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Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning
Alderik Blom. Conference on Frisian Humanities 2025.

Alderik Blom. Conference on Frisian Humanities 2025.

Introducing: plenary speaker Alderik Blom (CFH2025)

Conference

People and environment

From 12 to 14 November 2025, the third edition of the Conference on Frisian Humanities (CFH2025) will be held at the Oranje Hotel in Leeuwarden. The overarching theme is “Bridges and Boundaries: Fryslân in a Global Context”. We would like to introduce our four keynote speakers to you one by one.

On Wednesday, 12 November, Prof. Alderik Blom has been invited as the first keynote speaker at the conference.  Alderik H. Blom studied history, musicology, Celtic studies and Old Germanic studies in Utrecht, Amsterdam and Galway. From 2002 to 2010, he worked at the University of Cambridge (M. Phil., Ph.D. and postdoc at Girton College), then at the University of Oxford: first as a postdoc at Corpus Christi College and, from 2013, as Associate Professor of Celtic.

Since 2017, Blom has been Professor of Celtic at the Department of Indo-European Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany.

Lecture

Blom's lecture title is ‘Hor c’heneiled vreizhat ~ Ús Bretonske freonen: Relations between the Frisian and Breton movements, ca. 1946-1958’. 


Hor c’heneiled vreizhat ~ Ús Bretonske freonen: Relations between the Frisian and Breton movements, ca. 1946-1958

In June 1948, the newly founded Frisian literary magazine ‘De Tsjerne’ published a special issue entirely devoted to the Breton minority in France. In the good ten years that followed, Brittany, with its language and literature, even became a regular theme in ‘De Tsjerne’ and other Frisian-language magazines. Moreover, in turn, the leading Breton magazine ‘Al Liamm’ published a similar issue in 1951, this time entirely devoted to Fryslân and its language, with contributions from the main players in the Frisian movement of the time, translated into Breton. ‘Al Liamm’ also continued to follow cultural developments in Fryslân well into the 1960s. 

How did this culturally fruitful but now almost forgotten exchange come about and to what end? Who were the central Breton and Frisian figures in this attempt to bring linguistic minorities closer together in post-World War II Europe? The cultural and political context of post-war European federalism, the problematic wartime past of the two movements and the personal networks that formed the background of this Breton and Frisian exchange are the central issues addressed in this lecture. In addition to relevant journal publications in both Breton and Frisian, as well as French and Dutch, the focus will be on the unpublished correspondence between the main figures in this Frisian-Breton exchange.

More information about Blom and the lecture can be found on the speakers page on the conference website.

In short

What: Conference on Frisian Humanities
Where: Oranje Hotel, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden, the Netherlands
When: 12-14 November, 2025 
Organisation: Fryske Akademy, the Mercator European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning, the Lectorate Multilingualism and Literacy of NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, the department of Frisian Studies of University of Groningen, and the department Language, Technology and Culture of UG/Campus Fryslân.
Programme (time schedule): download (pdf) 
Book of Abstracts: download (pdf) 
Registration: through the website.

 

 

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