Project acronym 15CBOOKTRADE
Project The 15th-century Book Trade: An Evidence-based Assessment and Visualization of the Distribution, Sale, and Reception of Books in the Renaissance
Researcher (PI) Cristina Dondi
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary The idea that underpins this project is to use the material evidence from thousands of surviving 15th-c. books, as well as unique documentary evidence — the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices — to address four fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence. The book trade differs from other trades operating in the medieval and early modern periods in that the goods traded survive in considerable numbers. Not only do they survive, but many of them bear stratified evidence of their history in the form of marks of ownership, prices, manuscript annotations, binding and decoration styles. A British Academy pilot project conceived by the PI produced a now internationally-used database which gathers together this kind of evidence for thousands of surviving 15th-c. printed books. For the first time, this makes it possible to track the circulation of books, their trade routes and later collecting, across Europe and the USA, and throughout the centuries. The objectives of this project are to examine (1) the distribution and trade-routes, national and international, of 15th-c. printed books, along with the identity of the buyers and users (private, institutional, religious, lay, female, male, and by profession) and their reading practices; (2) the books' contemporary market value; (3) the transmission and dissemination of the texts they contain, their survival and their loss (rebalancing potentially skewed scholarship); and (4) the circulation and re-use of the illustrations they contain. Finally, the project will experiment with the application of scientific visualization techniques to represent, geographically and chronologically, the movement of 15th-c. printed books and of the texts they contain.
Summary
The idea that underpins this project is to use the material evidence from thousands of surviving 15th-c. books, as well as unique documentary evidence — the unpublished ledger of a Venetian bookseller in the 1480s which records the sale of 25,000 printed books with their prices — to address four fundamental questions relating to the introduction of printing in the West which have so far eluded scholarship, partly because of lack of evidence, partly because of the lack of effective tools to deal with existing evidence. The book trade differs from other trades operating in the medieval and early modern periods in that the goods traded survive in considerable numbers. Not only do they survive, but many of them bear stratified evidence of their history in the form of marks of ownership, prices, manuscript annotations, binding and decoration styles. A British Academy pilot project conceived by the PI produced a now internationally-used database which gathers together this kind of evidence for thousands of surviving 15th-c. printed books. For the first time, this makes it possible to track the circulation of books, their trade routes and later collecting, across Europe and the USA, and throughout the centuries. The objectives of this project are to examine (1) the distribution and trade-routes, national and international, of 15th-c. printed books, along with the identity of the buyers and users (private, institutional, religious, lay, female, male, and by profession) and their reading practices; (2) the books' contemporary market value; (3) the transmission and dissemination of the texts they contain, their survival and their loss (rebalancing potentially skewed scholarship); and (4) the circulation and re-use of the illustrations they contain. Finally, the project will experiment with the application of scientific visualization techniques to represent, geographically and chronologically, the movement of 15th-c. printed books and of the texts they contain.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 172 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-04-01, End date: 2019-03-31
Project acronym AAREA
Project The Archaeology of Agricultural Resilience in Eastern Africa
Researcher (PI) Daryl Stump
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF YORK
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2013-StG
Summary "The twin concepts of sustainability and conservation that are so pivotal within current debates regarding economic development and biodiversity protection both contain an inherent temporal dimension, since both refer to the need to balance short-term gains with long-term resource maintenance. Proponents of resilience theory and of development based on ‘indigenous knowledge’ have thus argued for the necessity of including archaeological, historical and palaeoenvironmental components within development project design. Indeed, some have argued that archaeology should lead these interdisciplinary projects on the grounds that it provides the necessary time depth and bridges the social and natural sciences. The project proposed here accepts this logic and endorses this renewed contemporary relevance of archaeological research. However, it also needs to be admitted that moving beyond critiques of the misuse of historical data presents significant hurdles. When presenting results outside the discipline, for example, archaeological projects tend to downplay the poor archaeological visibility of certain agricultural practices, and computer models designed to test sustainability struggle to adequately account for local cultural preferences. This field will therefore not progress unless there is a frank appraisal of archaeology’s strengths and weaknesses. This project will provide this assessment by employing a range of established and groundbreaking archaeological and modelling techniques to examine the development of two east Africa agricultural systems: one at the abandoned site of Engaruka in Tanzania, commonly seen as an example of resource mismanagement and ecological collapse; and another at the current agricultural landscape in Konso, Ethiopia, described by the UN FAO as one of a select few African “lessons from the past”. The project thus aims to assess the sustainability of these systems, but will also assess the role archaeology can play in such debates worldwide."
