Symposium: An Intellectual History of Legal History

May 23, 2025

The symposium is organized by Frank Ejby Poulsen (Bayreuth Humboldt Centre / Institut für Fränkische Landesgeschichte der Universitäten Bamberg und Bayreuth) and explores the intellectual history of legal history through a diverse range of themes, periods, and regions. Participants examine how legal knowledge has been shaped, taught, and transmitted from the early modern period to the 20th century, across Europe and into colonial and post-colonial contexts.

Time:  12 - 13 June 2025
Place: Schloss Thurnau, (Thurnau, Germany)

The organizer aims to bring together scholars working on legal history or any aspects related to the teaching of legal disciplines in a historical context, contributing to the intellectual history of this field. While the conference focuses on identifying the intellectual contexts in which legal history developed, it also considers social aspects, as ideas do not exist independently of people.

The symposium will feature four panels discussing the following themes:

1. The Use of History in the Theory and Practice of Law: Codification, Concepts, and Origins

2. Theology, Medicine, History, and Legal Studies: Early Modern Knowledge Paradigms

3. Actors of Exchange: Influential Legal Historians and the Legacy of Their Concepts

4. The History of Teaching Legal History: Temporality and Spatiality in Academia

Keynote Speakers:

• Heikki Pihlajamäki, University of Helsinki: How legal histories are written: codification, modernization and taxonomy of law
• Sören Koch, University of Bergen: Changing perspectives on the sources of and reasons for legal historical research – A Scandinavian case study

The full Programme can be downloaded below.

Source: https://www.iflg-thurnau.uni-bayreuth.de/de/3_veranstaltungen/2025-06-12-Symposium-on-Intellectual-History-and-Legal-History-_INTELLEX_/index.html (23.5.2025)

Programme