Project acronym FLOS
Project Florilegia Syriaca. The Intercultural Dissemination of Greek Christian Thought in Syriac and Arabic in the First Millennium CE
Researcher (PI) Emiliano FIORI
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2017-STG
Summary FLOS will focus on the metamorphoses of Greek Christian thought in Syriac (Aramaic) and Arabic in Late Antiquity, within the timeframe of the first millennium CE. Syriac Christianity was a pivotal mediator of culture in the Late Antique epistemic space, but is little-known today. FLOS aims to bring to light for the first time a body of highly relevant Syriac and Christian Arabic sources that have hardly ever been studied before. At the end of the millennium, in Islamic-ruled Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran, Syriac Christians strived to define their religious identity. One of their strategies was the production of florilegia, i.e. anthologies that they used to excerpt and reinvent the patristic canon, a corpus of Greek Christian works of the 2nd–6th centuries shared by European and Middle Eastern Christian cultures. A Greco-centric bias has prevented scholars from viewing these florilegia as laboratories of cultural creativity. FLOS will reverse the state of the art through two groundbreaking endeavours: 1) open-access digital editions of a set of Syriac florilegia of the 8th–10th centuries; 2) a study of many neglected writings of Syriac and Christian Arabic authors of the 8th–11th centuries. These tremendously important writings drew from Syriac patristic florilegia to pinpoint topics like incarnation and the Trinity against other Christians or Islam, showing how patristic sources were used to create new knowledge for the entangled environment of the Abbasid era. FLOS will thus dramatically improve our understanding of the cultural dynamics of Late Antiquity; patristic Christianity will emerge as a bridge between the intellectual history of Europe and of the Middle East. By studying how this shared patrimony was transformed in situations of interreligious interaction, especially with Islam, FLOS will facilitate the comprehension of Europe’s current religious discourses, and the preservation of the endangered cultural heritage of the Syriac Christians.
Summary
FLOS will focus on the metamorphoses of Greek Christian thought in Syriac (Aramaic) and Arabic in Late Antiquity, within the timeframe of the first millennium CE. Syriac Christianity was a pivotal mediator of culture in the Late Antique epistemic space, but is little-known today. FLOS aims to bring to light for the first time a body of highly relevant Syriac and Christian Arabic sources that have hardly ever been studied before. At the end of the millennium, in Islamic-ruled Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran, Syriac Christians strived to define their religious identity. One of their strategies was the production of florilegia, i.e. anthologies that they used to excerpt and reinvent the patristic canon, a corpus of Greek Christian works of the 2nd–6th centuries shared by European and Middle Eastern Christian cultures. A Greco-centric bias has prevented scholars from viewing these florilegia as laboratories of cultural creativity. FLOS will reverse the state of the art through two groundbreaking endeavours: 1) open-access digital editions of a set of Syriac florilegia of the 8th–10th centuries; 2) a study of many neglected writings of Syriac and Christian Arabic authors of the 8th–11th centuries. These tremendously important writings drew from Syriac patristic florilegia to pinpoint topics like incarnation and the Trinity against other Christians or Islam, showing how patristic sources were used to create new knowledge for the entangled environment of the Abbasid era. FLOS will thus dramatically improve our understanding of the cultural dynamics of Late Antiquity; patristic Christianity will emerge as a bridge between the intellectual history of Europe and of the Middle East. By studying how this shared patrimony was transformed in situations of interreligious interaction, especially with Islam, FLOS will facilitate the comprehension of Europe’s current religious discourses, and the preservation of the endangered cultural heritage of the Syriac Christians.