Summary
"The twin concepts of sustainability and conservation that are so pivotal within current debates regarding economic development and biodiversity protection both contain an inherent temporal dimension, since both refer to the need to balance short-term gains with long-term resource maintenance. Proponents of resilience theory and of development based on ‘indigenous knowledge’ have thus argued for the necessity of including archaeological, historical and palaeoenvironmental components within development project design. Indeed, some have argued that archaeology should lead these interdisciplinary projects on the grounds that it provides the necessary time depth and bridges the social and natural sciences. The project proposed here accepts this logic and endorses this renewed contemporary relevance of archaeological research. However, it also needs to be admitted that moving beyond critiques of the misuse of historical data presents significant hurdles. When presenting results outside the discipline, for example, archaeological projects tend to downplay the poor archaeological visibility of certain agricultural practices, and computer models designed to test sustainability struggle to adequately account for local cultural preferences. This field will therefore not progress unless there is a frank appraisal of archaeology’s strengths and weaknesses. This project will provide this assessment by employing a range of established and groundbreaking archaeological and modelling techniques to examine the development of two east Africa agricultural systems: one at the abandoned site of Engaruka in Tanzania, commonly seen as an example of resource mismanagement and ecological collapse; and another at the current agricultural landscape in Konso, Ethiopia, described by the UN FAO as one of a select few African “lessons from the past”. The project thus aims to assess the sustainability of these systems, but will also assess the role archaeology can play in such debates worldwide."
Max ERC Funding
1 196 701 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2018-01-31
Project acronym ABEP
Project Asset Bubbles and Economic Policy
Researcher (PI) Jaume Ventura Fontanet
Host Institution (HI) Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional (CREI)
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH1, ERC-2009-AdG
Summary Advanced capitalist economies experience large and persistent movements in asset prices that are difficult to justify with economic fundamentals. The internet bubble of the 1990s and the real state market bubble of the 2000s are two recent examples. The predominant view is that these bubbles are a market failure, and are caused by some form of individual irrationality on the part of market participants. This project is based instead on the view that market participants are individually rational, although this does not preclude sometimes collectively sub-optimal outcomes. Bubbles are thus not a source of market failure by themselves but instead arise as a result of a pre-existing market failure, namely, the existence of pockets of dynamically inefficient investments. Under some conditions, bubbles partly solve this problem, increasing market efficiency and welfare. It is also possible however that bubbles do not solve the underlying problem and, in addition, create negative side-effects. The main objective of this project is to develop this view of asset bubbles, and produce an empirically-relevant macroeconomic framework that allows us to address the following questions: (i) What is the relationship between bubbles and financial market frictions? Special emphasis is given to how the globalization of financial markets and the development of new financial products affect the size and effects of bubbles. (ii) What is the relationship between bubbles, economic growth and unemployment? The theory suggests the presence of virtuous and vicious cycles, as economic growth creates the conditions for bubbles to pop up, while bubbles create incentives for economic growth to happen. (iii) What is the optimal policy to manage bubbles? We need to develop the tools that allow policy makers to sustain those bubbles that have positive effects and burst those that have negative effects.
