From the 8th to the 9th of December 2017, the University of Edinburgh will be holding a conference highlighting the nexus between onomastics, multilingualism, and multiculturalism in ancient Rome. Entitled “Theorizing Contacts in the Roman Empire”, the event will feature scholarly papers from leading experts in classical studies. Although the official call for papers has passed, details about the conference subject matter can be found at the website of the Society for Classical Studies.
The aim of this conference is to assess the validity and scope of a variety of some of these models, with a particular focus on multilingualism and multiculturalism. By promoting and facilitating dialogue between disciplines, we shall aim to provide effective tools for different fields’ approaches in parallel (e.g. historical and linguistic). This has already been done very successfully in a few cases (e.g. ‘code-switching’), though greater interaction remains a desideratum. It is hoped that the participants will thereby open the discussion for a ‘theory of contact’ in the Roman world.