Project acronym AGATM
Project A Global Anthropology of Transforming Marriage
Researcher (PI) Janet CARSTEN
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary This research will create a new theoretical vision of the importance of marriage as an agent of transformation in human sociality. Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking intense debate and anxiety. These concerns refract wider instabilities in political, economic, and familial institutions. They signal the critical role of marriage in bringing together - and separating - intimate, personal, and familial life with wider state institutions. But we have little up to date comparative research or general theory of how marriage changes or the long-term significance of such change. Paradoxically, social scientific and public discourse emphasise the conservative and normative aspects of marriage. This underlines the need for a new theoretical frame that takes account of cultural and historical specificity to grasp the importance of marriage as both vehicle of and engine for transformation. AGATM overturns conventional understandings by viewing marriage as inherently transformative, indeed at the heart of social and cultural change. The research will investigate current transformations of marriage in two distinct senses. First, it will undertake an ethnographic investigation of new forms of marriage in selected sites in Europe, N. America, Asia, and Africa. Second, it will subject ‘marriage’ to a rigorous theoretical critique that will denaturalise marriage and reintegrate it into the new anthropology of kinship. Research on five complementary and contrastive sub-projects examining emerging forms of marriage in different locations will be structured through the themes of care, property, and ritual forms. The overarching analytic of temporality will frame the theoretical vision of the research and connect the themes. The resulting six monographs, journal articles, and exhibition will together revitalise the study of kinship by placing the moral, practical, political, and imaginative significance of marriage over time at its centre.
Summary
This research will create a new theoretical vision of the importance of marriage as an agent of transformation in human sociality. Marriage globally is undergoing profound change, provoking intense debate and anxiety. These concerns refract wider instabilities in political, economic, and familial institutions. They signal the critical role of marriage in bringing together - and separating - intimate, personal, and familial life with wider state institutions. But we have little up to date comparative research or general theory of how marriage changes or the long-term significance of such change. Paradoxically, social scientific and public discourse emphasise the conservative and normative aspects of marriage. This underlines the need for a new theoretical frame that takes account of cultural and historical specificity to grasp the importance of marriage as both vehicle of and engine for transformation. AGATM overturns conventional understandings by viewing marriage as inherently transformative, indeed at the heart of social and cultural change. The research will investigate current transformations of marriage in two distinct senses. First, it will undertake an ethnographic investigation of new forms of marriage in selected sites in Europe, N. America, Asia, and Africa. Second, it will subject ‘marriage’ to a rigorous theoretical critique that will denaturalise marriage and reintegrate it into the new anthropology of kinship. Research on five complementary and contrastive sub-projects examining emerging forms of marriage in different locations will be structured through the themes of care, property, and ritual forms. The overarching analytic of temporality will frame the theoretical vision of the research and connect the themes. The resulting six monographs, journal articles, and exhibition will together revitalise the study of kinship by placing the moral, practical, political, and imaginative significance of marriage over time at its centre.
Max ERC Funding
2 297 584 €
Duration
Start date: 2017-01-01, End date: 2021-12-31
Project acronym CLASP
Project A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry
Researcher (PI) Andrew Orchard
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary As elsewhere in Europe, Anglo-Saxon England saw a development from an oral, vernacular, native, and pagan culture to one that was primarily literate, Latinate, imported, and Christian; and such a transition is clearest in Anglo-Saxon verse. CLASP will focus on all surviving verse of Anglo-Saxon England, composed in Old English and Anglo-Latin over a period of over four centuries (c. 670–1100 CE), and produce for the first time an online and interactive consolidated library, marked up through TEI P5 XML to facilitate the identification of idiosyncratic features of sound, metre, spellings, diction, syntax, formulas, themes, and genres across the entire corpus, so forging connections and suggesting more certain chains of influence both within and between the two main literary languages of Anglo-Saxon England. The bilingual corpus comprises almost 60,000 lines of poetry, with about half surviving in each language, and mostly appearing in only a single witness, usually in manuscript. More than fifty named poets are identified, many of them dateable with more or less precision, whose influence on each other can be closely documented, while in the case of anonymous verse, most of which is in Old English, the focus will be on tracing potential influence between texts, to establish a comparative rather than an absolute chronology. CLASP will use the full panoply of digital resources, including sound- and image-files where relevant, to make the oldest surviving poetry in England available to a modern audience for unprecedented kinds of exploration, comprehensive analysis, and interrogation, and in a series of conferences, workshops, and other publications will show the potential of such a comprehensive multilingual corpus to revolutionize perspectives not only on Anglo-Saxon England, but elsewhere in Europe, where Latin and the vernacular likewise co-existed in a Christian context across centuries.
Summary
As elsewhere in Europe, Anglo-Saxon England saw a development from an oral, vernacular, native, and pagan culture to one that was primarily literate, Latinate, imported, and Christian; and such a transition is clearest in Anglo-Saxon verse. CLASP will focus on all surviving verse of Anglo-Saxon England, composed in Old English and Anglo-Latin over a period of over four centuries (c. 670–1100 CE), and produce for the first time an online and interactive consolidated library, marked up through TEI P5 XML to facilitate the identification of idiosyncratic features of sound, metre, spellings, diction, syntax, formulas, themes, and genres across the entire corpus, so forging connections and suggesting more certain chains of influence both within and between the two main literary languages of Anglo-Saxon England. The bilingual corpus comprises almost 60,000 lines of poetry, with about half surviving in each language, and mostly appearing in only a single witness, usually in manuscript. More than fifty named poets are identified, many of them dateable with more or less precision, whose influence on each other can be closely documented, while in the case of anonymous verse, most of which is in Old English, the focus will be on tracing potential influence between texts, to establish a comparative rather than an absolute chronology. CLASP will use the full panoply of digital resources, including sound- and image-files where relevant, to make the oldest surviving poetry in England available to a modern audience for unprecedented kinds of exploration, comprehensive analysis, and interrogation, and in a series of conferences, workshops, and other publications will show the potential of such a comprehensive multilingual corpus to revolutionize perspectives not only on Anglo-Saxon England, but elsewhere in Europe, where Latin and the vernacular likewise co-existed in a Christian context across centuries.
Max ERC Funding
2 443 640 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym CROSSLOCATIONS
Project Crosslocations in the Mediterranean: rethinking the socio-cultural dynamics of relative positioning
Researcher (PI) Sarah Francesca Green
Host Institution (HI) HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The Mediterranean, a key socio-cultural, economic and political crossroads, has shifted its relative position recently, with profound effects for relations between the peoples associated with its diverse parts. Crosslocations is a groundbreaking theoretical approach that goes beyond current borders research to analyse the significance of the changes in relations between places and peoples that this involves. It does this through explaining shifts in the relative positioning of the Mediterranean’s many locations – i.e. the changing values of where people are rather than who they are. Approaches focusing on people’s identities, statecraft or networks do not provide a way to research how the relative value of ‘being somewhere in particular’ is changing and diversifying.
