The First Global Enlightenment Forum
Saturday, 12th April 2025
The First Global Enlightenment Forum centred around the origins, growth, proliferation and application of Enlightenment thought and philosophy to the Arab and non-Western world. As modern academia continues to discover the global roots that found some of history's most important philosophical movements, we wish to tease apart the intellectual heritage and impact of the Enlightenment vis-à-vis its closest neighbour; the Middle East. This spans the breadth and depth of intellectual canon: philosophy, literature, science, history, economics and politics.
We were delighted to hear from the following academics and intellectuals:
Professor Nicholas Cronk
Professor of French Literature and European Enlightenment Studies at St Edmund's Hall and Wolfson College; Director of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford,
on Voltaire in the Arab World.
Dr Dmitri Levitin
Fifty-Pound Fellow in History at All Soul's College, University of Oxford,
on European and Islamicate Intellectual Change, 1300–1800: Knowledge, Institutions, and the Market.
Professor Nahyan Fancy
Al-Qasimi Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter,
on The History of Science as Entanglement across the Mediterranean.
Professor Ali M. Ansari FRSE
Professor of Iranian History at the University of St. Andrews; President of the British Institute of Persian Studies,
on Whiggism and Iranian Intellectuals.
The Rt Hon The Lord Hannan of Kingsclere
Conservative life peer in the House of Lords; Adviser to the Board of Trade; President of the Institute for Free Trade,
on Islam and the birth of market capitalism.
Essay Competition Winners
We were also delighted to hear from the three winners of our student Enlightenment Essay Competition, Noreen Salah, Walid El-Khatib, and Rachel Kennedy. They presented on the Application of Enlightenment Values in the Contemporary Middle East.
Attendees had the opportunity to discuss Enlightenment principles and comparative intellectual history over breakfast, lunch, tea, coffee, and biscuits. Academics and attendees mingled freely, bringing the heights of academe to the public. And it helped that everyone had a lovely time too!
