Periodic Reporting for period 3 - T-MIGRANTS (Crossing Borders: The Agency of Nineteenth-Century European Theatre Migrants)
Période du rapport: 2023-09-01 au 2025-02-28
How do migrants influence culture, its institutions and the production of the art? How does the migration process feed back into the migrants’ mind-sets, activities and social relations? These are pivotal questions today as in the past. The nineteenth century was a period of significant mass migration, and theatre – one of the mass media of the day – was profoundly affected by it. T-MIGRANTS carries out the first systematic and in-depth analysis of nineteenth-century European theatre migrants. By reclaiming and positioning this group of agents, which has largely been ignored by national theatre historiographies, and by stressing their crucial but hitherto neglected influence on processes of modernity and global entanglement within theatre in and beyond Europe, the project will open up new ways of evaluating the influence of migration on culture and its institutions.
Focusing on migrations between 1850 and 1918 within Europe as well as out of Europe, the project pursues three interrelated key objectives:
1. To systematically collect, analyse and make digitally accessible a new stock of data on nineteenth-century migrants, their theatrical work and their international networks.
2. To contextualise European theatre migrants within the migration processes of the nineteenth century.
3. To investigate the pivotal consequences of theatre migrants on institutional and aesthetical level, including significant impulses towards cross-cultural flows and tensions within the theatre business.
The research of T-MIGRANTS is organised in five interrelated work packages which consist of individual case studies (WP 2-4) as well as a shared collection of data (WP 1) and the work on the Digital Platform (WP 5).
Focusing on migrations between 1850 and 1918 within Europe as well as out of Europe, the project pursues three interrelated key objectives:
1. To systematically collect, analyse and make digitally accessible a new stock of data on nineteenth-century migrants, their theatrical work and their international networks.
2. To contextualise European theatre migrants within the migration processes of the nineteenth century.
3. To investigate the pivotal consequences of theatre migrants on institutional and aesthetical level, including significant impulses towards cross-cultural flows and tensions within the theatre business.
The research of T-MIGRANTS is organised in five interrelated work packages which consist of individual case studies (WP 2-4) as well as a shared collection of data (WP 1) and the work on the Digital Platform (WP 5).
A crucial focus was the organisation and the implementation of the data collection on theatre migrants and the development of a relational database. In this context, the following activities were carried out:
Semantic modelling and design of an entity-relationship model focusing on theatre migrants, their migration and their relation to each other, locations and institutions.
Implementation of the model as a SQL-based relational database.
Development of standards for data collection and design of a standardised data collection template.
Continuous refinement of the database implementation and conceptual scheme based on the experience gained during data collection.
Furthermore, we have succeeded in developing a visualisation tool that transfers the migrations of the theatre migrants recorded in our database onto a digital map.
One major international conference, "Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 - Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts", was held in Munich from 29-31 March 2022. We are currently preparing a publication on this.
A total of five workshops were conducted within the framework of the project: Besides three internal and one methodological on research with data and databases, two large international workshops were organised, the first one from 7 to 8 November 2022 in Munich entitled "Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race", and the second one from 24 to 26 November 2022 on "Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration" in Krakow.
The first research results were presented at international conferences and workshops. In addition, the first publications were published.
In order to reach a wider public, T-MIGRANTS disseminates activities and information on the project's website: www.t-migrants.com
Semantic modelling and design of an entity-relationship model focusing on theatre migrants, their migration and their relation to each other, locations and institutions.
Implementation of the model as a SQL-based relational database.
Development of standards for data collection and design of a standardised data collection template.
Continuous refinement of the database implementation and conceptual scheme based on the experience gained during data collection.
Furthermore, we have succeeded in developing a visualisation tool that transfers the migrations of the theatre migrants recorded in our database onto a digital map.
One major international conference, "Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 - Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts", was held in Munich from 29-31 March 2022. We are currently preparing a publication on this.
A total of five workshops were conducted within the framework of the project: Besides three internal and one methodological on research with data and databases, two large international workshops were organised, the first one from 7 to 8 November 2022 in Munich entitled "Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race", and the second one from 24 to 26 November 2022 on "Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration" in Krakow.
The first research results were presented at international conferences and workshops. In addition, the first publications were published.
In order to reach a wider public, T-MIGRANTS disseminates activities and information on the project's website: www.t-migrants.com