The approach builds on the idea that in socio-cultural terms, location is a form of political, social, economic, and technical relative positioning, involving diverse scales that calibrate relative values (here called ‘locating regimes’). This means locations are both multiple and historically variable, so different types of location may overlap in the same geographical space, particularly in crossroads regions such as the Mediterranean. The dynamics between them alter relations between places, significantly affecting people’s daily lives, including their life chances, wellbeing, environmental, social and political conditions and status.
The project will first research the locating regimes crossing the Mediterranean region (border regimes, infrastructures; digital technologies; fiscal, financial and trading systems; environmental policies; and social and religious structures); then intensively ethnographically study the socio-cultural dynamics of relative positioning that these regimes generate in selected parts of the Mediterranean region. Through explaining the dynamics of relative location, Crosslocations will transform our understanding of trans-local, socio-cultural relations and separations.
Summary
The Mediterranean, a key socio-cultural, economic and political crossroads, has shifted its relative position recently, with profound effects for relations between the peoples associated with its diverse parts. Crosslocations is a groundbreaking theoretical approach that goes beyond current borders research to analyse the significance of the changes in relations between places and peoples that this involves. It does this through explaining shifts in the relative positioning of the Mediterranean’s many locations – i.e. the changing values of where people are rather than who they are. Approaches focusing on people’s identities, statecraft or networks do not provide a way to research how the relative value of ‘being somewhere in particular’ is changing and diversifying.
The approach builds on the idea that in socio-cultural terms, location is a form of political, social, economic, and technical relative positioning, involving diverse scales that calibrate relative values (here called ‘locating regimes’). This means locations are both multiple and historically variable, so different types of location may overlap in the same geographical space, particularly in crossroads regions such as the Mediterranean. The dynamics between them alter relations between places, significantly affecting people’s daily lives, including their life chances, wellbeing, environmental, social and political conditions and status.
The project will first research the locating regimes crossing the Mediterranean region (border regimes, infrastructures; digital technologies; fiscal, financial and trading systems; environmental policies; and social and religious structures); then intensively ethnographically study the socio-cultural dynamics of relative positioning that these regimes generate in selected parts of the Mediterranean region. Through explaining the dynamics of relative location, Crosslocations will transform our understanding of trans-local, socio-cultural relations and separations.
Max ERC Funding
2 433 234 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym DevelopingTheatre
Project Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945
Researcher (PI) Christopher BALME
Host Institution (HI) LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary This research project proposes a fundamental re-examination of the historiography of theatre in emerging countries after 1945 . It investigates the institutional factors that led to the emergence of professional theatre in the post-war period throughout the decolonizing world. The particular focus will be on the massive involvement of internationally coordinated ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ programs both East and West. The project will introduce the concepts of epistemic community, expert networks and techno-politics to theatre historical research as a means to historicize theatre within transnational and transcultural paradigms and examine its imbrication in globalization processes. This institutional and transnational approach will enable theatre studies to overcome its still strong national and local focus on plays and productions and connect it to current discourses on transnational history.
The main objectives of this project are to:
• examine how a global ‘epistemic community’ centred around theatre emerged in the post-war period;
• investigate how ‘expert networks’ composed of government bodies, private foundations, transnational corporate philanthropy, local elites and individual artists sought to institutionalize particular forms and practices of professional theatre as an interconnected, transnational phenomenon;
• develop a new interdisciplinary approach to theatre historiography by focusing on institutional structures, path dependencies and transnational imbrications rather than on works and authors.
The principal investigator will bring to this project two decades of internationally recognized research into intercultural and global theatre. With its combination of institutional historiography and innovative research methods the project will provide a new foundation for current discussions of cultural policy and sustainability in emerging societies.
Summary
This research project proposes a fundamental re-examination of the historiography of theatre in emerging countries after 1945 . It investigates the institutional factors that led to the emergence of professional theatre in the post-war period throughout the decolonizing world. The particular focus will be on the massive involvement of internationally coordinated ‘development’ and ‘modernization’ programs both East and West. The project will introduce the concepts of epistemic community, expert networks and techno-politics to theatre historical research as a means to historicize theatre within transnational and transcultural paradigms and examine its imbrication in globalization processes. This institutional and transnational approach will enable theatre studies to overcome its still strong national and local focus on plays and productions and connect it to current discourses on transnational history.
The main objectives of this project are to:
• examine how a global ‘epistemic community’ centred around theatre emerged in the post-war period;
• investigate how ‘expert networks’ composed of government bodies, private foundations, transnational corporate philanthropy, local elites and individual artists sought to institutionalize particular forms and practices of professional theatre as an interconnected, transnational phenomenon;
• develop a new interdisciplinary approach to theatre historiography by focusing on institutional structures, path dependencies and transnational imbrications rather than on works and authors.
The principal investigator will bring to this project two decades of internationally recognized research into intercultural and global theatre. With its combination of institutional historiography and innovative research methods the project will provide a new foundation for current discussions of cultural policy and sustainability in emerging societies.
Max ERC Funding
2 150 083 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30
Project acronym Filmcolors
Project Film Colors. An Interdisciplinary Approach.
Researcher (PI) Barbara Flueckiger
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITAT ZURICH
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary Film is in essence colored light projected onto a screen. Its aesthetics are thus highly determined by the material properties of film and the optical configuration of the cinematic apparatus. To this day, however, there is no systematic study of the relationship between the technology and aesthetics of film colors, despite the fact that, following the digital turn in film production and distribution, the understanding of this relationship is more essential than ever before.
Over 200 film color processes were developed since the invention of film. They are presented on the Timeline of Historical Film Colors, which will be an integral part of the project.
The groundbreaking nature of this project lies in a truly interdisciplinary research design with a novel methodology to explore the interaction of technological advances and limitations with film color aesthetics, identifying diachronic patterns of stylistic means. To this end it develops a tool through recent advancements in digital humanities for crowd-sourcing of color analyses of large groups of films. In-depth studies of technical papers and scientific measurements of film colors will investigate the technical basis of films’ aesthetic appearance. These insights will be applied to the digitization and restoration of historical films to explore and disseminate the results. While every serious art restoration connects scientific analyses with art-historical and aesthetic investigations, a similar approach is rarely applied to film.
