Connected Communities in Action: ‘Marco Polo and the Silk Roads’ Autumn School (Venice, 30 September – 4 October 2024)

In 2024, the year marking the 700th anniversary of the death of one of the world’s great explorers, Marco Polo, the University of Warwick, in collaboration with NOVA University in Lisbon, the University of Ljubljana, the University of Arts in Belgrade, Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, Kazakh National Academy of Arts in Almaty, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, is inviting postgraduate students and early career researchers to an autumn school focused on the theme of Marco Polo and the Silk Roads.

In the popular imagination, Marco Polo features as arguably the most famous Western traveller to have journeyed along the trade route between Europe and Asia known as the Silk Road. As a young merchant, he began his journey to China in 1271 and his travels lasted for 24 years. Today the Silk Road is rapidly becoming one of the key geocultural and geostrategic concepts of the twenty-first century. A narrative of connected histories, it now operates as a platform for international trade, diplomacy, infrastructure development and digital connectivity (Winter 2022). Identified by two principal routes - maritime and overland, the Silk Road stretches across the Indian Ocean and Eurasian landmass; regions that will be of paramount importance in an increasingly multi-polar world.

Building on concepts and insights from theatre and performance studies, critical heritage studies, visual arts, history, cultural studies, and international relations and geopolitics, this autumn school calls for new research and approaches on how we should situate the mobilisation of the Silk Road imaginary historically and geopolitically within international affairs, and how the Silk Road is localised, interpreted, and contested within existing national and regional cultural contexts.

Through talks, workshops, and demonstrations the participants will be exposed to a variety of disciplinary approaches and ways in which they could be combined to build a new critical framework to understand the Silk Road(s) performatively as a relational and intersectional critical concept and practice.

Please see more details about the programme and how to apply here.

Deadline for applications: September 2, 2024.