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 CONSPIRATORIALMEMORY
Project Cultures of Suspicion in Post-Socialist Europe
Researcher (PI) Boris Noordenbos
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Country Netherlands
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Academic inquiry into conspiracy theories is unquestionably on the rise. Since the turn of the millennium, a new generation of scholars has released conspiracy theory from its earlier associations with individual pathologies, and has shifted attention to its wider social and cultural functioning. Notwithstanding these developments, existing research still tends to treat conspiracy theories in historical and cultural isolation, overlooking their reliance on earlier events and narrative templates, and neglecting their – increasingly digital – transnational dynamic. Focusing on conspiratorial stories and images in Central and East European literature, film, television, commemorative rituals and online culture, during the period 2010-2020, CONSPIRATORIALMEMORY aims to overcome these limitations. The project elucidates the historical references, the transnational interactions and the online circulations that give conspiracy theories their rhetorical and emotional momentum in the post-socialist era. Relying on a theoretical framework that enriches the emerging field of conspiracy theory studies with affect studies and cultural memory studies, the project zooms in on conspiracy-based cultural imaginations from Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus regarding three transnational events that have recently been at the center of international political tensions. Subprojects 1, 2 and 3 each focus on the conspiracy cultures around one of these events, employing the qualitative methodology of Cultural Analysis to examine the intersecting discourses of memory and suspicion. Subproject 4 uses quantitative digital media research methods to analyze the medium-specific contributions of online platforms to memory-based conspiratorial imaginations. The Project Synthesis compares the modes and media of expression in the examined cases, and addresses their parallels with cultural imaginations of conspiracy from Western Europe and the United States.
Summary
Academic inquiry into conspiracy theories is unquestionably on the rise. Since the turn of the millennium, a new generation of scholars has released conspiracy theory from its earlier associations with individual pathologies, and has shifted attention to its wider social and cultural functioning. Notwithstanding these developments, existing research still tends to treat conspiracy theories in historical and cultural isolation, overlooking their reliance on earlier events and narrative templates, and neglecting their – increasingly digital – transnational dynamic. Focusing on conspiratorial stories and images in Central and East European literature, film, television, commemorative rituals and online culture, during the period 2010-2020, CONSPIRATORIALMEMORY aims to overcome these limitations. The project elucidates the historical references, the transnational interactions and the online circulations that give conspiracy theories their rhetorical and emotional momentum in the post-socialist era. Relying on a theoretical framework that enriches the emerging field of conspiracy theory studies with affect studies and cultural memory studies, the project zooms in on conspiracy-based cultural imaginations from Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus regarding three transnational events that have recently been at the center of international political tensions. Subprojects 1, 2 and 3 each focus on the conspiracy cultures around one of these events, employing the qualitative methodology of Cultural Analysis to examine the intersecting discourses of memory and suspicion. Subproject 4 uses quantitative digital media research methods to analyze the medium-specific contributions of online platforms to memory-based conspiratorial imaginations. The Project Synthesis compares the modes and media of expression in the examined cases, and addresses their parallels with cultural imaginations of conspiracy from Western Europe and the United States.
Max ERC Funding
1 487 090 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym DIME
Project Disruptive innovation in healthcare requires disruptive innovation in medical ethics
Researcher (PI) Heidi Mertes
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT GENT
Country Belgium
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Several recent medical innovations do not conform with the way medicine traditionally operates, but rather blur the boundaries of medicine and/or side-line the doctor-patient relationship as an essential aspect of healthcare. Examples of this are healthcare apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, disease surveillance, electronic patient records, telehealth and certain types of clinical decision support systems. I postulate that several of these new innovations will fundamentally change the very concept of medicine and thus turn out to be disruptive innovations.
