Welcome
This has been an exciting year for the Voltaire Foundation:
after completing the paper edition of the Complete Works
of Voltaire in 2022, we have spent the year charting a
new course as a digitally-focused research department
for Enlightenment studies. We now have a superb and
growing group of postdoctoral students, whose projects
are highlighted in this annual report. At the same time,
we have been busy transforming our traditional expertise
in textual editing into the digital realm. Our new online
journal, Digital Enlightenment Studies, will be launched
in autumn 2023; and after intensive work on the Voltaire
edition, we are on course to launch the new digital
Complete Voltaire in 2024. This is set to become our
flagship project, and we are currently discussing what
name to give it – watch this space!
Nicholas Cronk, Director
It is especially gratifying that we have
successfully completed what is arguably the
largest academic book publishing project of
the last 100 years – the 205 volumes of the
Complete Works of Voltaire – while at the same
time setting out on a very ambitious programme
of digitisation, pioneering new techniques and
methodologies both for Oxford and the wider
world, and doing so at significant scale.
As the Voltaire Foundation moves from a focus
on Voltaire to one which encompasses the
Enlightenment more broadly, I believe this
could not be more important. Enlightenment
values – free thinking and free speaking – are
under attack from many sources: making the
process of digitisation which enables them to
be accessed not just in a scholarly way but also
more broadly in the public domain, even more important, putting them at the heart of modern
discourse. As debates about the acuteness of artificial intelligence gather pace, nothing could
also be more timely. The medium for us, to a significant degree, must be the message.
I hope you find this report of our activity in 2022/23 informative.
Miles Young, Chair of Voltaire Foundation Fund Board of Management
2 | VOLTAIRE FOUNDATION ANNUAL REPORT 2022/23