Project acronym ACADEMIA
Project Reconstructing Late Medieval Quests for Knowledge: Quodlibetal Debates as Precursors of Modern Academic Practice
Researcher (PI) Ota PavlIcek
Host Institution (HI) FILOSOFICKY USTAV AV CR, v.v.i.
Country Czechia
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary ACADEMIA proposes a pioneering study of a neglected corpus of manuscripts stemming from the practice of quodlibetal debates held at Faculties of Arts of European universities, flourishing from the 14th to the early 16th century. As prescribed by the university statutes, dozens of professors participated periodically in these unique collective works of the Middle Ages, which encompassed all the disciplines pursued at the university, from logic to medicine to theology. The PI hypothesises that the professors presented at the hitherto mostly ignored quodlibets their recent scientific innovations, which they then published in the first collective volumes of European academia. The PI thus proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the quodlibets: they stand at the origin of the modern concept of science as a collective intellectual enterprise, similar to modern conferences and the subsequent dissemination of results. This makes them and their written form critical for understanding European intellectual and scientific traditions, both past and present. ACADEMIA’s ambition is to establish the corpus of these debates as a new field of study through an extensive examination of manuscripts, thus filling a substantial gap, radically extending the fields of the history of universities and intellectual history, and reconstructing the roots of the modern practice of fostering collective science. A complex analysis of the corpus will bring about a substantial change in our understanding of medieval practices of the production and sharing of knowledge. Aiming to examine the quodlibets as a phenomenon successively interconnecting European intellectual space, ACADEMIA focuses on fourteen universities at which the PI has identified the tradition so far and on their mutual relations and development. ACADEMIA employs an interdisciplinary team and an innovative combination of approaches from history, codicology, palaeography, philology, hermeneutics and Digital Humanities.
Summary
ACADEMIA proposes a pioneering study of a neglected corpus of manuscripts stemming from the practice of quodlibetal debates held at Faculties of Arts of European universities, flourishing from the 14th to the early 16th century. As prescribed by the university statutes, dozens of professors participated periodically in these unique collective works of the Middle Ages, which encompassed all the disciplines pursued at the university, from logic to medicine to theology. The PI hypothesises that the professors presented at the hitherto mostly ignored quodlibets their recent scientific innovations, which they then published in the first collective volumes of European academia. The PI thus proposes a novel theoretical framework for understanding the quodlibets: they stand at the origin of the modern concept of science as a collective intellectual enterprise, similar to modern conferences and the subsequent dissemination of results. This makes them and their written form critical for understanding European intellectual and scientific traditions, both past and present. ACADEMIA’s ambition is to establish the corpus of these debates as a new field of study through an extensive examination of manuscripts, thus filling a substantial gap, radically extending the fields of the history of universities and intellectual history, and reconstructing the roots of the modern practice of fostering collective science. A complex analysis of the corpus will bring about a substantial change in our understanding of medieval practices of the production and sharing of knowledge. Aiming to examine the quodlibets as a phenomenon successively interconnecting European intellectual space, ACADEMIA focuses on fourteen universities at which the PI has identified the tradition so far and on their mutual relations and development. ACADEMIA employs an interdisciplinary team and an innovative combination of approaches from history, codicology, palaeography, philology, hermeneutics and Digital Humanities.
Max ERC Funding
1 260 485 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-07-01, End date: 2026-06-30
Project acronym AFRIUNI
Project The Creative Lives of African Universities: Pedagogies of Hope and Despair
Researcher (PI) Ruth Bush
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary AFRIUNI explores cultural representations and lived experiences of university life on the African continent. Building on insights from critical pedagogy and decolonial thought, the project considers in material, affective, and aesthetic terms the forms of structural and epistemic violence, physical discomfort, and individual and collective self-realization that obtain within these contested institutions. The project asks: 1. How are African universities represented in creative work and how do these representations inform the perception of education? 2. What do student experiences of campus life tell us about the human experience of uncertainty in the global South? 3. What are the languages of creative expression in these universities and how does translation manifest? What does multilingualism contribute to the experiences of hope, resilience, uncertainty and despair experienced there? 4. How do debates around epistemic justice and engaged pedagogy manifest in historically francophone sites? 5. How can fine-grained understanding of cultural production and reception on campus inform local and global thinking about education? The work responds to these questions by exploring case studies in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Cameroon. The project’s first strand will document and analyse cultural representations (including literature, hip hop, film, theatre) of the universities; the second strand will map the histories of literary curricula/pedagogies; the third strand will focus on students’ lived experiences. Throughout, the project will test and develop cutting-edge decolonial (participatory, co-productive, digital) methodologies for Humanities research. AFRIUNI is acutely attuned both to the legacies of imperial linguistic and cultural structures and the significance of place-based learning. It will drive forward connections between these case studies and local, continental, and global scales of debate concerning decoloniality, creativity, and education.