In summary, the present research proposal capitalizes on the principal investigator’s preceding studies to bridge the gap between technology and aesthetics. With the methods described here, the results will trace previously hidden roots of aesthetic developments of film colors. While the project is ambitious, it builds on a sizable methodological foundation to optimize risk management and guarantee significant advances in the understanding of film colors.
Summary
Film is in essence colored light projected onto a screen. Its aesthetics are thus highly determined by the material properties of film and the optical configuration of the cinematic apparatus. To this day, however, there is no systematic study of the relationship between the technology and aesthetics of film colors, despite the fact that, following the digital turn in film production and distribution, the understanding of this relationship is more essential than ever before.
Over 200 film color processes were developed since the invention of film. They are presented on the Timeline of Historical Film Colors, which will be an integral part of the project.
The groundbreaking nature of this project lies in a truly interdisciplinary research design with a novel methodology to explore the interaction of technological advances and limitations with film color aesthetics, identifying diachronic patterns of stylistic means. To this end it develops a tool through recent advancements in digital humanities for crowd-sourcing of color analyses of large groups of films. In-depth studies of technical papers and scientific measurements of film colors will investigate the technical basis of films’ aesthetic appearance. These insights will be applied to the digitization and restoration of historical films to explore and disseminate the results. While every serious art restoration connects scientific analyses with art-historical and aesthetic investigations, a similar approach is rarely applied to film.
In summary, the present research proposal capitalizes on the principal investigator’s preceding studies to bridge the gap between technology and aesthetics. With the methods described here, the results will trace previously hidden roots of aesthetic developments of film colors. While the project is ambitious, it builds on a sizable methodological foundation to optimize risk management and guarantee significant advances in the understanding of film colors.
Max ERC Funding
2 913 144 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2021-05-31
Project acronym GTCMR
Project Global Terrorism and Collective Moral Responsibility: Redesigning Military, Police and Intelligence Institutions in Liberal Democracies
Researcher (PI) Seumas Miller
Host Institution (HI) TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary International terrorism, e.g. Al Qaeda, IS, is a major global security threat. Counter-terrorism is a morally complex enterprise involving police, military, intelligence agencies and non-security agencies. Counter-terrorism should be framed as a collective moral responsibility of governments, security institutions and citizens. (1) How is international terrorism to be defined? (2) What is the required theoretical notion of collective moral responsibility? (3) What counter-terrorist strategies and tactics are effective, morally permissible and consistent with liberal democracy? Tactics: targeted killing, drone warfare, preventative detention, and bulk metadata collection (e.g. by NSA); (4) How is this inchoate collective moral responsibility to be institutionally embedded in security agencies? (i) How are security institutions to be redesigned to enable them to realise and coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies without over-reaching their various core institutional purposes which have hitherto been disparate, (e.g. law enforcement versus military combat), and without compromising human rights, (e.g. right to life of innocent civilians, right to freedom, right to privacy), including by means of morally unacceptable counter-terrorism tactics? (ii) How are these tactics to be integrated with a broad-based counter-terrorism strategy which has such measures as anti-radicalisation and state-to-state engagement to address key sources of terrorism, such as the dissemination of extremist religious ideology (e.g. militant Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia) and the legitimate grievances of some terrorist groups (e.g. Palestinian state)? What ought a morally permissible and efficacious (i) structure of counter-terrorist institutional arrangements, and (ii) set of counter-terrorist tactics, for a contemporary liberal democracy collaborating with other liberal democracies facing the common problem of international terrorism consist of?
Summary
International terrorism, e.g. Al Qaeda, IS, is a major global security threat. Counter-terrorism is a morally complex enterprise involving police, military, intelligence agencies and non-security agencies. Counter-terrorism should be framed as a collective moral responsibility of governments, security institutions and citizens. (1) How is international terrorism to be defined? (2) What is the required theoretical notion of collective moral responsibility? (3) What counter-terrorist strategies and tactics are effective, morally permissible and consistent with liberal democracy? Tactics: targeted killing, drone warfare, preventative detention, and bulk metadata collection (e.g. by NSA); (4) How is this inchoate collective moral responsibility to be institutionally embedded in security agencies? (i) How are security institutions to be redesigned to enable them to realise and coordinate their counter-terrorism strategies without over-reaching their various core institutional purposes which have hitherto been disparate, (e.g. law enforcement versus military combat), and without compromising human rights, (e.g. right to life of innocent civilians, right to freedom, right to privacy), including by means of morally unacceptable counter-terrorism tactics? (ii) How are these tactics to be integrated with a broad-based counter-terrorism strategy which has such measures as anti-radicalisation and state-to-state engagement to address key sources of terrorism, such as the dissemination of extremist religious ideology (e.g. militant Wahhabi ideology emanating from Saudi Arabia) and the legitimate grievances of some terrorist groups (e.g. Palestinian state)? What ought a morally permissible and efficacious (i) structure of counter-terrorist institutional arrangements, and (ii) set of counter-terrorist tactics, for a contemporary liberal democracy collaborating with other liberal democracies facing the common problem of international terrorism consist of?
Max ERC Funding
2 479 810 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym HERITAGE
Project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East: Cultural Identities and Classical Heritage
Researcher (PI) Judith Sheila MCKENZIE
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary This project will analyse the monumental art (large decorative programmes on buildings) of two areas of the former eastern Roman Empire which came under Islamic rule but which have never been the subject of an integrated comprehensive study: Egypt and Syro-Palestine (modern Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine). It aims to determine systematically how the strength and nature of the local ‘classical’ (Greco-Roman) traditions and expressions of identities influenced monumental art in these regions during Late Antiquity (AD 250–750), the period of transition from paganism to Christianity and, in turn, to Islam. By defining and distinguishing between the different strands of classical influence, both local and external (from the centres of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria), and investigating the roles of local artists and artisans as creators rather than imitators, this project will transform our understanding of the artistic culture of the late antique Middle East.
To achieve these objectives, this 5-year project, with a team of 4 post-docs, will apply an interdisciplinary methodology, using archaeology, architecture, art history, and textual analysis to examine evidence in a range of media (floor and wall mosaics, paintings, relief sculptures). The results will be presented in a synthetic analytical volume written by the PI and two books on late antique and early Islamic mosaics by the post-docs, with material placed on the Manar al-Athar open-access website.
Monumental art is the most visible surviving artistic heritage in the Middle East, on major buildings such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque in Damascus, ‘desert castles’, and church mosaic floors. This art is increasingly endangered, so it is essential to undertake this project now to show the importance of this art, the roles of ancestors of peoples of the Middle East in its creation, and the shared classical heritage of the Middle East and the West.
