Objects of Knowledge: advancing the history of knowledge

The network gathers scholars from universities, museums and The Royal Danish Library to conduct a multifaceted exploration of what objects of knowledge are and how they provide a new and intellectually stimulating framework for the history of knowledge.

The network explores how the historical contingency of the emergence, the co-creation and the production of knowledge in everyday life is closely linked to objects, tangible as non-tangible. Our ambition is to explore how and when an object becomes an object of knowledge in everyday life. Hence, objects are a prism for understanding how and why knowledge historically has had different forms, has been used and produced by different actors, and how it has circulated in antiquity, early-modern and modern cultures and societies.

 

Objects are ambigous. Are they concrete, physical objects, or abstract objects that more resemble ideas and concepts? We contend that knowledge is formed and performed in the borderland between materiality, form, genre, and content. In daily life, people create, consume and understand knowledge with objects, for instance books, algorithms, statistics or the underwater world, and we will discuss to what extent objects themselves do something and perform knowledge. Methodologically, we explore so-called ‘object biographies’ as a means for discerning the trajectories of objects of knowledge in everyday life.

 

 

Workshops

  • 18-19 September 2025: Objects and things: what are objects of knowledge?
  • 19-20 May 2026: Writing biographies of objects: Objects, knowledge, and practices.
  • 20-21 August 2026: Textual and digital objects in the history of knowledge.

Conference

  • 11-12 May 2027: Objects in the history of knowledge

 

 

  • Laura Skouvig, Associate Professor, Department of Communication 
  • Maria Simonsen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University
  • Caroline Nyvang, Senior Researcher, The Royal Danish Library
  • Line Vestergaard Knudsen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Research Coordinator in Center of Heritage Studies (CfK), Limfjordsmuseernes Samvirke

 

UCPH researchers

Name Title Phone E-mail
Lilleør, Anton Sylvest PhD Fellow +4535321685 E-mail
Skouvig, Laura Associate Professor +4535321320 E-mail

Other researchers

Funding

PI: Laura Skouvig, University of Copenhagen 

Co-PI: Maria Simonsen, Aalborg university