Why webinars?
Knowledge of the various subjects of material culture and experience in researching and teaching them is thinly spread among the universities. In the US only one academic institution, The Bard Graduate Center in New York, is devoted to the cross disciplinary and diachronic study of material culture. No comparable academic center exists elsewhere. In Europe and the Mediterranean, the material turn in the study of the Middle East is reflected in several dispersed courses at a number of universities. Islamic numismatics are only taught on an academic level in Oxford, Tübingen, and Hamburg; Papyrology only in Leiden and Munich; Islamic Archaeology in Chicago, Copenhagen, Bamberg, Bonn, Jerusalem and a few other places.
The leading scholars in the field for the study of material culture are dispersed, teaching often not only in different departments (Archaeology, History, Islamic Studies, and Art History), but also on different campuses in different countries within Europe, Northern America, and beyond. Not every country has the resources to cover all branches of Islamic material culture. State of the art knowledge is especially thin in the countries of the Middle East. Even at institutions that provide instructions in the topics of Islamic material culture, very few students study them, since one must have not only a basic knowledge of the society and language but also undertake additional efforts to acquire a wide range of new skills. Consequently, interested and motivated students usually cannot find the necessary intellectual guidance at their academic home institutions. Internationally, the accumulated demand for instruction in this range of topics is high.
The humanities have discovered the ‘material turn’. This is evidenced by the number of applications, and the spirited participation of students and young scholars in international workshops, and webinars, for manuscripts, numismatics, Islamic archaeology, and papyrology. In turn, webinars also allow outstanding scholars to teach beyond the confines of their own campus. Webinars, thus, serve as the means to bring together interested students and scholars. In a modern and digitalized world, special knowledge does not have to be bound to a specific place or institution.