Summary
This project will analyse the monumental art (large decorative programmes on buildings) of two areas of the former eastern Roman Empire which came under Islamic rule but which have never been the subject of an integrated comprehensive study: Egypt and Syro-Palestine (modern Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine). It aims to determine systematically how the strength and nature of the local ‘classical’ (Greco-Roman) traditions and expressions of identities influenced monumental art in these regions during Late Antiquity (AD 250–750), the period of transition from paganism to Christianity and, in turn, to Islam. By defining and distinguishing between the different strands of classical influence, both local and external (from the centres of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria), and investigating the roles of local artists and artisans as creators rather than imitators, this project will transform our understanding of the artistic culture of the late antique Middle East.
To achieve these objectives, this 5-year project, with a team of 4 post-docs, will apply an interdisciplinary methodology, using archaeology, architecture, art history, and textual analysis to examine evidence in a range of media (floor and wall mosaics, paintings, relief sculptures). The results will be presented in a synthetic analytical volume written by the PI and two books on late antique and early Islamic mosaics by the post-docs, with material placed on the Manar al-Athar open-access website.
Monumental art is the most visible surviving artistic heritage in the Middle East, on major buildings such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Great Mosque in Damascus, ‘desert castles’, and church mosaic floors. This art is increasingly endangered, so it is essential to undertake this project now to show the importance of this art, the roles of ancestors of peoples of the Middle East in its creation, and the shared classical heritage of the Middle East and the West.
Max ERC Funding
2 350 533 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym K4U
Project Knowledge For Use [K4U]: Making the Most of Social Science to Build Better Policies
Researcher (PI) Nancy Cartwright
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary ‘Research is an investment in our future’ says Horizon 2020. That’s only true if you know what to do with it. When it comes to social policy, we don’t really know how to put our research results to use. K4U aims to remedy this. K4U will construct a radically new picture of how to use social science to build better social policies. This picture will be founded on an ambitious philosophical study of the technology of social science including a thorough reconceptualisation of objectivity, deliberation and the role of values in the science/society interface. Current work, primarily by the evidence-based policy and practice movement, focusses on knowledge production: encouraging high quality studies and vetting them. Little attention goes to knowledge use: How is social science knowledge to be used in policy design and deliberation – how should it be used so that policy outcomes are more effective and more reliably predictable and competing values and points of view are respected in policy choice and implementation?
K4U will provide not just a theoretical but a practical understanding— for users: intelligible and practically helpful to those who need to estimate and balance the effectiveness, the evidence, the chances of success, the costs, the benefits, the winners and losers, and the social, moral, political and cultural acceptability of proposed policies.
The philosophical approach of K4U is broadly Popperian. It views ‘science and technology as a means of understanding social problems and responding to them’ and it emphasises the concrete and detailed, where the real content of general philosophical concepts and claims is embodied and interrogated. K4U is a showcase for the kind of philosophy that makes a difference to real life -- philosophy for practice. And it will launch an entire new field in philosophy: the philosophy of social technology.
Summary
‘Research is an investment in our future’ says Horizon 2020. That’s only true if you know what to do with it. When it comes to social policy, we don’t really know how to put our research results to use. K4U aims to remedy this. K4U will construct a radically new picture of how to use social science to build better social policies. This picture will be founded on an ambitious philosophical study of the technology of social science including a thorough reconceptualisation of objectivity, deliberation and the role of values in the science/society interface. Current work, primarily by the evidence-based policy and practice movement, focusses on knowledge production: encouraging high quality studies and vetting them. Little attention goes to knowledge use: How is social science knowledge to be used in policy design and deliberation – how should it be used so that policy outcomes are more effective and more reliably predictable and competing values and points of view are respected in policy choice and implementation?
K4U will provide not just a theoretical but a practical understanding— for users: intelligible and practically helpful to those who need to estimate and balance the effectiveness, the evidence, the chances of success, the costs, the benefits, the winners and losers, and the social, moral, political and cultural acceptability of proposed policies.
The philosophical approach of K4U is broadly Popperian. It views ‘science and technology as a means of understanding social problems and responding to them’ and it emphasises the concrete and detailed, where the real content of general philosophical concepts and claims is embodied and interrogated. K4U is a showcase for the kind of philosophy that makes a difference to real life -- philosophy for practice. And it will launch an entire new field in philosophy: the philosophy of social technology.
Max ERC Funding
2 092 125 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-11-01, End date: 2020-10-31
Project acronym LAWALISI
Project Law, Authority and Learning in Imami Shi'ite Islam
Researcher (PI) Robert GLEAVE
Host Institution (HI) THE UNIVERSITY OF EXETER
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary The academic study of Islamic law has, so far, almost exclusively focused on Sunni legal thought. The legal thought and practice of Shi’ite (and other) traditions has been neglected, and this has created a rather skewed account of the history of Islamic law. This project aims to rectify this inadequacy by producing a body of research in which the Imami Shi’ite contribution to Islamic legal history is described, analysed and evaluated. Imami Shi’ites, sometimes termed Twelvers, are the largest branch of Shi’ism today. Imamis form a majority in Iran and Iraq where the major Shi’i centres of legal learning are located.
In the project, we aim to examine the theories and methods used by scholars in the study of Islamic law, derived mainly from Sunni sources, and test them against the Shi’ite legal literature. The project aims to demonstrate that a non-Sunni tradition of Islamic legal thought, in this case Imami Shi’i law, can illuminate and enrich the general history of Islamic law. At times, Shi'ite law shares features with other legal schools; at other times it provides an alternative account, challenging long held assumptions concerning Islam’s legal development. The project will do this through 5 independent, but linked, Research Themes, in which research fellows and visiting professors will carry out detailed programmes of research. These will cover Imami law and doctrine, the dynamics of legal authority, the relationship between legal theory and doctrine and the influence of law on political theory. The project will facilitate opportunities to test the researchers' research findings with both international experts in the field, and scholars from within the Imami legal tradition.
The Principal Investigator, Robert Gleave, has made a major contribution to this area in his research, publications and other activities for 20 years, and this project extends and expands this interest, aiming to make a lasting impact on the field of Islamic legal studies in the future.
Summary
The academic study of Islamic law has, so far, almost exclusively focused on Sunni legal thought. The legal thought and practice of Shi’ite (and other) traditions has been neglected, and this has created a rather skewed account of the history of Islamic law. This project aims to rectify this inadequacy by producing a body of research in which the Imami Shi’ite contribution to Islamic legal history is described, analysed and evaluated. Imami Shi’ites, sometimes termed Twelvers, are the largest branch of Shi’ism today. Imamis form a majority in Iran and Iraq where the major Shi’i centres of legal learning are located.
