13 Nov 08

'La Sainte Cène du Patriarche' by Jean Huber was restored and repaired in 2008, 25 years after it first came to the Voltaire Foundation.

Oxford University is leading the way in the field of Enlightenment with both the launch of the Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment and last month’s Electronic Enlightenment project launch.

Tomorrow (Friday 14 November 2008) the Besterman Centre is holding its first major interdisciplinary event since its inaugural lecture six months ago. ‘Eighteenth Century Quarrels’ sees speakers from English, History, Music, History of Art, German, Classics and French faculties exploring the quarrels, controversies, battles and disputes that defined disciplines, nations and arts during that era.

The Besterman Centre is a new interdisciplinary research centre, based at the Voltaire Foundation. Currently funded by the Voltaire Foundation, it offers an annual programme of lectures, seminars, and conferences on every aspect of the Enlightenment and the 18th century. These range from debates about tolerance and freedom of speech and questions of intelligent design and atheism, to issues of colonialism and commercial economy.

Dr Kate Tunstall, Programme Director and University Lecturer in French and Fellow of Worcester said: ‘The Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment builds on the prestigious international reputation of Oxford's Voltaire Foundation, a world-leader for research and scholarship in the French Eighteenth Century and Enlightenment, founded by Theodore Besterman in the 1960s.

‘The Besterman Centre is about going beyond the French Enlightenment to engage with scholars working on the Enlightenment and the 18th century in all the Humanities - Classics, English, French, German, History, History of Art, History of Science, Music, Philosophy, Russian and Theology. We are delighted that the University has decided to support and facilitate interdisciplinary work by creating the Besterman Centre for the Enlightenment.’

The Centre was launched with an inaugural lecture by Professor Marian Hobson, on one of the major thinkers of the Enlightenment about whom too little is known – Denis Diderot. She was introduced by Professor Sir Colin Lucas who approved the ‘Eighteenth Century Quarrels as the Centre’s first project by saying: ‘If there’s one thing that both eighteenth century writers and Oxford academics are good at, it is quarrelling!’

The Electronic Enlightenment project launched last month. It is hosted by hosted by the Bodleian Library and offers unrivalled access to the correspondence of the greatest thinkers and writers of the long 18th century.