Current Issue

The Journal for the History of Knowledge includes an annual special issue, compiled by guest editors, which explores a theme central to the journal’s scope.

We are currently accepting proposals for the Fall 2022 Special Issue.

Proposals should contain the following:

• A description of the proposed theme (1500-2000 words) highlighting its significance for the history of knowledge
• A table of contents (typically 8-12 articles of 8000 words)
• Abstracts of the articles
• Two-page CVs of the editors; short biographies of the contributors
• An outline of the production process up to manuscript submission. All manuscripts must be submitted to the journal by Summer 2021.

Please send your proposal to all three editors: 
Sven Dupré (s.g.m.dupre@uu.nl), 
Renée Schilling (renee.schilling@huygens.knaw.nl), and
Geert Somsen (g.somsen@maastrichtuniversity.nl).

Proposal deadline: 14 December 2020
Notification of acceptance: before 26 February 2021

After submission, all manuscripts will go through a process of peer-review, author’s revisions, and copy-editing. JHoK is an Open Access journal, in principle at no charge to the authors.

Details of the journal's scope can be found here. 

A full list of the editorial team and advisory editorial board is available here.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming special issue: Histories of Ignorance, with guest editors Lukas Verburgt and Peter Burke. It is scheduled to appear in the fall of 2021.

A quote from the proposal:

Our suggestion for the 2020s and beyond is that the new field of the history of knowledge should also be a history of ignorance, both of what is known in German as Unwissen (general ignorance) and Nichtwissen (ignorance of something specific). It is simply impossible to draw a sharp contrast between the production and circulation of knowledge, on the one hand, and that of ignorance, on the other hand: rather, we should study the changing and hierarchical relationship between them. What becomes clear is that the central questions standing at the heart of the history of knowledge are, in fact, questions about the connections between what is known and unknown, what is knowable and unknowable and who is deemed knowledgeable and unknowledgeable in different epochs and cultures. Both a tour d’horizon and a programmatic outline of the historical study of a highly timely topic, in science as well as in society, this agenda-setting special issue brings together a diverse group of scholars. Their contributions explore ignorance in different places and periods and from perspectives ranging from the history of science to global history and social anthropology – each emphasizing how ignorance is, and should be, central to every history of knowledge.