Summary
AFRIUNI explores cultural representations and lived experiences of university life on the African continent. Building on insights from critical pedagogy and decolonial thought, the project considers in material, affective, and aesthetic terms the forms of structural and epistemic violence, physical discomfort, and individual and collective self-realization that obtain within these contested institutions. The project asks: 1. How are African universities represented in creative work and how do these representations inform the perception of education? 2. What do student experiences of campus life tell us about the human experience of uncertainty in the global South? 3. What are the languages of creative expression in these universities and how does translation manifest? What does multilingualism contribute to the experiences of hope, resilience, uncertainty and despair experienced there? 4. How do debates around epistemic justice and engaged pedagogy manifest in historically francophone sites? 5. How can fine-grained understanding of cultural production and reception on campus inform local and global thinking about education? The work responds to these questions by exploring case studies in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Cameroon. The project’s first strand will document and analyse cultural representations (including literature, hip hop, film, theatre) of the universities; the second strand will map the histories of literary curricula/pedagogies; the third strand will focus on students’ lived experiences. Throughout, the project will test and develop cutting-edge decolonial (participatory, co-productive, digital) methodologies for Humanities research. AFRIUNI is acutely attuned both to the legacies of imperial linguistic and cultural structures and the significance of place-based learning. It will drive forward connections between these case studies and local, continental, and global scales of debate concerning decoloniality, creativity, and education.
Max ERC Funding
1 500 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym AMPS
Project Ancient Mesopotamian Priestly Scholasticism in the First Millennium BCE
Researcher (PI) Uri Gabbay
Host Institution (HI) THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Country Israel
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2020-COG
Summary The scholarly texts of ancient Mesopotamia in the first millennium BCE, specifically commentaries written in Akkadian on cuneiform tablets, were the work of priests who also performed cultic activities in the temple. The proposed project seeks to demonstrate how these scholarly and cultic activities were interrelated and how they shaped the self-identity of the priestly-scholarly community that was in charge of both. The project thus aims to bridge the gap between the study of intellectual history and the study of priesthood in ancient Mesopotamia, which are treated as two separate fields in Assyriology.
The project innovatively treats Mesopotamian scholarship and Mesopotamian priesthood as complementary aspects of one phenomenon: “scholasticism.” This concept, which originally referred to the scholarly activities of Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, has recently been applied to the study of non-European communities of priestly scholars with great success. Using the scholastic model to study the priestly-scholarly community of ancient Mesopotamia will reveal the intricate connections between the ritual and textual activities of this community and illuminate the holistic and systematic worldview of its members.
Combining traditional philology and the comparative approach, the project investigates how, like other scholastic communities, the scholar-priests of ancient Mesopotamia “internalized” the liturgical texts they studied and performed, how they attributed authority to these texts, and how their study of the liturgical corpus generated new exegetical texts. Key points of comparison between the scholar-priests of ancient Mesopotamia and various ancient and contemporary scholastic communities include their interest in language, textual authority, commentaries, and rituals. By applying the comparative method to the study of cuneiform tablets, the project aims to reconstruct the social, religious, and intellectual reality in which they were written.
