicant’s proposed contribution
• a fair representation across the disciplines and across participating ISECS national societies

The seminar’s scientific advisory boardwill be made up of Prof Fernando Durán, Prof Jesús Astigarraga, Prof Mónica Bolufer, Dr Elena de Lorenzo, and Dr John Stone. The deadline for the second round of applications is 31 March 2024. Applications should be sent in English or French to ISECSBarcelona2024@gmail.com, preferably as PDFs or Microsoft Word documents. The organising and scientific advisory board will contact applicants about the outcome of the selection process by 5 April 2024.