Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture #9 with Dr Sara Uckelman: Making the Erudite Accessible

Swedigarch in conjunction with both the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Archaeology at Umeå University, are delighted to announce an upcoming Swedigarch Inspirational Lecture, to be held at Umeå University on 15 April, 2026 from 13:15 – 15:00, and shared online at https://www.umu.se/live/. Our speaker this time is Dr. Sara Uckelman, a Professor of Logic at Durham University, who will be speaking on the intersection of Philosophy with Swedigarch’s mission. The title of her talk is Making the Erudite Accessible.

Dr. Sara L. Uckelman is a Professor of Logic at Durham University.  She joined the Department of Philosophy in 2014 after completing her PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2009, with a dissertation entitled Modalities in Medieval Logic, and undertaking post-docs in Amsterdam, Tilburg, and Heidelberg.  An expert in both contemporary logic and the history of logic, Dr. Uckelman’s recent research has focused on how to make logic a more inclusive discipline, and she has particular interest in women in the history of logic.

Making the Erudite Accessible

Abstract: In a world where “expertise” and “expert” is viewed increasingly negatively, the academic’s task of translating their work for a wider audience is not only increasingly important but increasingly difficult. This is particularly the case for academics in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, where we have always faced the challenge of explaining why our work matters. But while we may not be the ones curing cancer, we are the ones who make a life with incurable cancer worth living: Through stories, through art, through music, through all the activities that make humans flourish. Against such a backdrop, I will address the topic of “making the erudite accessible”: How can we, as arts, humanities, and social sciences scholars and academics, take our research and transform it, through digital and social media tools, into something that is not only accessible to the wider public but also desirable to them. Drawing on my own experience of the last 6 years translating the erudite world of formal logic into the social world of youtube, I will talk about methods, strategies, and tools to offer challenges and support to other academics to transform their research in a similar way.