Max ERC Funding
1 343 175 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28
Project acronym FOI
Project The formation of Islam: The view from below
Researcher (PI) Petra Marieke Sijpesteijn
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2007-StG
Summary My project is to write a history of the formation of Islam using the vastly important but largely neglected papyri from Egypt. Until the introduction of paper in the 10th C., papyrus was the Mediterranean world’s primary writing material. Thousands of papyrus documents survive, preserving a minutely detailed transcription of daily life, as well as the only contemporary records of Islam’s rise and first wave of conquests. As an historian and papyrologist, my career has been dedicated to developing the potential of this extraordinary resource. The prevailing model of Islam’s formation is based on sources composed by a literary élite some 150 years after the events they describe. The distortions this entails are especially problematic since it was in these first two centuries that Islam’s institutional, social and religious framework developed and stabilised. To form a meaningful understanding of this development requires tackling the contemporary documentary record, as preserved in the papyri. Yet the technical difficulties presented by these mostly unpublished and uncatalogued documents have largely barred their use by historians. This project is a systematic attempt to address this critical problem. The project has three stages: 1) a stocktaking of unedited Arabic, Coptic and Greek papyri; 2) the editing of a corpus of the most significant papyri; 3) the presentation of a synthetic historical analysis through scholarly publications and a dedicated website. By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character and ambition of Muslim state competency at the time of the Islamic conquest; the steps – military, administrative and religious – by which it extended its reach and what this tells us about the origins and evolution of Muslim ideas of rulership, religion and pow
Summary
My project is to write a history of the formation of Islam using the vastly important but largely neglected papyri from Egypt. Until the introduction of paper in the 10th C., papyrus was the Mediterranean world’s primary writing material. Thousands of papyrus documents survive, preserving a minutely detailed transcription of daily life, as well as the only contemporary records of Islam’s rise and first wave of conquests. As an historian and papyrologist, my career has been dedicated to developing the potential of this extraordinary resource. The prevailing model of Islam’s formation is based on sources composed by a literary élite some 150 years after the events they describe. The distortions this entails are especially problematic since it was in these first two centuries that Islam’s institutional, social and religious framework developed and stabilised. To form a meaningful understanding of this development requires tackling the contemporary documentary record, as preserved in the papyri. Yet the technical difficulties presented by these mostly unpublished and uncatalogued documents have largely barred their use by historians. This project is a systematic attempt to address this critical problem. The project has three stages: 1) a stocktaking of unedited Arabic, Coptic and Greek papyri; 2) the editing of a corpus of the most significant papyri; 3) the presentation of a synthetic historical analysis through scholarly publications and a dedicated website. By examining the impact of Islam on the daily life of those living under its rule, the goal of this project is to understand the striking newness of Islamic society and its debt to the diverse cultures it superseded. Questions will be the extent, character and ambition of Muslim state competency at the time of the Islamic conquest; the steps – military, administrative and religious – by which it extended its reach and what this tells us about the origins and evolution of Muslim ideas of rulership, religion and pow
Max ERC Funding
1 000 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2009-03-01, End date: 2015-02-28
Project acronym FOOD CITIZENS
Project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale
Researcher (PI) Cristina GRASSENI
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2016-COG
Summary Considerable attention goes to ‘smart’ urban food procurement, with little notice of the cultural diversity within Europe. For a growing urban population (80% by 2050), food is a mediator of relations within social networks, not only a commodity or nutrient. Eaters are not just consumers but social actors whose meaning-making depend on faith, gender, age, income, or kinship. How we procure and share food is thus central to cultural understandings of citizenship: the project studies in-depth nine cases of collective food procurement across three European cities, asking if collective food procurement networks indicate emerging forms of ‘food citizenship’, or if they concomitantly co-produce hegemonic notions of participation and belonging – and either way, how.
Challenging stereotypical imaginaries of European urbanites, multilevel comparison in Rotterdam, Turin and Gdańsk will investigate three types of collective food procurement networks (a. urban foraging; b. short food chains; c. local food governance) in post-industrial cities, considering the dimensions of solidarity, diversity, skill and scale of action.
Ethnographically, we investigate how collective food procurement networks engage with and through food: how do they interpret and articulate solidarity? Which skills do they acquire or lack? How do they operate across and within diverse communities? Do they scale ‘up’ or ‘out’, and how?
Conceptually, we deliver a critical theory of food citizenship, adding a ‘meso’ level of sociocultural analysis to food scenarios, which mostly focus on the ‘macro’ (food systems) or ‘micro’ (individual deliberations and habituated reflexes) scale.
Methodologically, we match in-depth fieldwork observation with participants’ narratives, using pioneering digital visual media to deliver collaborative and immersive ‘thick descriptions’ of their experiences and trajectories.
Societal and local government stakeholders have granted access and will benefit from comparative insights.