Given that medical ethics are tailored to ‘traditional’ medicine, we should be critical about its current ability to cope with these changes and question whether the discipline of medical ethics is sufficiently equipped to guide new, disruptive innovations in healthcare towards their great potential in terms of improving patients’ access to good quality healthcare, while also safeguarding patients/users for the risks that come with them, not only in terms of health, but also in terms of infractions against firmly rooted values such as patient autonomy, the duty of care, confidentiality or privacy. If the medical ethics toolbox is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges, we urgently need to rethink or replace procedures, principles or theories in order to remedy this problem.
DIME will address these challenges by focusing on three main objectives:
(1) To establish where the most prominent ethical disruptions are located and therefore in which areas re-orientations of ethical principles are most urgently needed.
(2) To develop normative arguments regarding which fundamental procedures, principles or theories in medical ethics ought to be reinforced, adapted or replaced in the face of disruptive innovations to better cope with the challenges ahead.
(3) To critically analyse the shifting moral responsibilities in healthcare as a consequence of disruptive innovations.
Summary
Several recent medical innovations do not conform with the way medicine traditionally operates, but rather blur the boundaries of medicine and/or side-line the doctor-patient relationship as an essential aspect of healthcare. Examples of this are healthcare apps, direct-to-consumer genetic testing, disease surveillance, electronic patient records, telehealth and certain types of clinical decision support systems. I postulate that several of these new innovations will fundamentally change the very concept of medicine and thus turn out to be disruptive innovations.
Given that medical ethics are tailored to ‘traditional’ medicine, we should be critical about its current ability to cope with these changes and question whether the discipline of medical ethics is sufficiently equipped to guide new, disruptive innovations in healthcare towards their great potential in terms of improving patients’ access to good quality healthcare, while also safeguarding patients/users for the risks that come with them, not only in terms of health, but also in terms of infractions against firmly rooted values such as patient autonomy, the duty of care, confidentiality or privacy. If the medical ethics toolbox is ill-equipped to deal with these challenges, we urgently need to rethink or replace procedures, principles or theories in order to remedy this problem.
DIME will address these challenges by focusing on three main objectives:
(1) To establish where the most prominent ethical disruptions are located and therefore in which areas re-orientations of ethical principles are most urgently needed.
(2) To develop normative arguments regarding which fundamental procedures, principles or theories in medical ethics ought to be reinforced, adapted or replaced in the face of disruptive innovations to better cope with the challenges ahead.
(3) To critically analyse the shifting moral responsibilities in healthcare as a consequence of disruptive innovations.
Max ERC Funding
1 273 750 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-02-01, End date: 2026-01-31
Project acronym DYBBUK
Project Yiddish Popular Theatre, 1880-1920: Performance as Knowledge
Researcher (PI) Ruthie Abeliovich
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA
Country Israel
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary DYBBUK will uncover and explore the popular theatre that made up the daily cultural reality of the Jewish masses at the turn of the 20th century. It will crack open the textual body of remaining musical and dramatic manuscripts, to the complete performances of this popular theatre. Amid a massive migration movement at the turn of the 20th century, the Yiddish popular theatre prospered, producing a staggering volume of entertainment consumed by millions of Jews. Most of this mass-appealing output was delegitimized by Jewish intellectuals as Shund (trash), a term that encompasses primitive, plagiarized, vulgar, and worthless art. Consequently, a valuable component of modern popular culture has been overlooked. DYBBUK will restore this neglected yet highly influential corpus of Yiddish popular theatre and make it available for our appreciation. Revising canonical cultural paradigms, DYBBUK recognizes delegitimized artistic ‘lowbrow’ theatre as a vital component in the fashioning of modernist culture. Focusing on the unexplored theatrical corpus of the two most prolific Shund authors: Moyshe Hurwitz (1844-1910) and Joseph Lateiner (1853-1935), this project offers an integrative typological, embodied, and theoretical analysis of theatrical themes, forms, and practices. The Yiddish popular theatre played a crucial role in transporting cultural styles, ideas, and products. To untangle and understand the complexity and scope of this theatre, this project devises a groundbreaking analytical and embodied toolkit for studying theatre history. We will incorporate into our analysis resources of various media, and we will reenact a forgotten Shund performance in a practice-based research. In doing so, DYBBUK will transform our understanding of popular theatre, revealing it as a preeminent ethnographic and historical source for examining the sensual and experiential dimensions of theatre, and the theatrical and cultural exchange of minorities with mainstream culture.