In the project, we aim to examine the theories and methods used by scholars in the study of Islamic law, derived mainly from Sunni sources, and test them against the Shi’ite legal literature. The project aims to demonstrate that a non-Sunni tradition of Islamic legal thought, in this case Imami Shi’i law, can illuminate and enrich the general history of Islamic law. At times, Shi'ite law shares features with other legal schools; at other times it provides an alternative account, challenging long held assumptions concerning Islam’s legal development. The project will do this through 5 independent, but linked, Research Themes, in which research fellows and visiting professors will carry out detailed programmes of research. These will cover Imami law and doctrine, the dynamics of legal authority, the relationship between legal theory and doctrine and the influence of law on political theory. The project will facilitate opportunities to test the researchers' research findings with both international experts in the field, and scholars from within the Imami legal tradition.
The Principal Investigator, Robert Gleave, has made a major contribution to this area in his research, publications and other activities for 20 years, and this project extends and expands this interest, aiming to make a lasting impact on the field of Islamic legal studies in the future.
Max ERC Funding
2 212 639 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-09-01, End date: 2021-08-31
Project acronym MALMECC
Project Music and Late Medieval European Court Cultures: Towards a Trans-Disciplinary and Post-National Cultural Poetics of the Performative Arts
Researcher (PI) Karl Kuegle
Host Institution (HI) THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary Late medieval European court cultures have traditionally been studied from a mono-disciplinary and national(ist) perspective. This focus has obscured much of the interplay of cultural performances that informed “courtly life”. Recent research has begun to reverse this, focusing on issues such as the tensions between orality, writing, and performance; the sociocultural dimensions of making and owning manuscripts (musical and otherwise); the interstices between musical, literary and visual texts and political, social and religious rituals; and the impact of gender, kinship, and social status on the genesis and transmission of culture and music. These “new medievalist” studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the cultural meanings of singing, listening, and sound in late medieval times.
Taking a decisive step further, MALMECC will, for the first time, systematically explore late medieval (c. 1280-1450) court cultures and their music synoptically across Europe. England, the Low Countries, Avignon, Bohemia, south-eastern Germany/Salzburg, Savoy, and Cyprus have been selected for study as each was a vibrant site of cultural production but has been relatively neglected due to prevailing discursive formations favouring “centres” like Paris and Florence. Linking these courts in a large-scale comparative study focused on the role of music in courtly life but embedded within a multidisciplinary framework encompassing all the arts as well as politics and religion will reveal the complex ecology of late medieval performances of noblesse in unheard-of depth while at the same time throwing the unique qualities of each court into distinct relief. The project will apply an innovative research paradigm that develops a trans-disciplinary and post-national(ist), “relational” approach to the study of music in late-medieval court cultures. In doing so it will integrate all late medieval arts and re-constitute the fullness of their potential meanings.
Summary
Late medieval European court cultures have traditionally been studied from a mono-disciplinary and national(ist) perspective. This focus has obscured much of the interplay of cultural performances that informed “courtly life”. Recent research has begun to reverse this, focusing on issues such as the tensions between orality, writing, and performance; the sociocultural dimensions of making and owning manuscripts (musical and otherwise); the interstices between musical, literary and visual texts and political, social and religious rituals; and the impact of gender, kinship, and social status on the genesis and transmission of culture and music. These “new medievalist” studies have significantly enhanced our understanding of the cultural meanings of singing, listening, and sound in late medieval times.
Taking a decisive step further, MALMECC will, for the first time, systematically explore late medieval (c. 1280-1450) court cultures and their music synoptically across Europe. England, the Low Countries, Avignon, Bohemia, south-eastern Germany/Salzburg, Savoy, and Cyprus have been selected for study as each was a vibrant site of cultural production but has been relatively neglected due to prevailing discursive formations favouring “centres” like Paris and Florence. Linking these courts in a large-scale comparative study focused on the role of music in courtly life but embedded within a multidisciplinary framework encompassing all the arts as well as politics and religion will reveal the complex ecology of late medieval performances of noblesse in unheard-of depth while at the same time throwing the unique qualities of each court into distinct relief. The project will apply an innovative research paradigm that develops a trans-disciplinary and post-national(ist), “relational” approach to the study of music in late-medieval court cultures. In doing so it will integrate all late medieval arts and re-constitute the fullness of their potential meanings.
Max ERC Funding
2 186 400 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym MSG
Project Making Sense of Games: A Methodology for Humanistic Game Analysis
Researcher (PI) Espen Johannes AARSETH
Host Institution (HI) IT-UNIVERSITETET I KOBENHAVN
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary Making Sense of Games (MSG) will build a methodology for the humanistic study of games, and develop a theory of how ludic meaning is produced.
Following the pervasive, global growth of video gaming culture and the games industry, the multi-disciplinary field of game studies has grown exponentially in the last 15 years, with numerous new journals, conferences, university programs and research departments.
However, still lacking at this ‘adolescent’ stage of the field’s development are game-specific methods and theoretical foundations necessary to train researchers and build curricula. In aesthetic games research there is not yet any widely accepted methodology for game analysis, and there has not yet been any large-scale, long-term attempt to produce a theoretical platform that can support and advance the field.
MSG aims to fill this gap by combining fundamental hermeneutic approaches (semiotics, reception theory, reader response, theories of representation, narrative theory) with recent theories of ludic structure (game ontology) into a hermeneutic theory of game meaning, which can be used as a set of tools and concepts for game analysis and criticism. MSG will be a triple first for aesthetic game research: a five-year research program, a hermeneutic theory of games, and a team-based effort to build an interdisciplinary methodology.
The results from MSG will speak to many of the current public concerns and debates about games, such as gamer culture, games’ cultural and artistic status, the representation of minorities, misogyny, violence and even addiction. MSG will demonstrate the strong usefulness of humanistic approaches not only to game studies itself, but also to the 21st century’s most vibrant new cultural sector. It will also provide other aesthetic fields (literary studies, film studies, art history) with theoretical models, critical insights, and a rich empirical material for comparative exploration.
Summary
Making Sense of Games (MSG) will build a methodology for the humanistic study of games, and develop a theory of how ludic meaning is produced.
Following the pervasive, global growth of video gaming culture and the games industry, the multi-disciplinary field of game studies has grown exponentially in the last 15 years, with numerous new journals, conferences, university programs and research departments.
However, still lacking at this ‘adolescent’ stage of the field’s development are game-specific methods and theoretical foundations necessary to train researchers and build curricula. In aesthetic games research there is not yet any widely accepted methodology for game analysis, and there has not yet been any large-scale, long-term attempt to produce a theoretical platform that can support and advance the field.
