Projects
Ongoing
- Chorographie between Mimesis and Metric: Handdrawn Regional Maps from Westfalia (1450–1650)
The project aims at the beginnings of regional cartography in Westfalia between mid-15th century and c. 1650, and looks at hand-drawn representations of regional spaces in their archival file context, mostly unique pieces created for specific, mostly legal, administrative or economic means, representing spatial and other knowledge in a combination of pictorial and scriptural elements. The project aims at working out the larger context of development of this new medium which in the end changed the in Middle Ages common use of words for spatial descriptions to graphic representations.
In the early times of regional representations of space they were vastly different in forms and layouts, suggesting that their makers experimented with a variety of traditional and more recent.
- Investing in the Past: Medieval Europe in the Globalized 21st Century
Europe’s identity and place within the world are contested and pressing issues which shape and draw together both academic research and public discourse. Using the methodologies of cultural memory studies, IPMEG aims to theorize a fully European framework for the study of the medieval past in the global 21st-Century. Such a framework encompasses multiple roots, minority narratives and non-European perspective; critically it also sets aside the still dominant nationalizing approaches to the Middle Ages. An international and interdisciplinary team will use the ESF workshop to define this ground- breaking research area and to lay ambitious plans for its development.