Summary
DYBBUK will uncover and explore the popular theatre that made up the daily cultural reality of the Jewish masses at the turn of the 20th century. It will crack open the textual body of remaining musical and dramatic manuscripts, to the complete performances of this popular theatre. Amid a massive migration movement at the turn of the 20th century, the Yiddish popular theatre prospered, producing a staggering volume of entertainment consumed by millions of Jews. Most of this mass-appealing output was delegitimized by Jewish intellectuals as Shund (trash), a term that encompasses primitive, plagiarized, vulgar, and worthless art. Consequently, a valuable component of modern popular culture has been overlooked. DYBBUK will restore this neglected yet highly influential corpus of Yiddish popular theatre and make it available for our appreciation. Revising canonical cultural paradigms, DYBBUK recognizes delegitimized artistic ‘lowbrow’ theatre as a vital component in the fashioning of modernist culture. Focusing on the unexplored theatrical corpus of the two most prolific Shund authors: Moyshe Hurwitz (1844-1910) and Joseph Lateiner (1853-1935), this project offers an integrative typological, embodied, and theoretical analysis of theatrical themes, forms, and practices. The Yiddish popular theatre played a crucial role in transporting cultural styles, ideas, and products. To untangle and understand the complexity and scope of this theatre, this project devises a groundbreaking analytical and embodied toolkit for studying theatre history. We will incorporate into our analysis resources of various media, and we will reenact a forgotten Shund performance in a practice-based research. In doing so, DYBBUK will transform our understanding of popular theatre, revealing it as a preeminent ethnographic and historical source for examining the sensual and experiential dimensions of theatre, and the theatrical and cultural exchange of minorities with mainstream culture.
Max ERC Funding
1 499 800 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-10-01, End date: 2026-09-30
Project acronym DynamiTE
Project Dynamic Territory: A Normative Framework for Territory in the Post-Holocene
Researcher (PI) MarIa Alejandra Mancilla Drpic
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Country Norway
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Climate change will disrupt current political, societal and economic paradigms. What should a just territorial arrangement be for countries that will partially or totally disappear due to sea level rise, or whose main productive activities—like farming—will be lost due to changed weather patterns? How to think of “locals” and “migrants” in a world where climate refugees are estimated to reach up to one billion by 2050? How should Global Systemic Resources (GSRs), like rainforests, be governed to guarantee their maintenance?
In a post-Holocene world where sea level rise, desertification, droughts, crop failure, water shortage, floods and extreme weather events will become the norm, we need normative criteria to solve conflicts of interest regarding the use of land and natural resources. DynamiTE aims to provide those criteria, developing a novel framework for territory on a global scale, reassessing the traditional rights and duties associated with it.
While current normative theories of territory (NTTs) rely on Late Holocene assumptions (stable and predictable climate, geography and demographics), DynamiTE theorizes territory amidst instability and unpredictability. While current NTTs draw their main normative assumptions from the Western liberal canon—e.g., that property rights over land and natural resources secure justice—DynamiTE questions their adequacy now and in the future.
DynamiTE conceptualizes territory and territorial agency as dynamic, with shifting boundaries and shifting memberships that reflect this new complexity. It proposes moreover a dynamic, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates environmental studies, geography and international law into political philosophy.
Examining three transversal themes (people in flux, distribution of land and resource use, and governance of GSRs), DynamiTE aims to be the first truly interdisciplinary NTT and to open a new field of research on normative questions surrounding territory in a changing world.