MSG aims to fill this gap by combining fundamental hermeneutic approaches (semiotics, reception theory, reader response, theories of representation, narrative theory) with recent theories of ludic structure (game ontology) into a hermeneutic theory of game meaning, which can be used as a set of tools and concepts for game analysis and criticism. MSG will be a triple first for aesthetic game research: a five-year research program, a hermeneutic theory of games, and a team-based effort to build an interdisciplinary methodology.
The results from MSG will speak to many of the current public concerns and debates about games, such as gamer culture, games’ cultural and artistic status, the representation of minorities, misogyny, violence and even addiction. MSG will demonstrate the strong usefulness of humanistic approaches not only to game studies itself, but also to the 21st century’s most vibrant new cultural sector. It will also provide other aesthetic fields (literary studies, film studies, art history) with theoretical models, critical insights, and a rich empirical material for comparative exploration.
Max ERC Funding
2 006 906 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-11-01, End date: 2021-10-31
Project acronym Mulosige
Project Multilingual locals, significant geographies: a new approach to world literature
Researcher (PI) Francesca Orsini
Host Institution (HI) SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary “World literature is literature that circulates globally. It is mostly in English. Its main genre is the novel.” These are caricatures of how World literature as a set of discourses is shaping the field of literary studies, but in fact Non-Western literatures are positioned with reference to a single global timeline and a single map, and translations supposedly ensure that worthy texts enter the global canon. What does not circulate globally is provincial, not good enough, not “world literature”.
This picture bears little resemblance to the multilingual world of literature, which consists not of a single map but of many “significant geographies” specific to language, group, and genre. By exploring the often fractured “multilingual locals” and “significant geographies” of literature in north India, Morocco, and Ethiopia—each with different experiences of literary multilingualism, colonial diglossia, and continuing oral traditions—we seek to establish a multilingual and located approach to world literature in place of meta-categories like “global” and “world”. Mindful of older histories and networks of literary multilingualism and critical of the monolingual straitjacket of modern literary histories that partition Anglophone and Francophone literature from Arabic, Amharic, and Hindi/Urdu, we focus on three periods: imperial consolidation, decolonization, and the current globalizing moment. We will study local transculturations, local debates on world literature, old and new forms of multilingualism, actors and technologies of print and orality, to highlight dynamics of appropriation rather than imitation, co-constitution rather than diffusion, and the multiplicity of choices and trajectories that together form local and transnational literary fields (“world literature”). The project will propose a theoretical approach, methods for multilingual training and research, and strategic dialogues with scholars and writers in Morocco, Ethiopia, India, UK and France.
Summary
“World literature is literature that circulates globally. It is mostly in English. Its main genre is the novel.” These are caricatures of how World literature as a set of discourses is shaping the field of literary studies, but in fact Non-Western literatures are positioned with reference to a single global timeline and a single map, and translations supposedly ensure that worthy texts enter the global canon. What does not circulate globally is provincial, not good enough, not “world literature”.
This picture bears little resemblance to the multilingual world of literature, which consists not of a single map but of many “significant geographies” specific to language, group, and genre. By exploring the often fractured “multilingual locals” and “significant geographies” of literature in north India, Morocco, and Ethiopia—each with different experiences of literary multilingualism, colonial diglossia, and continuing oral traditions—we seek to establish a multilingual and located approach to world literature in place of meta-categories like “global” and “world”. Mindful of older histories and networks of literary multilingualism and critical of the monolingual straitjacket of modern literary histories that partition Anglophone and Francophone literature from Arabic, Amharic, and Hindi/Urdu, we focus on three periods: imperial consolidation, decolonization, and the current globalizing moment. We will study local transculturations, local debates on world literature, old and new forms of multilingualism, actors and technologies of print and orality, to highlight dynamics of appropriation rather than imitation, co-constitution rather than diffusion, and the multiplicity of choices and trajectories that together form local and transnational literary fields (“world literature”). The project will propose a theoretical approach, methods for multilingual training and research, and strategic dialogues with scholars and writers in Morocco, Ethiopia, India, UK and France.
Max ERC Funding
2 482 416 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-01-01, End date: 2020-12-31
Project acronym MUYA
Project The Multimedia Yasna
Researcher (PI) Almut Hintze
Host Institution (HI) SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary What exactly are the words which priests recite in the Yasna, the core ritual of one of the most ancient and influential living religions, Zoroastrianism? What is their meaning and how do they relate to the ritual actions? The Yasna is significant for our cultural heritage not only because of its influential thought system which arguably impacted on post-exilic Judaism, nascent Christianity and Islam, but also because with parts of it going back to the 2nd millennium BCE, it is the oldest witness to Iranian languages. Its full appreciation, however, is severely hampered by the presence of outdated editions and translations or by their absence altogether. Moreover, the relationship between the text recited and the action performed during the ritual is unexplored due to a lack of documentary evidence. The Multimedia Yasna proposes to fill these gaps in a methodologically ground-breaking fashion.
MUYA combines two different, yet complementary approaches by examining the Yasna both as a ritual performance and as a text attested in manuscripts. The two approaches will be integrated to answer questions about the meaning and function of the Yasna in a historical perspective. The research methods for achieving MUYA’s objectives unite cutting edge approaches from Digital Humanities, Philology and Linguistics into four interrelated work-packages. These will involve filming and analyzing the ritual performance and teaching practices in priestly schools, the creation of a suite of electronic tools for editing Avestan texts, a database of transcribed manuscripts of the Yasna and in-depth studies of selected parts of the text by combining datasets produced by electronic processes with philological methods of textual criticism and linguistic analysis. These complementary datasets and methods will be used to produce an online publication of the sub-titled and interactive film of the Yasna ritual, together with print editions, translations and commentaries of the Avestan Yasna.
Summary
What exactly are the words which priests recite in the Yasna, the core ritual of one of the most ancient and influential living religions, Zoroastrianism? What is their meaning and how do they relate to the ritual actions? The Yasna is significant for our cultural heritage not only because of its influential thought system which arguably impacted on post-exilic Judaism, nascent Christianity and Islam, but also because with parts of it going back to the 2nd millennium BCE, it is the oldest witness to Iranian languages. Its full appreciation, however, is severely hampered by the presence of outdated editions and translations or by their absence altogether. Moreover, the relationship between the text recited and the action performed during the ritual is unexplored due to a lack of documentary evidence. The Multimedia Yasna proposes to fill these gaps in a methodologically ground-breaking fashion.
