Crossing those boundaries: Material Cultures and the Creation of Knowledge

Yesterday I had the (genuine) pleasure of spending a Sunday afternoon in the company of experts from the fields of literature, history, philosophy, publishing, cultural studies (and various combinations of these), at the University of Edinburgh's The Centre for the History of the Book's conference "Material Cultures and the Creation of Knowledge". It was fascinating to see familiar themes: creation of knowledge, its dissemination and power, potential barriers and opportunities, being considered from quite unfamiliar perspectives.

When chairing a session on censorship, however, I realised that they were not really so different. A reminder of the need for IP lawyers and researchers to look not only at other legal fields, as our project seeks to do, but to engage much more broadly with disciplines which, because of language, geography (or possibly lack of time!) might seem less relevant to our immediate focus.">