Thinking Across Contexts: Disciplinary Knowledge and Its Limits
17-19 June 2026, University of Exeter
How is knowledge shaped by where it is produced? What happens when disciplinary frameworks travel across historical, cultural, and political contexts?
Across the Humanities and Social Sciences, scholars are increasingly questioning the limits of universalising theories and reasserting the importance of locally grounded, historically situated forms of understanding. From debates about contextualism and transhistoricism to the decolonial turnās critique of Western-centrism, the production of knowledge is being re-examined in light of global inequality, geopolitical instability, climate crisis, and technological transformation.
The 2026 Exeter-Fudan Global Thought Network Conference invites participants to explore the entanglements between disciplinary frameworks and contextual knowledge. Bringing together colleagues from across our two institutions, the conference seeks contributions that foreground local meanings, situated epistemologies, and transhistorical processes from a range of disciplinary perspectives.
A full programme will be circulated in due course.