Summary
Considerable attention goes to ‘smart’ urban food procurement, with little notice of the cultural diversity within Europe. For a growing urban population (80% by 2050), food is a mediator of relations within social networks, not only a commodity or nutrient. Eaters are not just consumers but social actors whose meaning-making depend on faith, gender, age, income, or kinship. How we procure and share food is thus central to cultural understandings of citizenship: the project studies in-depth nine cases of collective food procurement across three European cities, asking if collective food procurement networks indicate emerging forms of ‘food citizenship’, or if they concomitantly co-produce hegemonic notions of participation and belonging – and either way, how.
Challenging stereotypical imaginaries of European urbanites, multilevel comparison in Rotterdam, Turin and Gdańsk will investigate three types of collective food procurement networks (a. urban foraging; b. short food chains; c. local food governance) in post-industrial cities, considering the dimensions of solidarity, diversity, skill and scale of action.
Ethnographically, we investigate how collective food procurement networks engage with and through food: how do they interpret and articulate solidarity? Which skills do they acquire or lack? How do they operate across and within diverse communities? Do they scale ‘up’ or ‘out’, and how?
Conceptually, we deliver a critical theory of food citizenship, adding a ‘meso’ level of sociocultural analysis to food scenarios, which mostly focus on the ‘macro’ (food systems) or ‘micro’ (individual deliberations and habituated reflexes) scale.
Methodologically, we match in-depth fieldwork observation with participants’ narratives, using pioneering digital visual media to deliver collaborative and immersive ‘thick descriptions’ of their experiences and trajectories.
Societal and local government stakeholders have granted access and will benefit from comparative insights.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 761 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31
Project acronym FutureHealth
Project Global future health: a multi-sited ethnography of an adaptive intervention
Researcher (PI) Emily YATES-DOERR
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2017-STG
Summary The proposed research project is a multi-sited ethnography of an emergent global health intervention to improve nutrition in the first 1000 days of life. The intervention links growth during this 1000-day window to chronic and mental illness, human capital, food security, and ecosystem sustainability, positing early life nutrition as the key to meeting the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The intervention draws numerous disciplines and geographic regions together in a holistic pursuit of a sustainable and healthy collective future. It then unfolds in different settings in diverse and localized ways. The research team will work with first 1000 days experts as well as study deployment sites in the Netherlands, Guatemala, and the Philippines. The innovative anthropological techniques of contrasting and co-laboring will allow us to both analyze the intervention and contribute to its further fine-tuning. Health experts currently recognize that there are social complexities within and differences between the sites involved, but tend to treat these as obstacles to overcome. The innovative force of our research is to consider the adaptive transformations of the intervention as a source of inspiration rather than a hindrance. Where experts currently prioritize the question of how to translate expert knowledge into interventions in the field, we will ask how lessons from the field might be translated back into expert knowledge and, where relevant, made available elsewhere. In the process we will enrich the anthropological repertoire, moving it beyond a choice between criticism or endorsement, turning living with/in difference into both a social ideal and a research style.
Summary
The proposed research project is a multi-sited ethnography of an emergent global health intervention to improve nutrition in the first 1000 days of life. The intervention links growth during this 1000-day window to chronic and mental illness, human capital, food security, and ecosystem sustainability, positing early life nutrition as the key to meeting the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. The intervention draws numerous disciplines and geographic regions together in a holistic pursuit of a sustainable and healthy collective future. It then unfolds in different settings in diverse and localized ways. The research team will work with first 1000 days experts as well as study deployment sites in the Netherlands, Guatemala, and the Philippines. The innovative anthropological techniques of contrasting and co-laboring will allow us to both analyze the intervention and contribute to its further fine-tuning. Health experts currently recognize that there are social complexities within and differences between the sites involved, but tend to treat these as obstacles to overcome. The innovative force of our research is to consider the adaptive transformations of the intervention as a source of inspiration rather than a hindrance. Where experts currently prioritize the question of how to translate expert knowledge into interventions in the field, we will ask how lessons from the field might be translated back into expert knowledge and, where relevant, made available elsewhere. In the process we will enrich the anthropological repertoire, moving it beyond a choice between criticism or endorsement, turning living with/in difference into both a social ideal and a research style.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 977 €
Duration
Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31
Project acronym GlobalOrthodoxy
Project Rewriting Global Orthodoxy Oriental Christianity in Europe between 1970 and 2020
Researcher (PI) Hendrika Murre-van den Berg
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2018-ADG
Summary Over the last fifty years, Oriental Orthodox Christians (Armenians, Copts, Syriacs/Arameans, Ethiopians and Eritreans) from the Middle East and Africa have settled in Europe, fleeing war-related violence and societal pressures. One of the prominent aspects of religious practice of these transnational Oriental communities is their strong emphasis on the writing and publishing of texts. These include traditional religious texts (from liturgy to history), re-translated and re-contextualized texts, and completely new texts. From simple leaflets and books to sophisticated internet productions where text is persuasively embedded in sound and image, these textual practices aim to transmit the religious heritage to a new generation in an increasingly globalized context.
