Donation to professorship a boost to Latin

“This is a very welcome and important contribution to the future of Latin and linguistic research, here in Uppsala and across the nation. It’s great that the Foundation sees the importance of strengthening Latin, which of course is a language that lies at the core of the humanities,” says David Håkansson, Dean of the Faculty of Languages.

“There is a strong and growing public interest in our history in the community. And knowledge of Latin is key to understanding our history and ourselves,” notes Håkansson.

In the Middle Ages and even into early modern times, scholars communicated in Latin and there are large numbers of documents in the archives that have not yet been translated and studied.

“There are lots of potentially very interesting research questions that can be asked of this material. It’s a huge language. Latin is also interesting in itself, given its many links to other languages,” he says.

Strengthening a lively research environment

The donation, titled “Olle Engkvist’s Professorship in Latin”, is for five years, with the possibility of extension. The professorship will strengthen the lively research environment in Latin that already exists at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, which is also collaborating well with the Latin experts at the University Library and the museums.

Uppsala’s sterling tradition in Latin, and its geographical proximity to a fine body of cultural heritage and the exciting opportunities for collaboration using modern language technology at the department are how Helena Dandenell, Chair of the Olle Engkvist Foundation, explains the Foundation’s choice of higher education institution in this instance. The fact that the Foundation has donated a professorial chair is unusual and she emphasises that it is a future-oriented and manifestly strategic initiative to strengthen the Foundation’s support for humanities subject areas:

“We object to what we perceive as a one-sided, instrumental view of knowledge and research in current public discourse. There is a lot of talk about immediate benefit for solving problems. Of course that is also needed, but we really want to highlight the importance of humanities research, as well as of basic and curiosity-driven research in general,” explains Dandenell.

Specific and important needs

Within the framework of this strategy, the Foundation wanted to identify and satisfy a concrete and important need in the humanities and classical languages. That soon resulted in Latin being identified as interesting and key to many scholars.

“Without knowledge of Latin, society loses a great deal,” says Dandenell.

The Foundation is looking forward to following the initiative and hopes that development in the subject area and research in it will now get a boost.

“We also hope that through this donation, we will encourage more people to contribute in a similar way. The humanities and general education are fundamental in a society. They provide knowledge and stimulate thinking that we as individuals and the whole of society benefit from.”

Anneli Waara