Closing Conference

The binational Weave project “Resonating Networks” (“Nachhallende Netzwerke”), based at the University of Basel and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation in the period 2023–26, aims to examine the origins, discursive constitution, and implications of research paradigms in Old Norse studies. With a methodological foundation in discourse analysis and network-theoretical approaches in the tradition of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (ANT), it addresses how complex and interrelating networks of people, places, texts (both literary and mainly scholarly), and discourses have created Setzungen in the discipline that resonate profoundly in later generations of scholarship across national and linguistic boundaries and still influence recent research up to the present day. The project studies the establishment of central research paradigms and the cross-discursive relationships between these paradigms in Old Norse studies from the beginning of the discipline’s research history in the mid-17th century to the mid-20th Century.

After three years of collaboration, the project will come to an end in November 2026. This closing conference gives us the opportunity to critically assess and analyse the different theoretical and methodological approaches that were adopted as part of the overall project and to present the insights gained from the individual sub-projects. Contributions on the individual sub-projects will be complemented and put in dialogue with contributions by international colleagues.

Guests are welcome to attend upon registration until 25 September 2026 at nordistikschweiz-dslw@unibas.ch.