Project acronym FAMINE
Project Relocated Remembrance: the Great Famine in Irish (Diaspora) Fiction, 1847-1921
Researcher (PI) Marguérite Christina Maria Corporaal
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary The Great Hunger (1845-49) radically transformed Ireland: it led to the wide-scale eviction of farmers, killed one million of the rural population, and caused massive emigration to other parts of the British Empire and the United States. Moreover, the Great Famine encouraged anti-English, nationalist sentiments and its trauma is pivotal to the development of an Irish postcolonial consciousness between 1847-1921. There is a vast unexplored transatlantic corpus of prose fiction, written between the aftermath of the Famine and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which remembers the years of starvation and diaspora.
My project is the first to inventorise and bring together this under-researched body of literature, written in Ireland and by Irish immigrants in England, Canada and the United States. This fiction requires intensive examination for significant reasons, offering alternative perspectives on how the Famine was culturally experienced than previous studies have displayed, and representing subaltern voices and recollections. Moreover, the texts are written in the homeland as well as in diaspora, by migrated Irish or their descendants. An examination of the corpus will therefore move beyond the largely nation-oriented frontiers of cultural memory studies towards innovative, transnational approaches.
The project specifically investigates how remembrance is mediated through time, from one generation to another, and space, in diaspora. It aims to evolve a novel theoretical model about the interaction between temporal and spatial relocation in literary remembrance. This pioneering model will generate groundbreaking insights into the interaction between memory and ethnic identity in comparative contexts of cultural dislocation, a colonised homeland and migrant communities; and in processes of cultural relocation: de-colonisation and ethnic integration. At the same time, the project will analyse genre aspects which play a dynamic role in processes of cultural remembrance, contributing a new perspective to the interdisciplinary debate on media of recollection in cultural memory studies.
Summary
The Great Hunger (1845-49) radically transformed Ireland: it led to the wide-scale eviction of farmers, killed one million of the rural population, and caused massive emigration to other parts of the British Empire and the United States. Moreover, the Great Famine encouraged anti-English, nationalist sentiments and its trauma is pivotal to the development of an Irish postcolonial consciousness between 1847-1921. There is a vast unexplored transatlantic corpus of prose fiction, written between the aftermath of the Famine and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which remembers the years of starvation and diaspora.
My project is the first to inventorise and bring together this under-researched body of literature, written in Ireland and by Irish immigrants in England, Canada and the United States. This fiction requires intensive examination for significant reasons, offering alternative perspectives on how the Famine was culturally experienced than previous studies have displayed, and representing subaltern voices and recollections. Moreover, the texts are written in the homeland as well as in diaspora, by migrated Irish or their descendants. An examination of the corpus will therefore move beyond the largely nation-oriented frontiers of cultural memory studies towards innovative, transnational approaches.
The project specifically investigates how remembrance is mediated through time, from one generation to another, and space, in diaspora. It aims to evolve a novel theoretical model about the interaction between temporal and spatial relocation in literary remembrance. This pioneering model will generate groundbreaking insights into the interaction between memory and ethnic identity in comparative contexts of cultural dislocation, a colonised homeland and migrant communities; and in processes of cultural relocation: de-colonisation and ethnic integration. At the same time, the project will analyse genre aspects which play a dynamic role in processes of cultural remembrance, contributing a new perspective to the interdisciplinary debate on media of recollection in cultural memory studies.
Max ERC Funding
741 000 €
Duration
Start date: 2010-10-01, End date: 2015-09-30
Project acronym HHIT
Project The here and the hereafter in Islamic traditions
Researcher (PI) Christian Robert Lange
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Call Details Starting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2010-StG_20091209
Summary The aim of this project is to write a history of the Muslim paradise and hell. Researchers (PI, RF and two doctoral researchers) will assess the extent to which Islamic traditions favour or reject a view of human existence as directed toward the otherworld. They will do so by examining a variety of intellectual traditions from the inception of Islam in the 7th century CE until today. The focus of investigation will not just be on the ‘high tradition’ of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, but also on mystical, philosophical, artistic and ‘popular’ traditions, thereby avoiding a monolithic, essentialising account of Islam’s attitude toward the hereafter.
As has been argued, the relationship between this world (dunya) and the otherworld (akhira) is as important to Islam as the mind/body dualism is to the intellectual history of the West. However, no sustained effort of analysis has been made in modern Islamic Studies to reflect on the dunya/akhira relationship, and on the boundary that separates the two. This project will be the first comprehensive and systematic attempt in this direction. Five axes of research will underlie this endeavor: (1) the eschatological imaginaire, (2) material culture and the arts, (3) theology and law, (4) mysticism and philosophy, and (5) modern and contemporary visions of the hereafter.