Summary
The scholarly texts of ancient Mesopotamia in the first millennium BCE, specifically commentaries written in Akkadian on cuneiform tablets, were the work of priests who also performed cultic activities in the temple. The proposed project seeks to demonstrate how these scholarly and cultic activities were interrelated and how they shaped the self-identity of the priestly-scholarly community that was in charge of both. The project thus aims to bridge the gap between the study of intellectual history and the study of priesthood in ancient Mesopotamia, which are treated as two separate fields in Assyriology.
The project innovatively treats Mesopotamian scholarship and Mesopotamian priesthood as complementary aspects of one phenomenon: “scholasticism.” This concept, which originally referred to the scholarly activities of Catholic priests in the Middle Ages, has recently been applied to the study of non-European communities of priestly scholars with great success. Using the scholastic model to study the priestly-scholarly community of ancient Mesopotamia will reveal the intricate connections between the ritual and textual activities of this community and illuminate the holistic and systematic worldview of its members.
Combining traditional philology and the comparative approach, the project investigates how, like other scholastic communities, the scholar-priests of ancient Mesopotamia “internalized” the liturgical texts they studied and performed, how they attributed authority to these texts, and how their study of the liturgical corpus generated new exegetical texts. Key points of comparison between the scholar-priests of ancient Mesopotamia and various ancient and contemporary scholastic communities include their interest in language, textual authority, commentaries, and rituals. By applying the comparative method to the study of cuneiform tablets, the project aims to reconstruct the social, religious, and intellectual reality in which they were written.
Max ERC Funding
1 959 968 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-10-01, End date: 2026-09-30
Project acronym ANINAN
Project An Intersectional Analysis of Ancient Jewish Travel Narratives
Researcher (PI) Elisa Katariina UUSIMaeKI
Host Institution (HI) AARHUS UNIVERSITET
Country Denmark
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary ANINAN investigates literary and cultural representations of travel and mobility – the often temporary move of a person from her or his home to another location – in ancient Israelite/Jewish narratives, including selected texts of the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish writings from the Hellenistic and early Roman eras (ca. 300 BCE – 100 CE). The sources, which originate from different parts of the Mediterranean region, are written or preserved in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Ge’ez.
The aim is to understand how human mobility was perceived and/or imagined in Jewish antiquity, including its agents, motives, and outcomes. The main objectives are: (1) to produce a series of case-studies that illustrate the portrayal of human mobility and its social confines in Israelite/Jewish literature; and (2) to compare and theorize the cultural representations of travel in an intersectional frame and, as a result, to provide a ground-breaking interpretative framework for the study of mobility in texts from the human past. The selected intersectional approach is novel and specifically unearths questions of power and social stratification that evidently pertain to (in)voluntary forms of mobility, including the individual profile of the traveller and the social realities that prompted, enabled, or compelled her or his travel in the first place.
The challenge is that we know nothing about the power dynamics of ancient Israelite/Jewish travel accounts. They are expected to reveal striking intersectional concerns, highlighting the complexity of human phenomena such as mobility. While multiple ‘categories of difference’ characterize the travelling agents, mobility also affects and shapes these categories, e.g., by leading the agent to negotiate, refine, or recreate aspects of her or his identity. The narratives also illustrate encounters between the Israelites/Jews and ‘others’, which results in a new understanding of cultural interaction in the ancient eastern Mediterranean.
Summary
ANINAN investigates literary and cultural representations of travel and mobility – the often temporary move of a person from her or his home to another location – in ancient Israelite/Jewish narratives, including selected texts of the Hebrew Bible and other Jewish writings from the Hellenistic and early Roman eras (ca. 300 BCE – 100 CE). The sources, which originate from different parts of the Mediterranean region, are written or preserved in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, and Ge’ez.
The aim is to understand how human mobility was perceived and/or imagined in Jewish antiquity, including its agents, motives, and outcomes. The main objectives are: (1) to produce a series of case-studies that illustrate the portrayal of human mobility and its social confines in Israelite/Jewish literature; and (2) to compare and theorize the cultural representations of travel in an intersectional frame and, as a result, to provide a ground-breaking interpretative framework for the study of mobility in texts from the human past. The selected intersectional approach is novel and specifically unearths questions of power and social stratification that evidently pertain to (in)voluntary forms of mobility, including the individual profile of the traveller and the social realities that prompted, enabled, or compelled her or his travel in the first place.