Summary
Advanced capitalist economies experience large and persistent movements in asset prices that are difficult to justify with economic fundamentals. The internet bubble of the 1990s and the real state market bubble of the 2000s are two recent examples. The predominant view is that these bubbles are a market failure, and are caused by some form of individual irrationality on the part of market participants. This project is based instead on the view that market participants are individually rational, although this does not preclude sometimes collectively sub-optimal outcomes. Bubbles are thus not a source of market failure by themselves but instead arise as a result of a pre-existing market failure, namely, the existence of pockets of dynamically inefficient investments. Under some conditions, bubbles partly solve this problem, increasing market efficiency and welfare. It is also possible however that bubbles do not solve the underlying problem and, in addition, create negative side-effects. The main objective of this project is to develop this view of asset bubbles, and produce an empirically-relevant macroeconomic framework that allows us to address the following questions: (i) What is the relationship between bubbles and financial market frictions? Special emphasis is given to how the globalization of financial markets and the development of new financial products affect the size and effects of bubbles. (ii) What is the relationship between bubbles, economic growth and unemployment? The theory suggests the presence of virtuous and vicious cycles, as economic growth creates the conditions for bubbles to pop up, while bubbles create incentives for economic growth to happen. (iii) What is the optimal policy to manage bubbles? We need to develop the tools that allow policy makers to sustain those bubbles that have positive effects and burst those that have negative effects.
Max ERC Funding
1 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-04-01, End date: 2015-03-31
Project acronym ACQDIV
Project Acquisition processes in maximally diverse languages: Min(d)ing the ambient language
Researcher (PI) Sabine Erika Stoll
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary "Children learn any language that they grow up with, adapting to any of the ca. 7000 languages of the world, no matter how divergent or complex their structures are. What cognitive processes make this extreme flexibility possible? This is one of the most burning questions in cognitive science and the ACQDIV project aims at answering it by testing and refining the following leading hypothesis: Language acquisition is flexible and adaptive to any kind of language because it relies on a small set of universal cognitive processes that variably target different structures at different times during acquisition in every language. The project aims at establishing the precise set of processes and at determining the conditions of variation across maximally diverse languages. This project focuses on three processes: (i) distributional learning, (ii) generalization-based learning and (iii) interaction-based learning. To investigate these processes I will work with a sample of five clusters of languages including longitudinal data of two languages each. The clusters were determined by a clustering algorithm seeking the structurally most divergent languages in a typological database. The languages are: Cluster 1: Slavey and Cree, Cluster 2: Indonesian and Yucatec, Cluster 3: Inuktitut and Chintang, Cluster 4: Sesotho and Russian, Cluster 5: Japanese and Turkish. For all languages, corpora are available, except for Slavey where fieldwork is planned. The leading hypothesis will be tested against the acquisition of aspect and negation in each language of the sample and also against the two structures in each language that are most salient and challenging in them (e. g. complex morphology in Chintang). The acquisition processes also depend on statistical patterns in the input children receive. I will examine these patterns across the sample with respect to repetitiveness effects, applying data-mining methods and systematically comparing child-directed and child-surrounding speech."
Summary
"Children learn any language that they grow up with, adapting to any of the ca. 7000 languages of the world, no matter how divergent or complex their structures are. What cognitive processes make this extreme flexibility possible? This is one of the most burning questions in cognitive science and the ACQDIV project aims at answering it by testing and refining the following leading hypothesis: Language acquisition is flexible and adaptive to any kind of language because it relies on a small set of universal cognitive processes that variably target different structures at different times during acquisition in every language. The project aims at establishing the precise set of processes and at determining the conditions of variation across maximally diverse languages. This project focuses on three processes: (i) distributional learning, (ii) generalization-based learning and (iii) interaction-based learning. To investigate these processes I will work with a sample of five clusters of languages including longitudinal data of two languages each. The clusters were determined by a clustering algorithm seeking the structurally most divergent languages in a typological database. The languages are: Cluster 1: Slavey and Cree, Cluster 2: Indonesian and Yucatec, Cluster 3: Inuktitut and Chintang, Cluster 4: Sesotho and Russian, Cluster 5: Japanese and Turkish. For all languages, corpora are available, except for Slavey where fieldwork is planned. The leading hypothesis will be tested against the acquisition of aspect and negation in each language of the sample and also against the two structures in each language that are most salient and challenging in them (e. g. complex morphology in Chintang). The acquisition processes also depend on statistical patterns in the input children receive. I will examine these patterns across the sample with respect to repetitiveness effects, applying data-mining methods and systematically comparing child-directed and child-surrounding speech."