The project (proposed duration: 48 months), which is to begin on 1 March 2011, will be based at the Utrecht University and led by Dr Christian Lange (PhD Harvard, 2006, 70%), currently Lecturer in Islamic Studies at New College/School of Divinity. The research team will include one research assistant (100%, 45 months) and two doctoral researchers (100%, 36 months). Financial support is solicited to facilitate the survey of manuscripts and manuscript research in various collections in North America, Europe and Asia, and to help organise two scholarly symposia in Islamic eschatology and one comparative conference.
Summary
The aim of this project is to write a history of the Muslim paradise and hell. Researchers (PI, RF and two doctoral researchers) will assess the extent to which Islamic traditions favour or reject a view of human existence as directed toward the otherworld. They will do so by examining a variety of intellectual traditions from the inception of Islam in the 7th century CE until today. The focus of investigation will not just be on the ‘high tradition’ of Islamic theology and jurisprudence, but also on mystical, philosophical, artistic and ‘popular’ traditions, thereby avoiding a monolithic, essentialising account of Islam’s attitude toward the hereafter.
As has been argued, the relationship between this world (dunya) and the otherworld (akhira) is as important to Islam as the mind/body dualism is to the intellectual history of the West. However, no sustained effort of analysis has been made in modern Islamic Studies to reflect on the dunya/akhira relationship, and on the boundary that separates the two. This project will be the first comprehensive and systematic attempt in this direction. Five axes of research will underlie this endeavor: (1) the eschatological imaginaire, (2) material culture and the arts, (3) theology and law, (4) mysticism and philosophy, and (5) modern and contemporary visions of the hereafter.
The project (proposed duration: 48 months), which is to begin on 1 March 2011, will be based at the Utrecht University and led by Dr Christian Lange (PhD Harvard, 2006, 70%), currently Lecturer in Islamic Studies at New College/School of Divinity. The research team will include one research assistant (100%, 45 months) and two doctoral researchers (100%, 36 months). Financial support is solicited to facilitate the survey of manuscripts and manuscript research in various collections in North America, Europe and Asia, and to help organise two scholarly symposia in Islamic eschatology and one comparative conference.
Max ERC Funding
978 368 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-03-01, End date: 2015-04-30
Project acronym LIFE-HIS-T
Project Mapping the life histories of T cells
Researcher (PI) Antonius Nicolaas Maria Schumacher
Host Institution (HI) STICHTING HET NEDERLANDS KANKER INSTITUUT-ANTONI VAN LEEUWENHOEK ZIEKENHUIS
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), LS6, ERC-2010-AdG_20100317
Summary T cells display many different phenotypes and functions, depending on the nature of previously encountered signals. If we want to understand how these different T cell subsets arise, we need to be able to follow individual T cells and their progeny through time. With the aim to map the life histories of individual T cells we have developed unique technologies that allow us to determine whether different T cell populations arise from common or distinct progenitors.
Within this project we will utilize genetic reporter systems to determine:
1. How T cell recruitment, proliferation and death shape antigen-specific T cell responses
2. At which stage the resulting T cells commit to the effector or the memory T cell lineage
3. The self renewal potential of the tissue-resident memory T cells that remain after infection is cleared
By following T cells and their progeny through time, this project will describe the regulation of cell fate in antigen-specific T cell responses. Furthermore, this project will lead to the creation of novel reporters of cellular history that will be of broad value to analyze cell fate and kinship for a variety of cell types.
Summary
T cells display many different phenotypes and functions, depending on the nature of previously encountered signals. If we want to understand how these different T cell subsets arise, we need to be able to follow individual T cells and their progeny through time. With the aim to map the life histories of individual T cells we have developed unique technologies that allow us to determine whether different T cell populations arise from common or distinct progenitors.
Within this project we will utilize genetic reporter systems to determine:
1. How T cell recruitment, proliferation and death shape antigen-specific T cell responses
2. At which stage the resulting T cells commit to the effector or the memory T cell lineage
3. The self renewal potential of the tissue-resident memory T cells that remain after infection is cleared
By following T cells and their progeny through time, this project will describe the regulation of cell fate in antigen-specific T cell responses. Furthermore, this project will lead to the creation of novel reporters of cellular history that will be of broad value to analyze cell fate and kinship for a variety of cell types.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 640 €
Duration
Start date: 2011-05-01, End date: 2017-01-31