The challenge is that we know nothing about the power dynamics of ancient Israelite/Jewish travel accounts. They are expected to reveal striking intersectional concerns, highlighting the complexity of human phenomena such as mobility. While multiple ‘categories of difference’ characterize the travelling agents, mobility also affects and shapes these categories, e.g., by leading the agent to negotiate, refine, or recreate aspects of her or his identity. The narratives also illustrate encounters between the Israelites/Jews and ‘others’, which results in a new understanding of cultural interaction in the ancient eastern Mediterranean.
Max ERC Funding
1 368 977 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym AntCoCo
Project Understanding Late Antique Top-Down Communication: a Study of Imperial Constitutions
Researcher (PI) Peter RIEDLBERGER
Host Institution (HI) OTTO-FRIEDRICH-UNIVERSITAET BAMBERG
Country Germany
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2020-COG
Summary The genre of late antique law texts, “constitutions”, appears puzzling to the modern observer: contrary to our expectations of clarity and brevity, they are astoundingly voluminous, hiding away the actual legal core—which can be quite short—in a lengthy and elaborate text. They are composed in an accomplished style, and we actually know that their authorship was entrusted to some of the best contemporary literati. Thanks to a sophisticated system of transmission, these texts would reach each and every town in the area of their intended diffusion. Eagerly attended public readings as well as postings at well-frequented places (sometimes permanently as inscriptions) ensured that vast portions of the population would come to know their contents.
These texts’ importance in Late Antiquity contrasts starkly with the current state of research. Nobody has investigated the full imperial constitutions as prime examples of late antique Kunstprosa, nor has much effort been put into appreciating the various subjects raised in their complex introductions. Their communicative role, spanning huge geographic as well as social distances from the very center of power to the remotest corners of the vast empire, has been tentatively interpreted by some scholars as “propaganda”, a simplistic explanation which fails to convince. Clearly, these extraordinary texts are in dire need of reassessment.
This project has a twofold purpose: first, on the basis of the evidence from the full constitutions, it will yield the methodically most sophisticated study of top-down communication in Late Antiquity, embracing important conclusions and methods of modern communication theory. Second, in order to obtain reliable results, the full constitutions must be collected, sorted, verified, emended, and published anew. Both the resulting collection itself as well as the completely novel methodology employed to ensure its soundness will have a major impact on other research in Classics, Law, and beyond.
Summary
The genre of late antique law texts, “constitutions”, appears puzzling to the modern observer: contrary to our expectations of clarity and brevity, they are astoundingly voluminous, hiding away the actual legal core—which can be quite short—in a lengthy and elaborate text. They are composed in an accomplished style, and we actually know that their authorship was entrusted to some of the best contemporary literati. Thanks to a sophisticated system of transmission, these texts would reach each and every town in the area of their intended diffusion. Eagerly attended public readings as well as postings at well-frequented places (sometimes permanently as inscriptions) ensured that vast portions of the population would come to know their contents.
These texts’ importance in Late Antiquity contrasts starkly with the current state of research. Nobody has investigated the full imperial constitutions as prime examples of late antique Kunstprosa, nor has much effort been put into appreciating the various subjects raised in their complex introductions. Their communicative role, spanning huge geographic as well as social distances from the very center of power to the remotest corners of the vast empire, has been tentatively interpreted by some scholars as “propaganda”, a simplistic explanation which fails to convince. Clearly, these extraordinary texts are in dire need of reassessment.
This project has a twofold purpose: first, on the basis of the evidence from the full constitutions, it will yield the methodically most sophisticated study of top-down communication in Late Antiquity, embracing important conclusions and methods of modern communication theory. Second, in order to obtain reliable results, the full constitutions must be collected, sorted, verified, emended, and published anew. Both the resulting collection itself as well as the completely novel methodology employed to ensure its soundness will have a major impact on other research in Classics, Law, and beyond.