Summary
Climate change will disrupt current political, societal and economic paradigms. What should a just territorial arrangement be for countries that will partially or totally disappear due to sea level rise, or whose main productive activities—like farming—will be lost due to changed weather patterns? How to think of “locals” and “migrants” in a world where climate refugees are estimated to reach up to one billion by 2050? How should Global Systemic Resources (GSRs), like rainforests, be governed to guarantee their maintenance?
In a post-Holocene world where sea level rise, desertification, droughts, crop failure, water shortage, floods and extreme weather events will become the norm, we need normative criteria to solve conflicts of interest regarding the use of land and natural resources. DynamiTE aims to provide those criteria, developing a novel framework for territory on a global scale, reassessing the traditional rights and duties associated with it.
While current normative theories of territory (NTTs) rely on Late Holocene assumptions (stable and predictable climate, geography and demographics), DynamiTE theorizes territory amidst instability and unpredictability. While current NTTs draw their main normative assumptions from the Western liberal canon—e.g., that property rights over land and natural resources secure justice—DynamiTE questions their adequacy now and in the future.
DynamiTE conceptualizes territory and territorial agency as dynamic, with shifting boundaries and shifting memberships that reflect this new complexity. It proposes moreover a dynamic, interdisciplinary methodology that integrates environmental studies, geography and international law into political philosophy.
Examining three transversal themes (people in flux, distribution of land and resource use, and governance of GSRs), DynamiTE aims to be the first truly interdisciplinary NTT and to open a new field of research on normative questions surrounding territory in a changing world.
Max ERC Funding
1 498 301 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym GLOBECOSAL
Project Global Economies of Salvation. Art and the Negotiation of Sanctity in the Early Modern Period
Researcher (PI) Raphaele Preisinger-Winkler
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Country Switzerland
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary GLOBECOSAL investigates how artworks were employed in the process of negotiating sanctity with the Roman Curia in the age of Iberian hegemony by examining the artworks produced with regard to the pioneers of Catholic blesseds and saints in the post-Tridentine ‘global’ context. As the cult of the saints was among the key conceptual battlegrounds in the conflict between the Catholic church and the Protestants, in the post-Tridentine period, saints came to fulfill spiritual, ideological and propagandistic purposes. Art history has paid heightened attention to the adherence of artworks to the models of sanctity formulated by the Tridentine church, leading to an overall neglect of competing local constructions of sanctity, a shortfall particularly momentous with regard to blesseds and saints connected in different ways to the process of European expansion, specifically to the Iberian empires.
The hypothesis under examination is that the artworks produced in relation to gaining recognition by the Church of saints first venerated in newly Christianized territories reveal an underlying negotiation of the local Catholic communities’ spiritual status within universal Catholicism. As official recognition affirmed the society which had made a saint its own, artworks related to this process served purposes of self-representation within the broader framework of social identity formation.
GLOBECOSAL traces the circulation of material objects and iconographies within and between global networks of knowledge transmission, and combines this approach with a hypothetical ‘global market of symbolic values’ developed on the basis of concepts from critical sociology. Investigating the negotiation of sanctity between Rome and geographically distant areas participates in ‘globalizing’ the history of early modern art and is qualified to challenge established perspectives on Roman Catholicism, colonialism, and the early modern world at large.
Summary
GLOBECOSAL investigates how artworks were employed in the process of negotiating sanctity with the Roman Curia in the age of Iberian hegemony by examining the artworks produced with regard to the pioneers of Catholic blesseds and saints in the post-Tridentine ‘global’ context. As the cult of the saints was among the key conceptual battlegrounds in the conflict between the Catholic church and the Protestants, in the post-Tridentine period, saints came to fulfill spiritual, ideological and propagandistic purposes. Art history has paid heightened attention to the adherence of artworks to the models of sanctity formulated by the Tridentine church, leading to an overall neglect of competing local constructions of sanctity, a shortfall particularly momentous with regard to blesseds and saints connected in different ways to the process of European expansion, specifically to the Iberian empires.