MUYA combines two different, yet complementary approaches by examining the Yasna both as a ritual performance and as a text attested in manuscripts. The two approaches will be integrated to answer questions about the meaning and function of the Yasna in a historical perspective. The research methods for achieving MUYA’s objectives unite cutting edge approaches from Digital Humanities, Philology and Linguistics into four interrelated work-packages. These will involve filming and analyzing the ritual performance and teaching practices in priestly schools, the creation of a suite of electronic tools for editing Avestan texts, a database of transcribed manuscripts of the Yasna and in-depth studies of selected parts of the text by combining datasets produced by electronic processes with philological methods of textual criticism and linguistic analysis. These complementary datasets and methods will be used to produce an online publication of the sub-titled and interactive film of the Yasna ritual, together with print editions, translations and commentaries of the Avestan Yasna.
Max ERC Funding
2 499 618 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-10-01, End date: 2021-09-30
Project acronym PHOTODEMOS
Project Citizens of photography: the camera and the political imagination
Researcher (PI) Christopher PINNEY
Host Institution (HI) UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary Citizens of photography: the camera and the political imagination will study a set of questions which recent transformations in political and photographic theory have made possible and which the current ‘war of images’ makes urgent and necessary.
Recent conceptual work suggests that photography makes available a form of citizenry, a form of civil imagination that may be available in advance of conventional political citizenship. This argument has been made chiefly with respect to photojournalism and the ‘photography of atrocity’. This project will investigate this hypothesis with respect to everyday photographic practices of self-representation. It asks whether arguments about the “distribution of the visible” (Rancière) and the way in which political possibility is related to “a certain field of perceptible reality” (Butler) can be illuminated through the study of quotidian practices of photography.
This question of the literal ‘visibility’ of the citizen has emerged through the PI’s ethnographic and historical work in India where democratic protocols are fundamentally embedded. The PI’s work has proposed that photography’s ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘seriality’, its ‘individuating’ propensity, and its subjunctive ‘as if’ quality all work to constitute citizens as potential co-equals, able to consciously chose idioms of self-representation.
Historically informed ethnographies of vernacular photographic practices in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Greece, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria will generate data that will permit the rigorous testing of these formulations. Photographs clearly have the power to crystalize and precipitate political sentiment. This project involves the relocation of a set of insights about photography and politics from one domain (photojournalism) to another domain (self-representation), where those questions are rarely asked, but may be more consequential.
Summary
Citizens of photography: the camera and the political imagination will study a set of questions which recent transformations in political and photographic theory have made possible and which the current ‘war of images’ makes urgent and necessary.
Recent conceptual work suggests that photography makes available a form of citizenry, a form of civil imagination that may be available in advance of conventional political citizenship. This argument has been made chiefly with respect to photojournalism and the ‘photography of atrocity’. This project will investigate this hypothesis with respect to everyday photographic practices of self-representation. It asks whether arguments about the “distribution of the visible” (Rancière) and the way in which political possibility is related to “a certain field of perceptible reality” (Butler) can be illuminated through the study of quotidian practices of photography.
This question of the literal ‘visibility’ of the citizen has emerged through the PI’s ethnographic and historical work in India where democratic protocols are fundamentally embedded. The PI’s work has proposed that photography’s ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘seriality’, its ‘individuating’ propensity, and its subjunctive ‘as if’ quality all work to constitute citizens as potential co-equals, able to consciously chose idioms of self-representation.
Historically informed ethnographies of vernacular photographic practices in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Greece, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, and Nigeria will generate data that will permit the rigorous testing of these formulations. Photographs clearly have the power to crystalize and precipitate political sentiment. This project involves the relocation of a set of insights about photography and politics from one domain (photojournalism) to another domain (self-representation), where those questions are rarely asked, but may be more consequential.
Max ERC Funding
2 449 086 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-07-01, End date: 2021-06-30
Project acronym SENSOTRA
Project Sensory Transformations and Transgenerational Environmental Relationships in Europe, 1950–2020
Researcher (PI) Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä
Host Institution (HI) ITA-SUOMEN YLIOPISTO
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2015-AdG
Summary This project aims at producing new understandings of the changes in people’s sensory environmental relationships in three European cities during a particular period in history, 1950–2020. It will offer a focused window on cultural transformations of the sensory by introducing a new transgenerational methodology, ethnographic “sensobiography”. Why now? Firstly, innovative and thoroughly researched information about sensory environmental relationships is in great demand. If the findings are successful, their challenge to several conventional dichotomies will provide results whose interdisciplinary impact extends beyond cultural, sound, and music studies to areas of psychology, human geography, environmental aesthetics, and media history and theory. The research is urgent: at present we are still able to study people ethnographically who were born in the 1930s and 1940s,who therefore lived their early years without digital technologies. The moment is also ideally suited for studying generations born straight into the digital world, where there is a need to enable young and older people to maintain a many-faceted relationship with their environments. The project's three research strands are (1) transformations in mediations of sensory experience, (2) embodied remembering and senses, and (3) sensory commons. These strands will be studied via a research strategy linking individuals and groups to broader social, cultural, and political issues in the medium-sized European cities of Brighton (UK), Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Turku (Finland). Temporally and spatially tightly focused dynamic ethnography makes it possible to examine multiple modes of past and present sensory experiencing. The study of artists as “sensewitnesses” will become one of the pivotal endeavours. The project facilitates a significant step from earlier methodologies toward large-scale, multisensory, transgenerational investigation, providing significant insights into culture with a sustainable future.
Summary
This project aims at producing new understandings of the changes in people’s sensory environmental relationships in three European cities during a particular period in history, 1950–2020. It will offer a focused window on cultural transformations of the sensory by introducing a new transgenerational methodology, ethnographic “sensobiography”. Why now? Firstly, innovative and thoroughly researched information about sensory environmental relationships is in great demand. If the findings are successful, their challenge to several conventional dichotomies will provide results whose interdisciplinary impact extends beyond cultural, sound, and music studies to areas of psychology, human geography, environmental aesthetics, and media history and theory. The research is urgent: at present we are still able to study people ethnographically who were born in the 1930s and 1940s,who therefore lived their early years without digital technologies. The moment is also ideally suited for studying generations born straight into the digital world, where there is a need to enable young and older people to maintain a many-faceted relationship with their environments. The project's three research strands are (1) transformations in mediations of sensory experience, (2) embodied remembering and senses, and (3) sensory commons. These strands will be studied via a research strategy linking individuals and groups to broader social, cultural, and political issues in the medium-sized European cities of Brighton (UK), Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Turku (Finland). Temporally and spatially tightly focused dynamic ethnography makes it possible to examine multiple modes of past and present sensory experiencing. The study of artists as “sensewitnesses” will become one of the pivotal endeavours. The project facilitates a significant step from earlier methodologies toward large-scale, multisensory, transgenerational investigation, providing significant insights into culture with a sustainable future.
