Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MADSEA (MADness, Religiosity and Environment: belief and materiality in community responses to mental difference and distress among early modern SEAfarers.)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2022-02-01 al 2024-01-31
Our understanding of mental illness has been shaped by the study of experiences of mental difference, disturbance and distress within the walls of psychiatric hospitals and asylums, often within single national contexts. Yet human experiences are rarely so neatly confined to institutional and political boundaries, especially experiences of madness. The non-material and material aspects of ordinary peoples’ lives, from their religiosity to the physical world within which they lived, moved and worked, have driven individual and collective understanding, experiences and responses to mental difference and distress throughout history. Shared cultures and experiences create community contexts that extend across borders and challenge national narratives, but have been difficult to study. Early modern seafarers, a group whose shared transnational experience of the ocean environment meant they often had more in common with each other than their compatriots on land, provide us with a valuable opportunity to understand the intersection of belief, environment, community and madness outside of national and institutional limits.
MADSEA's primary objective has been to develop a methodology for the study of madness in these transnational community contexts, inclusive of the complex interaction of belief and environment in the lives of ordinary sufferers. Through its in-depth comparative archival study of the meaning and societal impact of mental difference, disturbance and distress in the records of the 18th-century Danish-Norwegian and British navies, it achieves three further objectives: establishing how seafaring communities understood madness; gauging the degree to which mental difference and distress were stigmatised or tolerated within these dangerous environments; and testing the extent of a trans-European seafaring community culture and response to madness, to demonstrate the importance of a transnational approach to understanding mental illness.
MADSEA's primary objective has been to develop a methodology for the study of madness in these transnational community contexts, inclusive of the complex interaction of belief and environment in the lives of ordinary sufferers. Through its in-depth comparative archival study of the meaning and societal impact of mental difference, disturbance and distress in the records of the 18th-century Danish-Norwegian and British navies, it achieves three further objectives: establishing how seafaring communities understood madness; gauging the degree to which mental difference and distress were stigmatised or tolerated within these dangerous environments; and testing the extent of a trans-European seafaring community culture and response to madness, to demonstrate the importance of a transnational approach to understanding mental illness.
The project was organized into 5 workflows: the researcher’s training & knowledge transfer with the host institution; project management; development of the project’s methodology, analysis & academic dissemination; data collection & management; and public outreach in the form of a ‘pop-up’ exhibition.
The project’s first phase involved language, palaeography and digital methods training. The researcher was thoroughly integrated within the Research Group Managing Melancholy in the host department (Church History, Faculty of Theology, UCPH), which provided a valuable supportive and stimulating environment for gathering contextual knowledge and developing the project’s methodology. This phase also involved the collection of preliminary evidence from 18th-century Danish naval medical records, giving vital insights into e.g. the types of medical diagnoses used, necessary for early comparisons with the researcher’s existing British evidence and developing a framework to understand and select cases from the project’s core evidence base: the naval criminal courts.
The project’s next phase involved the collection and interpretation of evidence of the role of religion in seafarers’ mental health, supported by the interdisciplinary knowledge exchange with the church historians in the Research Group, drawing on 18th-century seamen’s devotional literature and the published/unpublished writings of key naval priests and captains. This resulted in a public magazine article, a specialist seminar on a Master's course in the host department and an upcoming source publication. This ran concurrently with the researcher’s implementation of the AI transcription software TRANSKRIBUS, training a text recognition model on the specific handwritings used in the Danish-Norwegian navy’s criminal court records, to facilitate an effective search through the material to select cases that mentioned mental states.
The project’s final phase involved case selection, interpretation and analysis, including: the development of the search criteria & methodology; transcription cleaning; and the selection of a core set of cases for qualitative analysis. This final phase also involved the synthesis of findings, including comparative analysis with the British material and tracing individuals across the record sets to test e.g. the impact experiencing mental disorder -being treated in hospital or admitting to experiences in court- had on individuals’ lives and work, in order to understand the role of community in seafarers’ madness and the impact of environment and religion on cultures of stigma or tolerance.
The project results have been disseminated in 8 international conferences, 2 international seminars/workshops, 1 magazine article and an upcoming ‘pop-up’ exhibition Galskab til Søs/Madness at Sea at Bornholms Museum in 2024. The project has also resulted in several sole-authored manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications currently under review or to be submitted in 2024: 3 articles, 1 chapter in an edited volume, 1 source article (Danish), 1 digital methods essay. The researcher is also co-editing a volume with the project’s supervisor Tine Reeh.
