Books provide sustained arguments; projects and collections reveal scholarship in motion. The resources below offer primary sources, journals, seminars, teaching materials, institutional networks and records of major research programmes.
Some are active organisations, while others are completed programmes or archived courses whose materials remain useful. Their status is indicated in the description of each entry.
Journal for the History of Knowledge
Open-access peer-reviewed journal
Publishes research on the history of knowledge across regions, periods and fields. New issues provide a continuing source of work on the making, circulation and classification of knowledge.
Interdisciplinary research centre
A McGill-based centre studying the connected history of the Indian Ocean world, from East and Southeast Asia through South Asia and the Middle East to Africa. Its projects, publications, podcasts and events provide an ongoing source of new scholarship.
Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies
Peer-reviewed journal
An interdisciplinary journal covering the societies, environments and networks of the Indian Ocean world. Its geographical scope extends across both maritime and terrestrial connections from Africa to East Asia.
Getty Foundation initiative
Supports sustained intellectual exchange among art historians working in Africa, Asia, Latin America, East-Central Europe and the Mediterranean. Its projects offer practical models for constructing global art history through collaboration.
Open-access primary-source collection
Provides medieval texts in their original languages alongside new English translations, with material from many parts of the world between approximately 600 and 1600. It gives readers access to primary sources rather than only modern syntheses.
International Dunhuang Programme
International digital collection and research collaboration
Brings together manuscripts, paintings, textiles and other materials from the eastern Silk Roads. The site also provides educational resources, news and information about related scholarly activity.
Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
Research and digitisation project
A University of Cape Town project concerned with West African manuscript traditions, scholarly mobility, book economies, cataloguing, digitisation and translation. Its work places the manuscripts within a wider social history of knowledge.
West African Arabic Manuscript Database
Union catalogue
A searchable catalogue of Arabic and Arabic-script writings from West Africa. It is a valuable point of entry into the scale, geography and diversity of the region's manuscript culture.
Research network and digital resource
Studies African languages written in modified Arabic scripts, including Hausa, Kanuri, Old Kanembu, Songhay, Manding and Soninke. It brings together philology, codicology, linguistics and digital manuscript research.
Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
Interdisciplinary research centre
Examines manuscript cultures across regions, languages, periods and writing materials. Its many projects and events are a strong source of current work beyond conventional European book history.
Open digital archive
Provides free access to manuscripts, maps, scientific texts, photographs and archival records concerning the Gulf, the Indian Ocean and neighbouring regions. Its Arabic scientific manuscripts are particularly relevant to this collection.
British Library digitisation programme
Supports the preservation and digitisation of vulnerable archives around the world and provides access to the resulting collections. The programme often makes local manuscript, photographic and documentary traditions available far beyond their original repositories.
Mapping the Republic of Letters
Digital humanities research project
Maps early modern correspondence, travel, publication and intellectual exchange. It gives a vivid visual form to the idea that knowledge is made through networks rather than only within individual nations.
Completed research programme and online archive
An archive of Max Planck Institute projects asking which forms of knowledge circulate, through which media, with which people and under what conditions. Its studies include texts, instruments, commodities, techniques and travellers.
Archived online course | Princeton University
A course on world history from approximately 1300 to the present, organised around collaborative work with primary sources. It is no longer presented as a live course, but remains a useful model for teaching connected global history.