Max ERC Funding
1 860 264 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-08-01, End date: 2021-07-31
Project acronym SICLE
Project Saadian Intellectual and Cultural Life
Researcher (PI) François Déroche
Host Institution (HI) COLLEGE DE FRANCE
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary The aim of the interdisciplinary investigation project SICLE is to investigate in a completely new way the intellectual and cultural history of the Saadian period in Morocco (1554-1660), using primarily the Saadian sultans’ library, exceptionally preserved as a ‘time capsule’ in the El Escorial monastery following king Felipe III’s decision to include it in his own library. The period is a time of direct involvement of Morocco in international politics and exchanges, both in their East-West (with the Ottoman empire) and North-South (with Europe) dimensions, without forgetting Timbuktu and the Songhay empire conquered by Ahmad al-Mansur, the most brilliant ruler of the dynasty. The manuscripts kept in El Escorial mirror the interests and the tastes of the Saadian rulers and of the elite at large. The paratextual information they contain (but ignored by the catalogues) like the various notes, the colophons, the illuminations or the bindings will be systematically collected and analyzed in a trans-disciplinary approach which can be defined as an ‘archaeology of the book’, combining codicology, philology, archaeometry, anthropology and art history. The same approach will be applied to the books of the ‘ordinary people’ from Saadian times preserved in Moroccan collections. SICLE goals are to offer: a) a history of the Saadian sultans’ library and an analysis of their interests; b) a cultural and intellectual history of Morocco during the 16th century, with groundbreaking studies on the history of the book, on its economy and on education; c) an evaluation of the relationship with the ‘outside’ (Christian Europe, the Ottoman empire and sub-Saharan Africa) and the possible influence it had on Saadian intellectual production. Special attention will be paid to the Jewish and Morisco communities in their role of culture brokers.
Summary
The aim of the interdisciplinary investigation project SICLE is to investigate in a completely new way the intellectual and cultural history of the Saadian period in Morocco (1554-1660), using primarily the Saadian sultans’ library, exceptionally preserved as a ‘time capsule’ in the El Escorial monastery following king Felipe III’s decision to include it in his own library. The period is a time of direct involvement of Morocco in international politics and exchanges, both in their East-West (with the Ottoman empire) and North-South (with Europe) dimensions, without forgetting Timbuktu and the Songhay empire conquered by Ahmad al-Mansur, the most brilliant ruler of the dynasty. The manuscripts kept in El Escorial mirror the interests and the tastes of the Saadian rulers and of the elite at large. The paratextual information they contain (but ignored by the catalogues) like the various notes, the colophons, the illuminations or the bindings will be systematically collected and analyzed in a trans-disciplinary approach which can be defined as an ‘archaeology of the book’, combining codicology, philology, archaeometry, anthropology and art history. The same approach will be applied to the books of the ‘ordinary people’ from Saadian times preserved in Moroccan collections. SICLE goals are to offer: a) a history of the Saadian sultans’ library and an analysis of their interests; b) a cultural and intellectual history of Morocco during the 16th century, with groundbreaking studies on the history of the book, on its economy and on education; c) an evaluation of the relationship with the ‘outside’ (Christian Europe, the Ottoman empire and sub-Saharan Africa) and the possible influence it had on Saadian intellectual production. Special attention will be paid to the Jewish and Morisco communities in their role of culture brokers.
Max ERC Funding
1 959 283 €
Duration
Start date: 2016-02-01, End date: 2021-01-31
Project acronym TVOF
Project The values of French language and literature in the European Middle Ages
Researcher (PI) Simon Benjamin Gaunt
Host Institution (HI) KING'S COLLEGE LONDON
Call Details Advanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2014-ADG
Summary Two questions about linguistic identity lie at the heart of this project. What is the relation historically between language and
identity in Europe? How are cognate languages demarcated from each other? Normative models of national languages
helped shape Europe. Yet they did not become hegemonic until the 19th century. Indeed, they were imposed (not always
successfully) on a linguistic map of Europe more fluid and complex than most histories of national languages allow. In the
Middle Ages multilingualism was common, as was the use of non-local languages, notably Latin, but also French. This
project undertakes a revaluation of the nature and value of the use of French in Europe during a crucial period, 1100-1450,
less in terms of its cultural prestige (the traditional focus of scholarship) than of its role as a supralocal, transnational
language, particularly in Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The project fosters collaboration between, and
cuts across, different intellectual and national scholarly traditions, drawing on expertise in codicology, critical theory,
linguistics, literature, and philology; it involves scholars from a range of European countries and North America, entailing
empirical research around a complex and widely disseminated textual tradition vital to medieval understandings of
European history and identity, L’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César. This case study will ground and stimulate broader
speculative reflection on the two core questions concerning linguistic identity. While the project builds on prior critiques of
the construction of, and investment in, national languages and literary traditions, it has a broad historical scope, and will
offer an innovative, genuinely international perspective, in terms of both its object of study and method. Indeed, its final aim,
through and beyond its consideration of French as a lingua franca, is to interrogate that language’s role in the emergence
of a European identity in the Middle Ages.
Summary
Two questions about linguistic identity lie at the heart of this project. What is the relation historically between language and
identity in Europe? How are cognate languages demarcated from each other? Normative models of national languages
helped shape Europe. Yet they did not become hegemonic until the 19th century. Indeed, they were imposed (not always
successfully) on a linguistic map of Europe more fluid and complex than most histories of national languages allow. In the
Middle Ages multilingualism was common, as was the use of non-local languages, notably Latin, but also French. This
project undertakes a revaluation of the nature and value of the use of French in Europe during a crucial period, 1100-1450,
less in terms of its cultural prestige (the traditional focus of scholarship) than of its role as a supralocal, transnational
language, particularly in Western Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. The project fosters collaboration between, and
cuts across, different intellectual and national scholarly traditions, drawing on expertise in codicology, critical theory,
linguistics, literature, and philology; it involves scholars from a range of European countries and North America, entailing
empirical research around a complex and widely disseminated textual tradition vital to medieval understandings of
European history and identity, L’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César. This case study will ground and stimulate broader
speculative reflection on the two core questions concerning linguistic identity. While the project builds on prior critiques of
the construction of, and investment in, national languages and literary traditions, it has a broad historical scope, and will
offer an innovative, genuinely international perspective, in terms of both its object of study and method. Indeed, its final aim,
through and beyond its consideration of French as a lingua franca, is to interrogate that language’s role in the emergence
of a European identity in the Middle Ages.
Max ERC Funding
2 274 225 €
Duration
Start date: 2015-09-01, End date: 2020-08-31