Max ERC Funding
1 998 438 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-09-01, End date: 2019-08-31
Project acronym ADAPT
Project Life in a cold climate: the adaptation of cereals to new environments and the establishment of agriculture in Europe
Researcher (PI) Terence Austen Brown
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2013-ADG
Summary "This project explores the concept of agricultural spread as analogous to enforced climate change and asks how cereals adapted to new environments when agriculture was introduced into Europe. Archaeologists have long recognized that the ecological pressures placed on crops would have had an impact on the spread and subsequent development of agriculture, but previously there has been no means of directly assessing the scale and nature of this impact. Recent work that I have directed has shown how such a study could be carried out, and the purpose of this project is to exploit these breakthroughs with the goal of assessing the influence of environmental adaptation on the spread of agriculture, its adoption as the primary subsistence strategy, and the subsequent establishment of farming in different parts of Europe. This will correct the current imbalance between our understanding of the human and environmental dimensions to the domestication of Europe. I will use methods from population genomics to identify loci within the barley and wheat genomes that have undergone selection since the beginning of cereal cultivation in Europe. I will then use ecological modelling to identify those loci whose patterns of selection are associated with ecogeographical variables and hence represent adaptations to local environmental conditions. I will assign dates to the periods when adaptations occurred by sequencing ancient DNA from archaeobotanical assemblages and by computer methods that enable the temporal order of adaptations to be deduced. I will then synthesise the information on environmental adaptations with dating evidence for the spread of agriculture in Europe, which reveals pauses that might be linked to environmental adaptation, with demographic data that indicate regions where Neolithic populations declined, possibly due to inadequate crop productivity, and with an archaeobotanical database showing changes in the prevalence of individual cereals in different regions."
Summary
"This project explores the concept of agricultural spread as analogous to enforced climate change and asks how cereals adapted to new environments when agriculture was introduced into Europe. Archaeologists have long recognized that the ecological pressures placed on crops would have had an impact on the spread and subsequent development of agriculture, but previously there has been no means of directly assessing the scale and nature of this impact. Recent work that I have directed has shown how such a study could be carried out, and the purpose of this project is to exploit these breakthroughs with the goal of assessing the influence of environmental adaptation on the spread of agriculture, its adoption as the primary subsistence strategy, and the subsequent establishment of farming in different parts of Europe. This will correct the current imbalance between our understanding of the human and environmental dimensions to the domestication of Europe. I will use methods from population genomics to identify loci within the barley and wheat genomes that have undergone selection since the beginning of cereal cultivation in Europe. I will then use ecological modelling to identify those loci whose patterns of selection are associated with ecogeographical variables and hence represent adaptations to local environmental conditions. I will assign dates to the periods when adaptations occurred by sequencing ancient DNA from archaeobotanical assemblages and by computer methods that enable the temporal order of adaptations to be deduced. I will then synthesise the information on environmental adaptations with dating evidence for the spread of agriculture in Europe, which reveals pauses that might be linked to environmental adaptation, with demographic data that indicate regions where Neolithic populations declined, possibly due to inadequate crop productivity, and with an archaeobotanical database showing changes in the prevalence of individual cereals in different regions."
