Project description
Studying citizenship through clothing patents
Clothing directly connects the body to social life and the political world. What we wear is central to concepts of identity, participation and belonging. However, clothing doesn’t just reflect these ideas, it can also be used to re-imagine them. The EU-funded POLITICS of PATENTS project studies 200 years of clothing inventions from the European patent archives to investigate how inventors have used new forms of clothing to resist, disrupt, or creatively break from conventional beliefs and make space for new political possibilities. The project combines concepts from science and technology studies and citizenship research with art-based inventive methods. A collection of inventions will be reconstructed to provide multi-dimensional insights into how inventors have re-imagined citizenship one stitch at a time.
Objective
From Victorian women cyclists, who suffered social stigma for daring to replace their skirts with bloomers a century ago, to the recent French burkini ban, where women were forcibly removed from beaches, specifically clothed bodies have long been sites of debate about gender, race, class and religion in public space. Clothing is directly connected to social life and the political world and as such is central to ideas around the politics of identity, participation and belonging. Yet, it is under explored in relation to citizenship studies. This five-year project undertakes for the first time a transnational sociological investigation of 200 years of clothing inventions. It focuses on clothing patents in Espacenet, the European Patent Office’s free online database. Inventors are the focus as they operate on the cutting edge of social and political change; building on the past to make claims on the present and imagine different futures. Central to this research is the idea that clothing inventors can be explored as citizen-makers and that clothing patents are rich untapped sources of data that render visible alternative citizenship possibilities, which may provoke new questions about things we take for granted. The research will be located in a Patent Lab using an inventive mixed-methods approach including quantitative and in-depth visual and document analysis, interviews with inventors and garment reconstruction.
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.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
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.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
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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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
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.
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.
ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant
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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-2018-COG
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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.
SE14 6NW London
United Kingdom
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.