Max ERC Funding
1 998 625 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-05-01, End date: 2026-04-30
Project acronym ATTENTION
Project Economics of Inattention
Researcher (PI) Filip Matejka
Host Institution (HI) NARODOHOSPODARSKY USTAV AKADEMIE VED CESKE REPUBLIKY VEREJNA VYZKUMNA INSTITUCE
Country Czechia
Call Details Consolidator Grant (CoG), SH1, ERC-2020-COG
Summary This proposal outlines an agenda that aims to improve our understanding of economies with inattentive agents. Attention to detail, not only to current news, but also to how the world works in general, is central to how we interact with the environment.
In the first part of the agenda, we will study how agents come up with the simplified mental models they use in their decision-making. The aim is to provide a new alternative to rational expectations. We will address the question of endogenous model uncertainty by sidestepping the largely statistical nature of previous work. Our agents learn about a model directly, i.e., all information on the details of the correct model is readily available. The envisioned implications can speak to issues such as the expectations formation and formation of narratives, polarization of opinions, and demand for public policy.
In the second part, we will study how a government optimally intervenes in markets if it finds it costly to get the necessary information. On one hand, a government does not possess the local information of decentralized markets. On the other, markets on their own often generate suboptimal social outcomes. We will explore what information the government should collect, how to use it for regulation, and when instead it should leave markets unaffected.
In the third part, we will leverage recent theories of attention allocation and use uniquely detailed data on attention and treatment choices by hospital personnel (including physicians and nurses). This will allow us to explore in more detail than before what theories describe realistic choices well. Moreover, we will eventually aim at a very practical goal: how to help clinicians decrease their cognitive load and improve medical choices.
Summary
This proposal outlines an agenda that aims to improve our understanding of economies with inattentive agents. Attention to detail, not only to current news, but also to how the world works in general, is central to how we interact with the environment.
In the first part of the agenda, we will study how agents come up with the simplified mental models they use in their decision-making. The aim is to provide a new alternative to rational expectations. We will address the question of endogenous model uncertainty by sidestepping the largely statistical nature of previous work. Our agents learn about a model directly, i.e., all information on the details of the correct model is readily available. The envisioned implications can speak to issues such as the expectations formation and formation of narratives, polarization of opinions, and demand for public policy.
In the second part, we will study how a government optimally intervenes in markets if it finds it costly to get the necessary information. On one hand, a government does not possess the local information of decentralized markets. On the other, markets on their own often generate suboptimal social outcomes. We will explore what information the government should collect, how to use it for regulation, and when instead it should leave markets unaffected.
In the third part, we will leverage recent theories of attention allocation and use uniquely detailed data on attention and treatment choices by hospital personnel (including physicians and nurses). This will allow us to explore in more detail than before what theories describe realistic choices well. Moreover, we will eventually aim at a very practical goal: how to help clinicians decrease their cognitive load and improve medical choices.
Max ERC Funding
1 162 664 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-04-01, End date: 2026-03-31
Project acronym BACKLASH
Project Climate Backlash: Contentious Reactions to Policy Action
Researcher (PI) James Patterson
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Country Netherlands
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger backlash. Why do societies sometimes accept costly public good action, but at other times push back suddenly and reject it? Abrupt and impactful reactions to climate policy actions are increasingly witnessed: Climate Backlash. Examples include the Yellow Vests in France, and acrimonious policy rollbacks in Canada and Australia. Climate change governance theory is, so far, unable to account for such dynamics, which undermines prospects for ambitious climate action. The challenge of BACKLASH is to empirically study, and ultimately to theorise, this type of contentious reaction to policy action. The aim of BACKLASH is to explain why, how, and under which conditions climate backlash emerges in advanced industrial democracies. BACKLASH will: 1) Identify the configurational drivers of climate backlash across varying national contexts, 2) Determine the mechanisms and processes by which climate backlash occurs within specific national contexts, 3) Establish whether and how climate backlash diffuses within and between countries, and 4) Explain the forms (i.e. institutionalised, non-institutionalised) and variation of climate backlash across contexts. To accomplish this, BACKLASH will conduct a two-level study of 36 OECD countries, and 4 in-depth national cases of climate policy, namely Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom. BACKLASH is ground-breaking in: 1) pioneering an original interdisciplinary lens for studying climate backlash, 2) advancing an ambitious mixed-methods research design, and applying and testing new innovations in cross-case analysis, and 3) tackling a new combination of challenging empirical circumstances confronting the field of climate governance with profound implications for policy-society dynamics. This will open up new frontiers for the interdisciplinary study of backlash to policy in addressing contentious collective problems.
