Workshops in February

The debate about objects of colonial provenance in European collections has been going on for some time, both in academia and in public. However, legal aspects often receive little attention. The workshop "The Forensics of Provenance. Colonial Translocations through the Lenses of Legal Pluralism" on 8 and 9 February 2024 aims to change this by taking a new look at the removal of material goods in colonial constellations, informed by the paradigm of legal pluralism.

The organisers of the workshop, anthropologist João Figueiredo (Münster) and legal historian Sebastian Spitra (Vienna), are calling for greater consideration to be given to the normative and legal imaginations of the communities of origin related to the objects in question. They emphasise that the colonies were by no means a legal no-man's land before the arrival of the Europeans, even if this impression could arise in view of the debates taking place today. The workshop therefore aims to create a common conceptual and disciplinary framework for a deeper understanding of the embeddedness of material culture in a plurality of legal orders and normative systems.

On 22 and 23 February 2024, the workshop "Unity and Plurality in Canon Law between the Concil of Nicaea and the Decretum Gratiani" will focus on the law of the medieval church. It spans a period from late antiquity to the 12th century and focusses on the relationship between legal unity and plurality.

Aspects of unity and plurality in early medieval canon law before the great systematisations of the 12th century will be discussed in five thematic sections including Merovingian canon law, the phenomenon of multinormativity and questions of historical tradition. Organiser Clara Harder (Cologne/Münster) emphasises that normative contradictions and flexible practices characterised pre-Gratian canon law just as much as the desire for unambiguity and unification, although a closed legal system cannot be assumed.