The Swedish National Infrastructure for Digital Archaeology (Swedigarch), in conjunction with both the Research Seminar series in Philosophy and the Research Seminar series in Archaeology and Environmental Archaeology, are delighted to announce an upcoming Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture, to be held at Umeå University on 15 April, 2026. The lecture may also be followed via livestream at umu.se/live.
Our speaker this time is Dr. Sara Uckelman, a Professor of Logic at Durham University, who will be speaking on the intersection of Philosophy with Swedigarch's mission. The title of her talk is "Making the Erudite Accessible".
Abstract
In a world where "expertise" and "expert" is viewed increasingly negatively, the academic's task of translating their work for a wider audience is not only increasingly important but increasingly difficult. This is particularly the case for academics in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, where we have always faced the challenge of explaining why our work matters. But while we may not be the ones curing cancer, we are the ones who make a life with incurable cancer worth living: Through stories, through art, through music, through all the activities that make humans flourish. Against such a backdrop, I will address the topic of "making the erudite accessible": How can we, as arts, humanities, and social sciences scholars and academics, take our research and transform it, through digital and social media tools, into something that is not only accessible to the wider public but also desirable to them. Drawing on my own experience of the last 6 years translating the erudite world of formal logic into the social world of youtube, I will talk about methods, strategies, and tools to offer challenges and support to other academics to transform their research in a similar way.