The project’s first phase involved language, palaeography and digital methods training. The researcher was thoroughly integrated within the Research Group Managing Melancholy in the host department (Church History, Faculty of Theology, UCPH), which provided a valuable supportive and stimulating environment for gathering contextual knowledge and developing the project’s methodology. This phase also involved the collection of preliminary evidence from 18th-century Danish naval medical records, giving vital insights into e.g. the types of medical diagnoses used, necessary for early comparisons with the researcher’s existing British evidence and developing a framework to understand and select cases from the project’s core evidence base: the naval criminal courts.
The project’s next phase involved the collection and interpretation of evidence of the role of religion in seafarers’ mental health, supported by the interdisciplinary knowledge exchange with the church historians in the Research Group, drawing on 18th-century seamen’s devotional literature and the published/unpublished writings of key naval priests and captains. This resulted in a public magazine article, a specialist seminar on a Master's course in the host department and an upcoming source publication. This ran concurrently with the researcher’s implementation of the AI transcription software TRANSKRIBUS, training a text recognition model on the specific handwritings used in the Danish-Norwegian navy’s criminal court records, to facilitate an effective search through the material to select cases that mentioned mental states.
The project’s final phase involved case selection, interpretation and analysis, including: the development of the search criteria & methodology; transcription cleaning; and the selection of a core set of cases for qualitative analysis. This final phase also involved the synthesis of findings, including comparative analysis with the British material and tracing individuals across the record sets to test e.g. the impact experiencing mental disorder -being treated in hospital or admitting to experiences in court- had on individuals’ lives and work, in order to understand the role of community in seafarers’ madness and the impact of environment and religion on cultures of stigma or tolerance.
The project results have been disseminated in 8 international conferences, 2 international seminars/workshops, 1 magazine article and an upcoming ‘pop-up’ exhibition Galskab til Søs/Madness at Sea at Bornholms Museum in 2024. The project has also resulted in several sole-authored manuscripts for peer-reviewed publications currently under review or to be submitted in 2024: 3 articles, 1 chapter in an edited volume, 1 source article (Danish), 1 digital methods essay. The researcher is also co-editing a volume with the project’s supervisor Tine Reeh.
MADSEA provides researchers with an empirical foundation and methodological toolkit for accessing and analysing the experiences of ordinary people outside modern clinical settings and national parameters, revitalising the history of madness 'from below'. In doing so it also brings to the forefront a section of society who have been neglected in the history of madness, which becomes increasingly important to address as damaging assumptions about the experiences, or complete absence, of mad sailors in this period feed into modern gendered and environmentally-based stigma towards mental ill-health and disabilities.
The upcoming peer-reviewed publications for the project target key areas in the state of the art: delivering the transnational methodology to demonstrate how researchers can look beyond national boundaries in the study of madness and other marginalised experiences; the role of community as a support structure and faith as a method of (self-)soothing in maritime transnational contexts; the impact of theological and legal structures or thoughts on the self-perception and stigma of mental disorder and how this intersects with the evidence of commonality across transnational contexts; and the use and dangers of AI technologies in historical research, particularly in the potential to obscure marginal histories.
The numerous conference and seminar presentations during the project have extended its impact by disseminating the findings to a wide range of researchers across disciplines. These exchanges helped to develop the project’s methodology and have also resulted in the researcher’s ongoing collaborations with researchers in e.g. Finland, Sweden, Austria and Belgium, including the development of a new research network making advances in the history of early modern disability https://disability.hypotheses.org/(si apre in una nuova finestra).
The fellowship has also had a profound impact on the researcher. The supportive host environment and stability have allowed her to consolidate and grow her work, international network and transferrable language and digital methods skills, enhancing her international research profile and mobility, enabling her delivery of MADSEA’s crucial intervention in the field and the potential to build on it in the future.
The upcoming peer-reviewed publications for the project target key areas in the state of the art: delivering the transnational methodology to demonstrate how researchers can look beyond national boundaries in the study of madness and other marginalised experiences; the role of community as a support structure and faith as a method of (self-)soothing in maritime transnational contexts; the impact of theological and legal structures or thoughts on the self-perception and stigma of mental disorder and how this intersects with the evidence of commonality across transnational contexts; and the use and dangers of AI technologies in historical research, particularly in the potential to obscure marginal histories.
The numerous conference and seminar presentations during the project have extended its impact by disseminating the findings to a wide range of researchers across disciplines. These exchanges helped to develop the project’s methodology and have also resulted in the researcher’s ongoing collaborations with researchers in e.g. Finland, Sweden, Austria and Belgium, including the development of a new research network making advances in the history of early modern disability https://disability.hypotheses.org/(si apre in una nuova finestra).
The fellowship has also had a profound impact on the researcher. The supportive host environment and stability have allowed her to consolidate and grow her work, international network and transferrable language and digital methods skills, enhancing her international research profile and mobility, enabling her delivery of MADSEA’s crucial intervention in the field and the potential to build on it in the future.