Summary
Growing calls for ambitious climate change action are challenging for governance because such action can trigger backlash. Why do societies sometimes accept costly public good action, but at other times push back suddenly and reject it? Abrupt and impactful reactions to climate policy actions are increasingly witnessed: Climate Backlash. Examples include the Yellow Vests in France, and acrimonious policy rollbacks in Canada and Australia. Climate change governance theory is, so far, unable to account for such dynamics, which undermines prospects for ambitious climate action. The challenge of BACKLASH is to empirically study, and ultimately to theorise, this type of contentious reaction to policy action. The aim of BACKLASH is to explain why, how, and under which conditions climate backlash emerges in advanced industrial democracies. BACKLASH will: 1) Identify the configurational drivers of climate backlash across varying national contexts, 2) Determine the mechanisms and processes by which climate backlash occurs within specific national contexts, 3) Establish whether and how climate backlash diffuses within and between countries, and 4) Explain the forms (i.e. institutionalised, non-institutionalised) and variation of climate backlash across contexts. To accomplish this, BACKLASH will conduct a two-level study of 36 OECD countries, and 4 in-depth national cases of climate policy, namely Australia, Canada, France, United Kingdom. BACKLASH is ground-breaking in: 1) pioneering an original interdisciplinary lens for studying climate backlash, 2) advancing an ambitious mixed-methods research design, and applying and testing new innovations in cross-case analysis, and 3) tackling a new combination of challenging empirical circumstances confronting the field of climate governance with profound implications for policy-society dynamics. This will open up new frontiers for the interdisciplinary study of backlash to policy in addressing contentious collective problems.
Max ERC Funding
1 491 458 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym BELIEFS
Project Beliefs and Gender Inequality
Researcher (PI) Teodora Boneva
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Country Switzerland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2020-STG
Summary There are large differences in earnings between men and women. Recent work highlights the importance of parenthood for the existence of gender inequality in the labour market. Estimates of the long-run ‘child penalty’, i.e. the impact of having children on women’s relative to men’s earnings, are large and vary substantially across countries. Neither the existence of child penalties nor the striking cross-country variation in child penalties is well understood. BELIEFS will collect a representative dataset of 80,000 individuals in the 28 EU Member States to study the role of several factors in explaining the cross-country differences in child penalties. It will examine the role of (i) beliefs about the benefits/costs to fertility and labour supply decisions, (ii) preferences for having children and for work/leisure, (iii) constraints, and (iv) social norms. BELIEFS will explore different dimensions of heterogeneity and study the individual-level (gender, age etc.) and country-level (labour regulations, family policies etc.) determinants of these factors. It will study whether there are misperceptions of norms and identify whether informing individuals of prevalent social norms shifts their beliefs about the benefits/costs to men/women working and their support for public policies. BELIEFS examines educational, fertility and labour supply decisions in a dynamic life-cycle framework and explores the role of beliefs, preferences, constraints and norms in those decisions. The dynamic framework will also be used to study the role of perceived child penalties in explaining fertility and educational choices. The project is highly ambitious in its scope and it is highly innovative in its combination of research methods. Ultimately, this research agenda will shed light on what drives gender gaps in labour market outcomes as well as which policies may be effective in narrowing these gaps.
