Conferences, Workshops, Call for Papers

The public and international workshop will bring together experts and knowledge from various institutes in Germany, England and Borneo. Individual topics and questions about collection objects will be discussed with regard to their original meaning and use as well as their relevance to the history of Borneo's collections. The workshop is part of the project »Objects from Borneo in the Cabinet of Artefacts and Natural Curiosities of the Francke Foundations Halle« funded by the German Lost Art Foundation since December 2023. 

You can find the workshop program here. 

Please register with Giulia Speciale.

Contact: speciale(at)francke-halle.de

School libraries with historical book collections are barely anchored in the public consciousness. Yet in many places they contain cultural treasures of the highest order, which are also valuable sources for researching the history of education and knowledge. The conference aims to bring representatives from libraries, schools and academia into a dialog and focus on the past and present of historical school libraries. The aim is to network and consolidate cooperation.

The conference is a cooperation project between the Francke Foundations in Halle, the Institute of Educational Science at the Ruhr University Bochum and the DIPF Library for Research in the History of Education. The venue is the Francke Foundations, online participation is possible. 

Contact: grunewald(at)francke-halle.de; klosterberg(at)francke-halle.de

Go to the CFP at HSozKult

Current results from pharmaceutical history research on alchemical practice at Halle's orphanage, today's Francke Foundations, will be presented at the lecture evening. These will be introduced by an overview of laboratory distillation techniques since antiquity. A project will also be presented that makes an outstanding manuscript source of alchemical knowledge digitally available to researchers and the general public for the first time.

Further information and the program can be found here

Accompanying the DFG project »Alchemy and Pietism. Alchemical Practice at the Halle Orphanage in the 18th Century«, which has been based at the Research Centre since April 2023, an interdisciplinary, public workshop took place in March 2025. The focus was on medical alchemy and associated early modern alchemical (knowledge) practices. The workshop aimed to facilitate a professional exchange from the perspective of the history of knowledge as well as the history of pharmacy and chemistry.

Program