40 Years On: Aberdeen, Enlightenment and Global Legacies

Join us for a landmark conference, marking forty years since the influential 1986 gathering that placed Aberdeen at the centre of Scottish Enlightenment studies. This special anniversary event revisits and re-evaluates that scholarship while exploring new perspectives on Aberdeen’s intellectual, cultural, and global impact. Through a series of roundtable discussions, academics and heritage professionals will examine the role of Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland in shaping ideas in philosophy, education, Jacobitism, religion, literature, and the arts. The conference will also consider Aberdeen’s wider influence through trade, empire, migration, and global networks from the seventeenth century to the present. A curated group of panellists, including attendees of the 1986 conference, will provide their reflections.