Summary
There are large differences in earnings between men and women. Recent work highlights the importance of parenthood for the existence of gender inequality in the labour market. Estimates of the long-run ‘child penalty’, i.e. the impact of having children on women’s relative to men’s earnings, are large and vary substantially across countries. Neither the existence of child penalties nor the striking cross-country variation in child penalties is well understood. BELIEFS will collect a representative dataset of 80,000 individuals in the 28 EU Member States to study the role of several factors in explaining the cross-country differences in child penalties. It will examine the role of (i) beliefs about the benefits/costs to fertility and labour supply decisions, (ii) preferences for having children and for work/leisure, (iii) constraints, and (iv) social norms. BELIEFS will explore different dimensions of heterogeneity and study the individual-level (gender, age etc.) and country-level (labour regulations, family policies etc.) determinants of these factors. It will study whether there are misperceptions of norms and identify whether informing individuals of prevalent social norms shifts their beliefs about the benefits/costs to men/women working and their support for public policies. BELIEFS examines educational, fertility and labour supply decisions in a dynamic life-cycle framework and explores the role of beliefs, preferences, constraints and norms in those decisions. The dynamic framework will also be used to study the role of perceived child penalties in explaining fertility and educational choices. The project is highly ambitious in its scope and it is highly innovative in its combination of research methods. Ultimately, this research agenda will shed light on what drives gender gaps in labour market outcomes as well as which policies may be effective in narrowing these gaps.
Max ERC Funding
1 496 957 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym BODY-POLITICS
Project Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality, and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages
Researcher (PI) Marianne Hem Eriksen
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
Country United Kingdom
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.
Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.
Summary
The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.
Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 492 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym BOMPAC
Project Books of the Medieval Parish Church
Researcher (PI) Jaakko Tahkokallio
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Country Finland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Book production became a market-orientated craft long before the invention of printing. In the late-medieval manuscript economy, the parish churches formed one of the biggest entities on the demand side. However, at present we know next to nothing about how they were provisioned with books. BOMPAC is a response to this gap in scholarly understanding. It offers the first substantial study of the place of the parish church in the culture and economy of the manuscript book, c. 1150–c.1500.
BOMPACs contribution to the topic will be twofold. It will, firstly, provide an extensive case study concering one medieval kingdom – Sweden – comprising more or less two modern countries (Sweden, Finland). Secondly, preliminary research indicates that many of the books used in the parishes of medieval Sweden were imported from abroad. Thus, the project will directly break new ground in the study of the international book economy of the later middle ages.
Parish church book provision remains poorly known because such books very rarely survive as complete physical items. BOMPAC will go around this limitation by innovative use of a hitherto understudied corpus of manuscript fragments. In Sweden, the parchment books of the parishes were recycled as covers for tax accounts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This operation was systematic and resulted in a massive collection of c. 50 000 leaves from c. 12 500 books, probably the biggest collection of material from medieval parish church books anywhere in the world.
Only recent cataloguing and digitizing efforts have made this material accessible for research. In BOMPAC, it will be studied with both statistical and palaeographical methods. A database-driven approach is used to produce a reliable big picture of how the books were distributed in the medieval period. Palaeographical and codicological case studies will show us the modes and routes by which parish churches acquired their books.
Summary
Book production became a market-orientated craft long before the invention of printing. In the late-medieval manuscript economy, the parish churches formed one of the biggest entities on the demand side. However, at present we know next to nothing about how they were provisioned with books. BOMPAC is a response to this gap in scholarly understanding. It offers the first substantial study of the place of the parish church in the culture and economy of the manuscript book, c. 1150–c.1500.
BOMPACs contribution to the topic will be twofold. It will, firstly, provide an extensive case study concering one medieval kingdom – Sweden – comprising more or less two modern countries (Sweden, Finland). Secondly, preliminary research indicates that many of the books used in the parishes of medieval Sweden were imported from abroad. Thus, the project will directly break new ground in the study of the international book economy of the later middle ages.
Parish church book provision remains poorly known because such books very rarely survive as complete physical items. BOMPAC will go around this limitation by innovative use of a hitherto understudied corpus of manuscript fragments. In Sweden, the parchment books of the parishes were recycled as covers for tax accounts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This operation was systematic and resulted in a massive collection of c. 50 000 leaves from c. 12 500 books, probably the biggest collection of material from medieval parish church books anywhere in the world.
Only recent cataloguing and digitizing efforts have made this material accessible for research. In BOMPAC, it will be studied with both statistical and palaeographical methods. A database-driven approach is used to produce a reliable big picture of how the books were distributed in the medieval period. Palaeographical and codicological case studies will show us the modes and routes by which parish churches acquired their books.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 808 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