Scholarship has largely ignored these texts, being too popular or too modern for scholars of the written religious traditions and too textual for social scientists working on these transnational communities, even though they make up a crucial source for the study of these communities’ European integration, especially as to the hybrid character of many of these traditions, among Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Christianities, and among European and global Christianity. Unfortunately, the popular nature of these texts, whether published on paper or digitally, threatens their long-term survival.
The project takes these textual practices as its main source to understand how these Oriental Christians inscribe themselves in European societies and so contribute not only to the transformation of their own transnational churches but also to that of Orthodoxy worldwide. It hypothesizes that diachronic and synchronic comparison among Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches will show that this rewriting includes the actualization of their religious heritage vis-à-vis ethnic and national self-definitions, vis-à-vis European society, and vis-à-vis other churches, particularly Orthodox ones.
Summary
Over the last fifty years, Oriental Orthodox Christians (Armenians, Copts, Syriacs/Arameans, Ethiopians and Eritreans) from the Middle East and Africa have settled in Europe, fleeing war-related violence and societal pressures. One of the prominent aspects of religious practice of these transnational Oriental communities is their strong emphasis on the writing and publishing of texts. These include traditional religious texts (from liturgy to history), re-translated and re-contextualized texts, and completely new texts. From simple leaflets and books to sophisticated internet productions where text is persuasively embedded in sound and image, these textual practices aim to transmit the religious heritage to a new generation in an increasingly globalized context.
Scholarship has largely ignored these texts, being too popular or too modern for scholars of the written religious traditions and too textual for social scientists working on these transnational communities, even though they make up a crucial source for the study of these communities’ European integration, especially as to the hybrid character of many of these traditions, among Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Christianities, and among European and global Christianity. Unfortunately, the popular nature of these texts, whether published on paper or digitally, threatens their long-term survival.
The project takes these textual practices as its main source to understand how these Oriental Christians inscribe themselves in European societies and so contribute not only to the transformation of their own transnational churches but also to that of Orthodoxy worldwide. It hypothesizes that diachronic and synchronic comparison among Oriental and Eastern Orthodox churches will show that this rewriting includes the actualization of their religious heritage vis-à-vis ethnic and national self-definitions, vis-à-vis European society, and vis-à-vis other churches, particularly Orthodox ones.
Max ERC Funding
2 467 260 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-10-01, End date: 2024-09-30
Project acronym GREEK INTO ARABIC
Project Greek into Arabic: Philosophical Concepts and Linguistic Bridges
Researcher (PI) Cristina D'ancona
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA DI PISA
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2009-AdG
Summary One of the prominent features of Medieval Aristotelianism, both Arabic and Latin, is the fact that Aristotle has been credited with writings that, albeit Neoplatonic in origin, circulated under his name. Crucial as it might be for the genesis of Arabic-Islamic philosophy, the main text of the Neoplatonic tradition into Arabic, i.e., the so-called Theology of Aristotle, is still poorly edited and no running commentary exists on it. The Theology of Aristotle, derived in reality from Plotinus' Enneads, will be critically edited, translated and commented upon. This project will also study the Graeco-Arabic translations from a linguistic viewpoint. It will develop the extant Greek and Arabic Lexicon; of the Medieval translations of philosophical works into a computational resource. For the first time, the project allows Ancient and Arabic philosophy to interact with computational linguistics.