Max ERC Funding
2 492 964 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-02-01, End date: 2019-01-31
Project acronym ADaPt
Project Adaptation, Dispersals and Phenotype: understanding the roles of climate,
natural selection and energetics in shaping global hunter-gatherer adaptability
Researcher (PI) Jay Stock
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary Relative to other species, humans are characterised by considerable biological diversity despite genetic homogeneity. This diversity is reflected in skeletal variation, but we lack sufficient understanding of the underlying mechanisms to adequately interpret the archaeological record. The proposed research will address problems in our current understanding of the origins of human variation in the past by: 1) documenting and interpreting the pattern of global hunter-gatherer variation relative to genetic phylogenies and climatic variation; 2) testing the relationship between environmental and skeletal variation among genetically related hunter-gatherers from different environments; 3) examining the adaptability of living humans to different environments, through the study of energetic expenditure and life history trade-offs associated with locomotion; and 4) investigating the relationship between muscle and skeletal variation associated with locomotion in diverse environments. This will be achieved by linking: a) detailed study of the global pattern of hunter-gatherer variation in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with; b) ground-breaking experimental research which tests the relationship between energetic stress, muscle function, and bone variation in living humans. The first component tests the correspondence between skeletal variation and both genetic and climatic history, to infer mechanisms driving variation. The second component integrates this skeletal variation with experimental studies of living humans to, for the first time, directly test adaptive implications of skeletal variation observed in the past. ADaPt will provide the first links between prehistoric hunter-gatherer variation and the evolutionary parameters of life history and energetics that may have shaped our success as a species. It will lead to breakthroughs necessary to interpret variation in the archaeological record, relative to human dispersals and adaptation in the past.
Summary
Relative to other species, humans are characterised by considerable biological diversity despite genetic homogeneity. This diversity is reflected in skeletal variation, but we lack sufficient understanding of the underlying mechanisms to adequately interpret the archaeological record. The proposed research will address problems in our current understanding of the origins of human variation in the past by: 1) documenting and interpreting the pattern of global hunter-gatherer variation relative to genetic phylogenies and climatic variation; 2) testing the relationship between environmental and skeletal variation among genetically related hunter-gatherers from different environments; 3) examining the adaptability of living humans to different environments, through the study of energetic expenditure and life history trade-offs associated with locomotion; and 4) investigating the relationship between muscle and skeletal variation associated with locomotion in diverse environments. This will be achieved by linking: a) detailed study of the global pattern of hunter-gatherer variation in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene with; b) ground-breaking experimental research which tests the relationship between energetic stress, muscle function, and bone variation in living humans. The first component tests the correspondence between skeletal variation and both genetic and climatic history, to infer mechanisms driving variation. The second component integrates this skeletal variation with experimental studies of living humans to, for the first time, directly test adaptive implications of skeletal variation observed in the past. ADaPt will provide the first links between prehistoric hunter-gatherer variation and the evolutionary parameters of life history and energetics that may have shaped our success as a species. It will lead to breakthroughs necessary to interpret variation in the archaeological record, relative to human dispersals and adaptation in the past.
Max ERC Funding
1 911 485 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-07-01, End date: 2019-06-30
Project acronym AGESPACE
Project SPATIAL NAVIGATION – A UNIQUE WINDOW INTO MECHANISMS OF COGNITIVE AGEING
Researcher (PI) Thomas Wolbers
Host Institution (HI) DEUTSCHES ZENTRUM FUR NEURODEGENERATIVE ERKRANKUNGEN EV
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2013-StG
Summary "By 2040, the European population aged over 60 will rise to 290 million, with those estimated to have dementia to 15.9 million. These dramatic demographic changes will pose huge challenges to health care systems, hence a detailed understanding of age-related cognitive and neurobiological changes is essential for helping elderly populations maintain independence. However, while existing research into cognitive ageing has carefully characterised developmental trajectories of functions such as memory and processing speed, one key cognitive ability that is particularly relevant to everyday functioning has received very little attention: In surveys, elderly people often report substantial declines in navigational abilities such as problems with finding one’s way in a novel environment. Such deficits severely restrict the mobility of elderly people and affect physical activity and social participation, but the underlying behavioural and neuronal mechanisms are poorly understood.
