Symposium: "The Silk Roads Rediscovered: Legend and Reality", online via Zoom, Friday March 20, 2026
(4:30-17:30 JST / 6:30-9:30 CET)

This international online symposium aims at investigating how the knowledge of Eurasian heritage acquired during the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries have influenced the way in which many people worldwide came to understand the visual, material and textual legacies of the trans-Eurasian trade network called 'Silk Roads'. In co-organisation with Persica Centropa: Cosmopolitan Artefacts and Artifices in the Age of Crises, 1900-1950 (FWF Elise Richter Programme, V-995), this event is held in conjunction with the the four-day programme 'EurAsia-Tokyo Academy (17-20 March 2026), generously sponsored by the Cluster of Excellence 'EurAsia Transformations, in collaboration with the University of Tokyo and the Yokohama Museum of Eurasian Cultures.

//
PROGRAMME (Please note this event is set in Japan Standard Time (JST))

14:30-14:40 – Welcome & Introduction: Yuka Kadoi (Uni Wien) & Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (ÖAW)

SESSION 1: Travellers, Scholars and Agents along the Silk Roads

14:40-15:00 – Daniel C. Waugh (University of Washington): Skrine at Kashgar: A History in Documents

15:00-15:20 – Imre Galambos (University of Cambridge / Zhejiang University): The Rhetorics of Exploration in Stein’s Narratives

15:20-15:40 – Håkan Wahlquist (Sven Hedin Foundation / Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences): Sven Hedin, Albert Herrmann and the (re-)Invention of the Silk Road

SESSION 2: Silk Road Heritage and Archival Science

15:50-16:10 – Martina Massullo (Musée du Louvre): Mapping Memory: Building Digital Access to the Godard Archives at Musée du Louvre

16:10-16:30 – Anton Matejicka (Uni Wien): Connecting the World through Offprints: Inventorying the Strzygowski Collection at the University of Vienna’s Art History Library

E-Roundtable:

16:30-17:30 – Japan and Persia: Revisiting "The Silk Road and the Shosoin": A conversation with Yuka Kadoi (Uni Wien), Yukio Lippit (Harvard University) & Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (ÖAW)

--

Zoom registration required:
https://univienna.zoom.us/meeting/register/U3noPJliR0KfkuqMd2O3NA

Further information:
https://persicacentropa.univie.ac.at/events/