Summary
One of the prominent features of Medieval Aristotelianism, both Arabic and Latin, is the fact that Aristotle has been credited with writings that, albeit Neoplatonic in origin, circulated under his name. Crucial as it might be for the genesis of Arabic-Islamic philosophy, the main text of the Neoplatonic tradition into Arabic, i.e., the so-called Theology of Aristotle, is still poorly edited and no running commentary exists on it. The Theology of Aristotle, derived in reality from Plotinus' Enneads, will be critically edited, translated and commented upon. This project will also study the Graeco-Arabic translations from a linguistic viewpoint. It will develop the extant Greek and Arabic Lexicon; of the Medieval translations of philosophical works into a computational resource. For the first time, the project allows Ancient and Arabic philosophy to interact with computational linguistics.
Max ERC Funding
2 106 381 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-04-01, End date: 2015-03-31
Project acronym GTCMR
Project Global Terrorism and Collective Moral Responsibility: Redesigning Military, Police and Intelligence Institutions in Liberal Democracies
Researcher (PI) Seumas Miller
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary International terrorism, e.g. Al Qaeda, IS, is a major global security threat. Counter-terrorism is a morally complex enterprise involving police, military, intelligence agencies and non-security agencies. Counter-terrorism should be framed as a collective moral responsibility of governments, security institutions and citizens. (1) How is international terrorism to be defined? (2) What is the required theoretical notion of collective moral responsibility? (3) What counter-terrorist strategies and tactics are effective, morally permissible and consistent with liberal democracy? Tactics: targeted killing, drone warfare, preventative detention, and bulk metadata collection (e.g. by NSA); (4) How is this inchoate collective moral responsibility to be institutionally embedded in security agencies? (i) How are security institutions to be redesigned to enable them to realise and coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies without over-reaching their various core institutional purposes which have hitherto been disparate, (e.g. law enforcement versus military combat), and without compromising human rights, (e.g. right to life of innocent civilians, right to freedom, right to privacy), including by means of morally unacceptable counter-terrorism tactics? (ii) How are these tactics to be integrated with a broad-based counter-terrorism strategy which has such measures as anti-radicalisation and state-to-state engagement to address key sources of terrorism, such as the dissemination of extremist religious ideology (e.g. militant Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia) and the legitimate grievances of some terrorist groups (e.g. Palestinian state)? What ought a morally permissible and efficacious (i) structure of counter-terrorist institutional arrangements, and (ii) set of counter-terrorist tactics, for a contemporary liberal democracy collaborating with other liberal democracies facing the common problem of international terrorism consist of?
Summary
International terrorism, e.g. Al Qaeda, IS, is a major global security threat. Counter-terrorism is a morally complex enterprise involving police, military, intelligence agencies and non-security agencies. Counter-terrorism should be framed as a collective moral responsibility of governments, security institutions and citizens. (1) How is international terrorism to be defined? (2) What is the required theoretical notion of collective moral responsibility? (3) What counter-terrorist strategies and tactics are effective, morally permissible and consistent with liberal democracy? Tactics: targeted killing, drone warfare, preventative detention, and bulk metadata collection (e.g. by NSA); (4) How is this inchoate collective moral responsibility to be institutionally embedded in security agencies? (i) How are security institutions to be redesigned to enable them to realise and coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies without over-reaching their various core institutional purposes which have hitherto been disparate, (e.g. law enforcement versus military combat), and without compromising human rights, (e.g. right to life of innocent civilians, right to freedom, right to privacy), including by means of morally unacceptable counter-terrorism tactics? (ii) How are these tactics to be integrated with a broad-based counter-terrorism strategy which has such measures as anti-radicalisation and state-to-state engagement to address key sources of terrorism, such as the dissemination of extremist religious ideology (e.g. militant Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia) and the legitimate grievances of some terrorist groups (e.g. Palestinian state)? What ought a morally permissible and efficacious (i) structure of counter-terrorist institutional arrangements, and (ii) set of counter-terrorist tactics, for a contemporary liberal democracy collaborating with other liberal democracies facing the common problem of international terrorism consist of?
Max ERC Funding
2 479 810 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym HandsandBible
Project The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Digital Palaeography and Scribal Culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls
Researcher (PI) Mladen Popovic
Host Institution (HI) RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2014-STG
Summary The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has fundamentally transformed our knowledge of Jewish and Christian origins. The scrolls provide a unique vantage point for studying the dynamic and creative engagement with authoritative scriptures that were to become the Bible. They also offer evidence for a scribal culture ‘in action’. Palaeography can provide access to this scribal culture, showing the human hand behind what came to be regarded as holy texts.