In this proposal, I will take a new approach to cognitive ageing that will bridge the gap between animal neurobiology and human cognitive neuroscience. With support from the ERC, I will create a team that will characterise the mechanisms mediating age-related changes in navigational processing in humans. The project will focus on three structures that perform key computations for spatial navigation, form a closely interconnected triadic network, and are particularly sensitive to the ageing process. Crucially, the team will employ an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines mathematical modelling, brain imaging and innovative data analysis techniques with novel virtual environment technology, which allows for rigorous testing of predictions derived from animal findings. Finally, the proposal also incorporates a translational project aimed at improving spatial mnemonic functioning with a behavioural intervention, which provides a direct test of functional relevance and societal impact."
Summary
"By 2040, the European population aged over 60 will rise to 290 million, with those estimated to have dementia to 15.9 million. These dramatic demographic changes will pose huge challenges to health care systems, hence a detailed understanding of age-related cognitive and neurobiological changes is essential for helping elderly populations maintain independence. However, while existing research into cognitive ageing has carefully characterised developmental trajectories of functions such as memory and processing speed, one key cognitive ability that is particularly relevant to everyday functioning has received very little attention: In surveys, elderly people often report substantial declines in navigational abilities such as problems with finding one’s way in a novel environment. Such deficits severely restrict the mobility of elderly people and affect physical activity and social participation, but the underlying behavioural and neuronal mechanisms are poorly understood.
In this proposal, I will take a new approach to cognitive ageing that will bridge the gap between animal neurobiology and human cognitive neuroscience. With support from the ERC, I will create a team that will characterise the mechanisms mediating age-related changes in navigational processing in humans. The project will focus on three structures that perform key computations for spatial navigation, form a closely interconnected triadic network, and are particularly sensitive to the ageing process. Crucially, the team will employ an interdisciplinary methodological approach that combines mathematical modelling, brain imaging and innovative data analysis techniques with novel virtual environment technology, which allows for rigorous testing of predictions derived from animal findings. Finally, the proposal also incorporates a translational project aimed at improving spatial mnemonic functioning with a behavioural intervention, which provides a direct test of functional relevance and societal impact."
Max ERC Funding
1 318 990 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-01-01, End date: 2018-12-31
Project acronym APARTHEID-STOPS
Project Apartheid -- The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990
Researcher (PI) Louise Bethlehem
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2013-CoG
Summary This proposal proceeds from an anomaly. Apartheid routinely breached the separation that it names. Whereas the South African regime was deeply isolationist in international terms, new research links it to the Cold War and decolonization. Yet this trend does not consider sufficiently that the global contest over the meaning of apartheid and resistance to it occurs on the terrain of culture. My project argues that studying the global circulation of South African cultural formations in the apartheid era provides novel historiographic leverage over Western liberalism during the Cold War. It recasts apartheid as an apparatus of transnational cultural production, turning existing historiography inside out. This study seeks:
• To provide the first systematic account of the deterritorialization of “apartheid”—as political signifier and as apparatus generating circuits of transnational cultural production.
• To analyze these itinerant cultural formations across media and national borders, articulating new intersections.
• To map the itineraries of major South African exiles, where exile is taken to be a system of interlinked circuits of affiliation and cultural production.
• To revise the historiography of states other than South Africa through the lens of deterritorialized apartheid-era formations at their respective destinations.
• To show how apartheid reveals contradictions within Western liberalism during the Cold War, with special reference to racial inequality.
Methodologically, I introduce the model of thick convergence to analyze three periods:
1. Kliptown & Bandung: Novel possibilities, 1948-1960.
2. Sharpeville & Memphis: Drumming up resistance, 1960-1976.
3. From Soweto to Berlin: Spectacle at the barricades, 1976-1990.
Each explores a cultural dominant in the form of texts, soundscapes or photographs. My work stands at the frontier of transnational research, furnishing powerful new insights into why South Africa matters on the stage of global history.
