Gaza: Tradition and Leadership in a Learning City in the 6th Century AD

I am delighted to report that Jan Stenger, MacDowell Professor of Greek, Classics, University of Glasgow has won funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh to hold a colloquium in April 2014 followed by a research workshop and public lecture in June 2014.

The core purpose of the colloquium will be to initiate interdisciplinary dialogue, explore key themes and chart pathways to significant collaboration around the topic of learning cities from antiquity to modern times. The results of the Colloquium will establish a methodological framework and road map for the Research Workshop, and Public Lecture, and will bring together scholars from Scottish and international HEIs (including from PASCAL) to test the approach on a range of case studies. All events will be structured around themes such as authority, education, urbanism and urban identity.

Gaza in Palestine underwent, in common with other cities, a profound transformation during the sixth century AD in society, economy and religion. What is significant about Gaza is its thriving culture, as documented by ample literary and material evidence. The key questions of this project are: how did major figures of religious and secular life create educational authority in the urban context and attempt to shape through their leadership Gaza as a ‘learning city’? To what extent did these attempts respond to the challenges of change? The investigation focuses on the strategies through which cultural visions were disseminated across the civic community and relates them to modern uses of learning for the promotion of urban regeneration. The objective of this pilot study is to gain insight into the situational nature of learning across times and cultures.