The main objective of this interdisciplinary project is to shed new light on ancient Jewish scribal culture and the making of the Bible by freshly investigating two aspects of the scrolls’ palaeography: the typological development of writing styles and writer identification. We will combine three different approaches to study these two aspects: palaeography, computational intelligence, and 14C-dating.
The combination of new 14C samples and the use of computational intelligence as quantitative methods in order to assess the development of handwriting styles and to identify individual scribes is a unique strength of this project, which will provide a new and much-needed scientific and quantitative basis for the typological estimations of traditional palaeography of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The quantitative evidence will be used to cluster manuscripts as products of scribal activity in order to profile scribal production and to determine a more precise location in time for their activity, focusing, from literary and cultural-historical perspectives, on the content and genres of the texts that scribes wrote and copied and on the scripts and languages that they used.
Through their scribal activities these anonymous scribes constructed a ‘textual community’ and negotiated identities of the movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. The exciting aspect of this project is the fact that it will, through the innovative and unconventional digital palaeographic analysis that we will be using, bring these scribal identities back to life.
Summary
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has fundamentally transformed our knowledge of Jewish and Christian origins. The scrolls provide a unique vantage point for studying the dynamic and creative engagement with authoritative scriptures that were to become the Bible. They also offer evidence for a scribal culture ‘in action’. Palaeography can provide access to this scribal culture, showing the human hand behind what came to be regarded as holy texts.
The main objective of this interdisciplinary project is to shed new light on ancient Jewish scribal culture and the making of the Bible by freshly investigating two aspects of the scrolls’ palaeography: the typological development of writing styles and writer identification. We will combine three different approaches to study these two aspects: palaeography, computational intelligence, and 14C-dating.
The combination of new 14C samples and the use of computational intelligence as quantitative methods in order to assess the development of handwriting styles and to identify individual scribes is a unique strength of this project, which will provide a new and much-needed scientific and quantitative basis for the typological estimations of traditional palaeography of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The quantitative evidence will be used to cluster manuscripts as products of scribal activity in order to profile scribal production and to determine a more precise location in time for their activity, focusing, from literary and cultural-historical perspectives, on the content and genres of the texts that scribes wrote and copied and on the scripts and languages that they used.
Through their scribal activities these anonymous scribes constructed a ‘textual community’ and negotiated identities of the movement behind the Dead Sea Scrolls. The exciting aspect of this project is the fact that it will, through the innovative and unconventional digital palaeographic analysis that we will be using, bring these scribal identities back to life.
Max ERC Funding
1 484 274 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2020-10-31
Project acronym HISTANTARTSI
Project Historical memory, Antiquarian Culture and Artistic Patronage: Social Identities in the Centres of Southern Italy between the Medieval and Early Modern Period
Researcher (PI) Bianca De Divitiis
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI FEDERICO II
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary From the 12th-century southern Italy was overrun by foreign rulers and their houses and saw fierce dynastic struggles for succession. In attempting to cope with these sudden changes and upheavels, the local urban communities continually found themselves faced by the need to legitimize and reconfirm their status through actual negotiations with the king, and eventually with the baron. In this context the procedures and methods used to construct specific
local identities take on particular importance, as do those used by individuals and families to affirm their social position. Through an interdisciplinary team the project seeks to identify the conscious and strategic use of archival and literary sources, and of local antiquities, in methods of self-representation adopted by the elite and by the local communities in the Regno di Napoli between the medieval and early modern period beginning with Campania and then extending to Puglia, Calabria, Lucania, Molise and Abruzzo. The aim of the project is to establish a balanced view of southern continental Italy and to create new instruments which will improve not only
international academic knowledge but can benefit civil society as a whole, as well as institutions in laying the foundations for a new conservation strategy to protect and manage the cultural patrimony of southern Italy, a region which has contributed significantly to the formation of a European identity. An accessible database on the Internet will be specifically designed and programmed to gather together all the data from this research pre-requisite for studying such themes, and will provide a new instrument and new prospects of research for scholars world-wide.
