Project description
Exploring the history of madness ‘from below’
The current psychiatric approach towards madness and mental illness evolved from studies within national and political boundaries. However, madness may be shaped by communities, beliefs, material and non-material environment, cultural and societal contexts. The EU-funded MADSEA project will apply a microhistorical methodology to conduct a comparative archival study on madness using as a context the transnational community of early modern seafarers in the harsh environment of the ocean. It will focus on the complex interaction of religiosity and environment in the lives of sufferers during the 18th century to explore madness from within an inclusive approach, where collective experiences, environments and historical memories are shared across boundaries, while environments and beliefs are taken into account.
Objective
Madness is not only shaped by clinicians within the walls of asylums and psychiatric hospitals, but by ordinary people within communities. The non-material and material aspects of their lives, from belief and religiosity to physical environment, have driven individual and collective understanding, experiences and responses to mental difference and distress throughout history. Through shared cultures and experience, these community contexts can extend across the national and political boundaries which have dominated studies in the history of madness and psychiatry. MADSEA's primary objective is to develop an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of madness in these transnational community contexts, inclusive of the complex interaction of belief (religiosity) and materiality (environment) in the lives of ordinary sufferers. It uses early modern seafarers as a spatial, socio-cultural frame for its investigation, as their shared mobility and exposure to the dynamic effects of the ocean transcended borders and left a rich historical record of the action of religiosity and environment in their lives. Employing a microhistorical approach, MADSEA undertakes an in-depth comparative archival study of the meaning and societal impact of madness in the records of the eighteenth-century Danish-Norwegian and British navies. Blending qualitative and quantitative methods, it achieves three further objectives: establish how seafaring communities understood madness; gauge the degree mental difference and distress were stigmatised or tolerated; and evidence a trans-European seafaring community culture and response towards madness, to demonstrate how religiosity and environment, rather than national boundaries, shape mental illness. As such, MADSEA provides researchers with an empirical foundation and innovative methodological toolkit for accessing and analysing the experiences of ordinary people outside modern clinical settings, revitalising the history of madness 'from below'.
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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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.1.3. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
MAIN PROGRAMME
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H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
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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.
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)
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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) H2020-MSCA-IF-2020
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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.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
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.