1 September 2026

Photo: Bibliothèque al-Cady al-Aqib/Hill Museum & Manuscript Library

1855 copy of the Islamic devotional text Dalāʾil alkhayrāt. Image courtesy of the Bibliothèque al-Cady al-Aqib (Timbuktu, Mali) and the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library. Published with permission of the owners. All rights reserved.

This winter semester, the Equity and Diversity Lecture Series is back, exploring the relationship between written artefacts and manifold practices of care. The lectures are open to everyone.

Where people care for someone or something, they leave traces: notes for family members, prescriptions doctors write for their patients, diligently copied prayer books, letters that sustain friendships, and records that keep institutions running. Written artefacts like these are deeply entangled with caring practices. They can organise care, as when timetables, rosters, or care plans structure who does what and when. They can perform care, as in love letters or condolence notes. They can also document care, preserving evidence of medical treatment, legal protection, or educational support. At the same time, the materiality of these objects, such as the choice of paper, ink, script, or format, can signal urgency, intimacy, authority, or neglect.

How have people used handwriting to look after one another, and what happens when these handwritten traces are lost, damaged, or ignored? These questions are at the heart of the new lecture series ‘Written Artefacts of Care’, which will run from 12 October to 14 December. Over the course of the semester, researchers from different disciplines will explore the many facets of the relationship between handwriting and caring practices. Talks will examine how written artefacts have shaped the organisation, performance, and communication of care in diverse historical and cultural settings.

The series opens up a new angle from which to explore social hierarchies and inequalities: by tracing who writes for whom, whose care is recorded or erased, and which artefacts survive or disappear, the lectures will shed light on power relations embedded in everyday practices of care. In the process, they will illuminate further aspects of written artefacts’ own social and material lives, showing how these objects circulate, age, and acquire meaning beyond their original purposes.

Organised by the CSMC’s Equity and Diversity Unit, the series is part of the studium generale and open to all. All sessions will take place on Mondays, 6:15 pm to 7:45 pm, in lecture hall C at Edmund-Siemers-Allee 1, and will also be accessible online via Zoom. Registration is required; details and the full schedule are available here.

Previous editions of the Equity and Diversity Lecture Series have dealt with the topics of ‘Invisibilty and Autonomy’ (2022), ‘Untold Stories’ (2023), and ‘Written Artefacts across World Regions’ (2024). An overview of all lectures delivered thus far can be found here.