Project description
Mapping Eastern European identity through early zoological history
Eastern Europe’s role in the history of science is often overlooked or viewed through modern biases. To address this, the ERC-funded SAIGA project will examine how animals were used to understand the region between the 16th and 18th centuries. By analysing animal drawings and records, the project will trace how knowledge moved from East to West through networks of local scholars and experts. The project will also investigate how early naturalists verified their data and how these findings influenced regional geography. This work aims to demonstrate how art and printmaking helped define Eastern Europe’s distinctive environment and culture, shifting the narrative beyond stereotypes and emphasising the region’s real impact on natural history.
Objective
Building on Claude Lévi-Strauss’s oft-cited claim that “animals are good to think with,” SAIGA sets out to forge a zoological trail in the understanding of Eastern Europe between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries. Focusing on animal representations, the project will shed new light on the role of images in the production and transfer of knowledge.
The project will highlight the region’s underrated contributions to the development of natural history by examining the overlooked Eastern European nodes in networks of scholars. By investigating various patterns of transmission of knowledge from East to West, this study will consider the vital role of Eastern informants, both trusted experts and unreliable amateurs. With animals as the primary object of investigation, the project will direct attention to the arduous processes of discovering Eastern European fauna. While some species had already been recorded by ancient authors (though seldom if ever seen), other species were only documented in the early modern period, turning Eastern Europe into a rewarding research opportunity for naturalists. Tracing the replication of images of Eastern European fauna, the project seeks to understand how early modern naturalists accounted for the discrepancies among ancient, medieval, and contemporaneous sources, and how their strategies of verification varied between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Mapping this knowledge transfer onto the articulation of early modern geographies—which also attempted to make sense of the regions situated between Europe and Asia—the project promises to move the study of Eastern Europe beyond the paradigm of “demi-Orientalism,” which all too often imposes a modern othering lens onto the earlier past of the region. Finally, the project will foreground the role of the arts, above all various printmaking techniques, in projecting the image of the region as an environmental and cultural landscape defined and distinguished by its animals.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-ADG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
00-927 Warszawa
Poland
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.