Summary
From the 12th-century southern Italy was overrun by foreign rulers and their houses and saw fierce dynastic struggles for succession. In attempting to cope with these sudden changes and upheavels, the local urban communities continually found themselves faced by the need to legitimize and reconfirm their status through actual negotiations with the king, and eventually with the baron. In this context the procedures and methods used to construct specific
local identities take on particular importance, as do those used by individuals and families to affirm their social position. Through an interdisciplinary team the project seeks to identify the conscious and strategic use of archival and literary sources, and of local antiquities, in methods of self-representation adopted by the elite and by the local communities in the Regno di Napoli between the medieval and early modern period beginning with Campania and then extending to Puglia, Calabria, Lucania, Molise and Abruzzo. The aim of the project is to establish a balanced view of southern continental Italy and to create new instruments which will improve not only
international academic knowledge but can benefit civil society as a whole, as well as institutions in laying the foundations for a new conservation strategy to protect and manage the cultural patrimony of southern Italy, a region which has contributed significantly to the formation of a European identity. An accessible database on the Internet will be specifically designed and programmed to gather together all the data from this research pre-requisite for studying such themes, and will provide a new instrument and new prospects of research for scholars world-wide.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-01-01, End date: 2016-05-31
Project acronym IMPACT HAU
Project The Hau of Finance: Impact Investing and the Globalization of Social and Environmental Sustainability
Researcher (PI) Marc BRIGHTMAN
Host Institution (HI) ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2017-COG
Summary Impact investing is a major emerging phenomenon in global finance that promises to reconcile capitalism with sustainability. It is increasingly embraced by governments, civil society and the private sector in the Global North and South to solve social and environmental problems. The combined crises of climate change, inequality and mass migration in a context of economic austerity have spurred cross-sectoral impact investing partnerships in areas such as green infrastructure, women’s entrepreneurship, agroecology, refugee support and disease prevention. This burgeoning $200bn market promises flexible, holistic and profitable paths to sustainability, attracting major philanthropic organisations and institutional investors boasting fresh ethical and responsible mandates. Is impact investing merely a new frontier for capitalism, or does it represent a revolutionary chapter in global history? Will it benefit communities better than conventional development programmes?
The time to answer these questions is now, as impact investing is still in its infancy and the first green and social stock exchanges are opening around the world. IMPACT HAU is an innovative, critical and comparative anthropological study of the moral and political dimensions of impact investing. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’s classic use of the Maori concept of hau, the ‘spirit of the gift’, it focuses on the designers, traders and beneficiaries of impact bonds to produce an empirically driven analysis of the multiple moral orders within contemporary capitalism. Six ethnographic case studies will provide grounded, detailed accounts of the design and implementation of impact investing in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. These will support a critical appraisal of the current consensus among global policymakers and business leaders giving markets a determining role in the ecological transition, testing the theories of sustainability that underpin hopes for a socially inclusive green economy.
Summary
Impact investing is a major emerging phenomenon in global finance that promises to reconcile capitalism with sustainability. It is increasingly embraced by governments, civil society and the private sector in the Global North and South to solve social and environmental problems. The combined crises of climate change, inequality and mass migration in a context of economic austerity have spurred cross-sectoral impact investing partnerships in areas such as green infrastructure, women’s entrepreneurship, agroecology, refugee support and disease prevention. This burgeoning $200bn market promises flexible, holistic and profitable paths to sustainability, attracting major philanthropic organisations and institutional investors boasting fresh ethical and responsible mandates. Is impact investing merely a new frontier for capitalism, or does it represent a revolutionary chapter in global history? Will it benefit communities better than conventional development programmes?
The time to answer these questions is now, as impact investing is still in its infancy and the first green and social stock exchanges are opening around the world. IMPACT HAU is an innovative, critical and comparative anthropological study of the moral and political dimensions of impact investing. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’s classic use of the Maori concept of hau, the ‘spirit of the gift’, it focuses on the designers, traders and beneficiaries of impact bonds to produce an empirically driven analysis of the multiple moral orders within contemporary capitalism. Six ethnographic case studies will provide grounded, detailed accounts of the design and implementation of impact investing in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. These will support a critical appraisal of the current consensus among global policymakers and business leaders giving markets a determining role in the ecological transition, testing the theories of sustainability that underpin hopes for a socially inclusive green economy.
Max ERC Funding
1 999 999 €
Duration
Start date: 2019-02-01, End date: 2024-01-31
