CfP: Discipline and Punish: The Early Modern University Court in Theory and Practice

 Call for Papers: Discipline and Punish: The Early Modern University Court in Theory and Practice University of Limerick, Ireland, 14-15 January 2026 

The internal jurisdictional autonomy of early modern universities represented a significant inheritance from the medieval instruments of academic freedom. The rise of the territorial university as a model curtailed the independence of these institutions rendering them more directly subject to external political actors, a situation that became more pronounced as a consequence of the Reformation. Despite these transformations, the university’s powers of internal oversight and control of its members remained relatively intact. These powers were set out, instituted and sanctioned in charters, statutes and ordinances. The principal instrument through which the powers were asserted was the academic jurisdiction, i.e. the university court. At one level, these arrangements protected university members, ensuring their protection to a certain extent from external legal threat. However, in adhering to the university jurisdiction, the members submitted themselves to its regulating influence. In this forum, students, professors and the cives academici could be arraigned, prosecuted and sanctioned for minor or major acts of deviancy. Thus, the university court and other instruments of institutional authority could play a central role in the disciplining of university members, defining the parameters of and enforcing normative behaviours. This conference seeks to explore the characteristics of these jurisdictional regimes in the early modern period. Paper proposals that address the following themes are especially welcome:

The legal and administrative frameworks of discipline at early modern universities

The characteristics of university courts

Social disciplining and the normative functions of university courts

The pursuit of personal vendettas and factional strife through the instruments of university jurisdiction

The limits and limitations of academic disciplinary regimes

Subversions of academic jurisdiction

The conference is organised as part of the Taighde Éireann – Research Ireland Laureate Award project, Malcontents: Order and Disorder in the Early Modern World of Learning (https://malcontents.hcommons.org/), which is led by Dr Richard Kirwan (University of Limerick).

The conference will take place at the University of Limerick, Ireland from 14-15 January 2026.

Proposals for papers of c. 300 words with a short biography of c. 200 words should be sent to Dr Wouter Kreuze, wouter.kreuze@ul.ie, by 16 June 2025.