1st International Egodocumental Network Conference
Vilnius University, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Lodz, and the Egodocumental Research Group (https://egodocuments.umk.pl) organise an international conference focusing on research, development, and changing perceptions of egodocuments in the twenty-first century. The conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their insights and to encourage interdisciplinary studies of egodocuments.
The conference will also be the first meeting of the International Egodocumental Network established in December 2023 by the Egodocumental Research Group (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Lodz) to unite scholars from different disciplines working on egodocuments. It provides a platform for discussion, collaboration, and exchange of information between the participants, as well as online research seminars organized twice a year. In this dimension, our conference continues two editions of the Scientific Symposium "Egodocuments, Life-Writing and Autobiographical Texts..." organized at NCU in Toruń in 2022 and 2024.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Nataliia Voloshkova
Kazimierz Wielki University and Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Leona Toker
Hebrew University and Shalem Academic College
Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu
Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University
Lucie Rizzo
Université de Neuchâtel
From one’s own Wedding to the Death of Guillaume Farel: A Typology of the Events Related in the livre de raison of the Favarger Family (County of Neuchâtel, 1547–1681)
In egodocuments, personal and family events are often interwoven with larger-scale episodes, such as political or meteorological incidents, affecting entire communities. Which events are worth being noted, and which are surprisingly missing out? How are these documents balanced between micro- and macro-events? We suggest discussing those questions through a specific case study from the County of Neuchâtel, a small independent principality situated at the crossroads of French and German cultural influences and surrounded by neighbours such as France, the Swiss Cantons, the duchies of Burgundy and of Savoy. A bourgeois of this city, Jonas Favarger, kept a livre de raison which was continued by his grandson, going from 1547 to 1681. This source allows us to observe which events were recounted by Jonas Favarger and his descendants during a period that began approximately ten years after the arrival of the Reformation in the region, and which therefore is characterized by a certain instability.
