Project description
A closer look at Central Asian Silk Road histories
In the historiography of the Silk Road, Central Asian peoples such as the Uyghurs have so far played only a minor role. The ERC-funded ReCent project aims to correct this imbalance by reconstructing the history of Central Asia between the 9th and 15th centuries from a local, bottom-up perspective. It will analyse a wide range of underused sources such as letters, contracts and administrative documents to better understand everyday life and exchange networks. A key focus is the role of Uyghur communities as cultural and linguistic intermediaries connecting different regions of Eurasia. Overall, the project aims to reveal how knowledge, goods and practices circulated across the Silk Road in much more complex ways than previously assumed.
Objective
The innovative ReCent project transforms the historiographical framework of the Silk Road through a global microhistorical approach. Focusing on the 9th to 15th centuries, it highlights the Uyghurs’ pivotal role in cultural, material, and knowledge exchange across Eurasia, challenging both Sinocentric and Eurocentric paradigms. Despite the extensive corpus of Old Uyghur documents, they remain marginalised in broader Silk Road historiography - an oversight ReCent addresses. By integrating local documents, ReCent reconstructs Silk Road history from within, demonstrating the centrality of Central Asia and its peoples. By fostering innovative collaborations across disciplines, ReCent provides a new model for overcoming the limitations of area studies. Its findings will reshape Silk Road historiography, illuminating premodern globalisation and offering fresh and widely applicable insights into intercultural exchange.
ReCent focuses on three core objectives: (1) reconstructing mechanisms of knowledge transfer, material exchange, and cultural exchange; (2) re-evaluating Silk Road functionality during periods of political fragmentation; and (3) reframing diaspora networks through comparative analyses of Central Asian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern sources.
ReCent employs a highly interdisciplinary methodology, combining traditional and material philology, microhistory, historical contact linguistics, and social network analysis. Within this interdisciplinary framework hitherto marginalised Old Uyghur documents will be systematically analysed and compared with other Silk Road sources and external literary narratives. Another key innovation is ReCent’s development of an open-access digital textual and prosopographical database of Uyghurs along the Silk Road, enabling identification of individuals and connections across multiple sources. This tool will be key to study processes in cultural, material, and knowledge exchange extending well beyond the proposed project.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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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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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.
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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
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2025-COG
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20148 Hamburg
Germany
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