Evidence, Experience, and Authority in Contested Knowledge
International Interdisciplinary Workshop Online | 26-27 August 2026
Organised by Dr Lucia Assenzi (PH Tirol) & Dr Matteo Polato (Manchester Metropolitan University)
“Photographs of flying saucers, leaked documents allegedly exposing global conspiracies, first-person accounts of divine visions, yeti footprints, testimonies of spirit communication, ectoplasmic residues of Spiritualist séances: in many discourses, evidence is central to credibility even when no evidence in the strict “scientific” sense can exist. Yet such claims are rarely presented as groundless. Instead, elaborate forms of justification, authentication, and evidential reasoning emerge.“