Summary
This proposal proceeds from an anomaly. Apartheid routinely breached the separation that it names. Whereas the South African regime was deeply isolationist in international terms, new research links it to the Cold War and decolonization. Yet this trend does not consider sufficiently that the global contest over the meaning of apartheid and resistance to it occurs on the terrain of culture. My project argues that studying the global circulation of South African cultural formations in the apartheid era provides novel historiographic leverage over Western liberalism during the Cold War. It recasts apartheid as an apparatus of transnational cultural production, turning existing historiography inside out. This study seeks:
• To provide the first systematic account of the deterritorialization of “apartheid”—as political signifier and as apparatus generating circuits of transnational cultural production.
• To analyze these itinerant cultural formations across media and national borders, articulating new intersections.
• To map the itineraries of major South African exiles, where exile is taken to be a system of interlinked circuits of affiliation and cultural production.
• To revise the historiography of states other than South Africa through the lens of deterritorialized apartheid-era formations at their respective destinations.
• To show how apartheid reveals contradictions within Western liberalism during the Cold War, with special reference to racial inequality.
Methodologically, I introduce the model of thick convergence to analyze three periods:
1. Kliptown & Bandung: Novel possibilities, 1948-1960.
2. Sharpeville & Memphis: Drumming up resistance, 1960-1976.
3. From Soweto to Berlin: Spectacle at the barricades, 1976-1990.
Each explores a cultural dominant in the form of texts, soundscapes or photographs. My work stands at the frontier of transnational research, furnishing powerful new insights into why South Africa matters on the stage of global history.
Max ERC Funding
1 861 238 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
Project acronym ARCHGLASS
Project Archaeometry and Archaeology of Ancient Glass Production as a Source for Ancient Technology and Trade of Raw Materials
Researcher (PI) Patrick Degryse
Host Institution (HI) KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2009-StG
Summary In this project, innovative techniques to reconstruct ancient economies are developed and new insights in the trade and processing of mineral raw materials are gained based on interdisciplinary archaeological and archaeometrical research. An innovative methodology for and a practical provenance database of the primary origin of natron glass from the Hellenistic-Roman world will be established. The project investigates both production and consumer sites of glass raw materials using both typo-chronological and archaeometrical (isotope geochemical) study of finished glass artefacts at consumer sites as well as mineralogical and chemical characterisation of raw glass and mineral resources at primary production sites. Suitable sand resources in the locations described by ancient authors will be identified through geological prospecting on the basis of literature review and field work. Sand and flux (natron) deposits will be mineralogically and geochemically characterised and compared to the results of the archaeological and geochemical investigations of the glass. Through integrated typo-chronological and archaeometrical analysis, the possible occurrence of primary production centres of raw glass outside the known locations in Syro-Palestine and Egypt, particularly in North-Africa, Italy, Spain and Gaul will be critically studied. In this way, historical, archaeological and archaeometrical data are combined, developing new interdisciplinary techniques for innovative archaeological interpretation of glass trade in the Hellenistic-Roman world.
Summary
In this project, innovative techniques to reconstruct ancient economies are developed and new insights in the trade and processing of mineral raw materials are gained based on interdisciplinary archaeological and archaeometrical research. An innovative methodology for and a practical provenance database of the primary origin of natron glass from the Hellenistic-Roman world will be established. The project investigates both production and consumer sites of glass raw materials using both typo-chronological and archaeometrical (isotope geochemical) study of finished glass artefacts at consumer sites as well as mineralogical and chemical characterisation of raw glass and mineral resources at primary production sites. Suitable sand resources in the locations described by ancient authors will be identified through geological prospecting on the basis of literature review and field work. Sand and flux (natron) deposits will be mineralogically and geochemically characterised and compared to the results of the archaeological and geochemical investigations of the glass. Through integrated typo-chronological and archaeometrical analysis, the possible occurrence of primary production centres of raw glass outside the known locations in Syro-Palestine and Egypt, particularly in North-Africa, Italy, Spain and Gaul will be critically studied. In this way, historical, archaeological and archaeometrical data are combined, developing new interdisciplinary techniques for innovative archaeological interpretation of glass trade in the Hellenistic-Roman world.