The hypothesis under examination is that the artworks produced in relation to gaining recognition by the Church of saints first venerated in newly Christianized territories reveal an underlying negotiation of the local Catholic communities’ spiritual status within universal Catholicism. As official recognition affirmed the society which had made a saint its own, artworks related to this process served purposes of self-representation within the broader framework of social identity formation.
GLOBECOSAL traces the circulation of material objects and iconographies within and between global networks of knowledge transmission, and combines this approach with a hypothetical ‘global market of symbolic values’ developed on the basis of concepts from critical sociology. Investigating the negotiation of sanctity between Rome and geographically distant areas participates in ‘globalizing’ the history of early modern art and is qualified to challenge established perspectives on Roman Catholicism, colonialism, and the early modern world at large.
Max ERC Funding
1 479 316 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-01-01, End date: 2025-12-31
Project acronym HealthXCross
Project Remaking Health in a Microbial Planet by Crossing Space, Time, Species and Epistemic Cultures
Researcher (PI) Roberta RAFFAETA
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Country Italy
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2020-STG
Summary Microbiome science is popularizing a symbiotic understanding of health and ecology. What microbiome science now knows is that microbes entangle the health of people and environments; what we don’t know is how, in this process, new cultural concepts and practices of health may emerge. This project asks: how does health come to be reconfigured in a world entangled through microbial data? HealthXCross is a multi-sited, comparative ethnographic study of how scientists produce and coordinate knowledge within interdisciplinary platforms that collect, compare and integrate microbial data across time, space and species in order to produce simulations for intervening in both environmental and human health. HealthXCross is an ethnographic inquiry into the implications of the environment as a body - and vice versa - through analysis of the tensions between the emancipatory and the dystopian effects of dissolving boundaries between human bodies and environments. With this aim, my project will examine how these research platforms 1) remake notions of biological diversity through technology by crossing conventional categorizations (space, time, species) and epistemic cultures, 2) create and emerge from the diverse spacetimes of innovations across the global North and the global South and 3) shape new trends in healthcare and health governance. HealthXCross will create a participatory design with scientists, who are among stakeholders in the public discourse about what it means to be human and how to live in an entangled planet. My project will offer timely insights into the interplay between knowledge making and changing health practices in times of profound ecological, socio-technical and economic transition. HealthXCross will dramatically advance anthropological understandings of the contradictory but constitutive aspects of living together and being in relation.
Summary
Microbiome science is popularizing a symbiotic understanding of health and ecology. What microbiome science now knows is that microbes entangle the health of people and environments; what we don’t know is how, in this process, new cultural concepts and practices of health may emerge. This project asks: how does health come to be reconfigured in a world entangled through microbial data? HealthXCross is a multi-sited, comparative ethnographic study of how scientists produce and coordinate knowledge within interdisciplinary platforms that collect, compare and integrate microbial data across time, space and species in order to produce simulations for intervening in both environmental and human health. HealthXCross is an ethnographic inquiry into the implications of the environment as a body - and vice versa - through analysis of the tensions between the emancipatory and the dystopian effects of dissolving boundaries between human bodies and environments. With this aim, my project will examine how these research platforms 1) remake notions of biological diversity through technology by crossing conventional categorizations (space, time, species) and epistemic cultures, 2) create and emerge from the diverse spacetimes of innovations across the global North and the global South and 3) shape new trends in healthcare and health governance. HealthXCross will create a participatory design with scientists, who are among stakeholders in the public discourse about what it means to be human and how to live in an entangled planet. My project will offer timely insights into the interplay between knowledge making and changing health practices in times of profound ecological, socio-technical and economic transition. HealthXCross will dramatically advance anthropological understandings of the contradictory but constitutive aspects of living together and being in relation.
Max ERC Funding
1 367 062 €
Duration
Start date: 2021-09-01, End date: 2026-08-31
