Project description
Investigating body-politics of the Iron and Viking Ages
Through migrations, raids, and violence, the first millennium populations of Scandinavia fundamentally shaped European history. However, this story is conventionally told from a top-down perspective, centring kings, ships, and state formation. Taking a different approach, the EU-funded BODY-POLITICS project investigates how politics worked through the body in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will conduct innovative analyses of bodies, sexuality and death, combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with central social and philosophical concerns. The project will analyse bodies deposited in settlements; burials of infants; sexuality and sexual violence; body imagery and textual evidence to illuminate the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age worlds.
Objective
The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.
Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.
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)
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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.
ERC-STG - Starting 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-2020-STG
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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.
LE1 7RH Leicester
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.