Max ERC Funding
954 960 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-11-01, End date: 2014-10-31
Project acronym ARISTOTLE
Project Aristotle in the Italian Vernacular: Rethinking Renaissance and Early-Modern Intellectual History (c. 1400–c. 1650)
Researcher (PI) Marco Sgarbi
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2013-StG
Summary From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Aristotle’s writings lay at the foundation of Western culture, providing a body of knowledge and a set of analytical tools applicable to all areas of human investigation. Scholars of the Renaissance have emphasized the remarkable longevity and versatility of Aristotelianism, but their attention has remained firmly, and almost exclusively, fixed on the transmission of Aristotle’s works in Latin. Scarce attention has gone to works in the vernacular. Nonetheless, several important Renaissance figures wished to make Aristotle’s works accessible and available outside the narrow circle of professional philosophers and university professors. They believed that his works could provide essential knowledge to a broad set of readers, and embarked on an intense programme of translation and commentary to see this happen. It is the argument of this project that vernacular Aristotelianism made fundamental contributions to the thought of the period, anticipating many of the features of early modern philosophy and contributing to a new encyclopaedia of knowledge. Our project aims to offer the first detailed and comprehensive study of the vernacular diffusion of Aristotle through a series of analyses of its main texts. We will thus study works that fall within the two main Renaissance divisions of speculative philosophy (metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, and logic) and civil philosophy (ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics). We will give strong attention to the contextualization of the texts they examine, as is standard practice in the best kind of intellectual history, focusing on institutional contexts, reading publics, the value of the vernacular, new visions of knowledge and eclecticism. With the work of the PI, two professors, 5 post-docs and two PhD students we aim to make considerable advances in the understanding of both speculative and civil philosophy within vernacular Aristotelianism.
Summary
From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Aristotle’s writings lay at the foundation of Western culture, providing a body of knowledge and a set of analytical tools applicable to all areas of human investigation. Scholars of the Renaissance have emphasized the remarkable longevity and versatility of Aristotelianism, but their attention has remained firmly, and almost exclusively, fixed on the transmission of Aristotle’s works in Latin. Scarce attention has gone to works in the vernacular. Nonetheless, several important Renaissance figures wished to make Aristotle’s works accessible and available outside the narrow circle of professional philosophers and university professors. They believed that his works could provide essential knowledge to a broad set of readers, and embarked on an intense programme of translation and commentary to see this happen. It is the argument of this project that vernacular Aristotelianism made fundamental contributions to the thought of the period, anticipating many of the features of early modern philosophy and contributing to a new encyclopaedia of knowledge. Our project aims to offer the first detailed and comprehensive study of the vernacular diffusion of Aristotle through a series of analyses of its main texts. We will thus study works that fall within the two main Renaissance divisions of speculative philosophy (metaphysics, natural philosophy, mathematics, and logic) and civil philosophy (ethics, politics, rhetoric, and poetics). We will give strong attention to the contextualization of the texts they examine, as is standard practice in the best kind of intellectual history, focusing on institutional contexts, reading publics, the value of the vernacular, new visions of knowledge and eclecticism. With the work of the PI, two professors, 5 post-docs and two PhD students we aim to make considerable advances in the understanding of both speculative and civil philosophy within vernacular Aristotelianism.
Max ERC Funding
1 483 180 €
Duration
Start date: 2014-05-01, End date: 2019-04-30
