Projects & Collaborations 11 foundShow per page10 10 20 50 SwissBritNet: Swiss-British cultural exchange and knowledge networks 1600-1780 Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe SwissBritNet project proposes to make a substantial corpus of 17th- and 18th-century documents available in a user-friendly database which will allow students, scholars and a wider audience to investigate Swiss-British relations in the early modern period and so deepen our understanding of early modern networks of knowledge. The study of early modern transnational relations in Europe has been advanced in recent years by digital humanities initiatives enabling the large-scale collection, visualisation and analysis of data designed to improve our knowledge of the Republic of Letters. Joining this international research community, we will highlight the nature and relevance of Swiss-British relations. While both continental anglophilia and the British enthusiasm for Switzerland are often seen as late-18th-century phenomena, we will show that they have a long and intricate history. These exchanges are hidden in thousands of unpublished manuscripts and obscure print items which need to be digitised, transcribed and made searchable online. SwissBritNet will contribute to a more complete picture of the early modern Republic of Letters by making Swiss-British relations and exchanges visible in context. Building on existing database projects and sharing data with the well-established hallerNet platform, we will develop advanced search options, visualisation tools and linked data solutions. Innovative search options will permit complex network analysis, and case studies will ensure that data is modelled with well-considered research questions in mind. SwissBritNet will offer fully edited and searchable texts of 1300-plus hitherto unpublished documents from Swiss and British libraries and the metadata for thousands more print and manuscript items, innovative linked-data solutions which enable collaborations with existing databases and visualisations for search results such as maps, graphs, timelines and 3-D animations. The SwissBritNet database will enable complex inquiries into the networked structure of the Republic of Letters by providing an interoperable, multi-modal database that connects to and shares data with other platforms. Representative case studies based on the corpus will be published in open access monographs and articles. Publications and outreach activities including conferences, an exhibition and transnational stories on the SwissBritNet website will disseminate findings to the academic community and a wider public. For data access longevity, compatibility will be ensured with the DaSCH platform. We are committed to an open access policy and sustainability according to the FAIR principles so that data and software will be freely and reliably accessible to the scientific community. PhD Thomas Manson; Remapping the Outmoded in Rural England, 1870-1995 Research Project | 2 Project MembersDrawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and his surrealist-inspired theory of the outmoded, this dissertation project re-reads rural England from 1870-1995 through the works of five authors - Thomas Hardy, Mary Butts, John Cowper Powys, Ithell Colquhoun and W.G. Sebald - whom Manson proposes as central participants in a previously unrecognized tradition of rural modernity. The project examines how these writers stage encounters between outmoded forms (objects, figures, rituals) and modernity which create new spatio-temporal assemblages, refiguring the rural as a dialectical space where outmoded forms are recuperable in combatting capitalist encroachment upon rural landscapes. Utilizing a theoretical approach more usually applied to urban settings, the project asks how Benjamin's urban-focussed conception of the outmoded may be read to incorporate the rural; and how the encounters between the outmoded and modernity staged by these authors provide a means of mobilizing the rural at the intersection of capitalism, globalization and rural traditions. The project employs a methodology that investigates both the formal and narrative strategies deployed by these authors, as well as examining how literature is able to represent performance forms such as folk drama and ritual. Through this methodology, which Manson terms literature as performance , the project aims to show not just how these texts utilize the outmoded as a narrative device, but also how the outmoded becomes a formal part of their expression, realizing Benjamin's radical model of historicity as performance. In doing so, these writers forge new ways of framing the rural, not as a nostalgic pastoral retreat, but as a repository of history that is of equal importance in the formulation of modernity as the metropolitan city. Sensing Crisis – Writing Towards the Nonhuman in Contemporary Ecopoetry PhD Project | 2 Project MembersThis Ph.D. thesis adds to a vibrant conversation in contemporary literary studies about the challenging nature of ecopoetry in the twenty-first century. With the introduction of the term 'Anthropocene' into the environmental discourse, attention has turned to the ongoing exploitative and destructive domination of the human over the nonhuman. As a result, contemporary poets confront the human-centred perspective on the nonhuman world that has prevailed post-industrialised Western literature. The unease in projecting human feelings, emotions, or expectations onto nonhuman representation challenges them to scrutinise the literary potential of poetic voice and form beyond the human in their work. By looking at a broad variety of texts by British and Irish poets, such as, Jen Hadfield, Kathleen Jamie, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O'Reilly, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott this Ph.D. project investigates how contemporary poetry reacts to the modern changes in the environment. Next to questioning the legitimacy of their own poetic voice to write about the nonhuman world, their works sound out the representation of anthropomorphic voices as well as human-nonhuman entanglements and ecological forms to rethink nonhuman agency. By applying new materialist, ecofeminist, and posthuman theories, my thesis aims to explore the poetic possibilities of shaping an empathetic dialogue with the nonhuman world. Zentrum Kulturelle Topographien Research Project | 11 Project MembersThe Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies has been closed, and interdisciplinary research about space at the University of Basel will be carried on from July 2014 within the framework of a Centre Cultural Topographies carried by the Faculty of Humanities. PhD Blanka Blagojevic; Europe East and West: Literary Negotiations of a Blurry Borderline Research Project | 2 Project MembersThis PhD thesis emerged from Ina Habermann's SNF-funded project on British Discourses of Europe. It focusses on British travel writing on Central and Eastern Europe and the construction of discursive boundaries between the East and the West. British Literary and Cultural Discourses of Europe Research Project | 4 Project MembersThis project investigates contemporary British cultural discourses of Europe with a particular focus on literature and travel writing. The project is subdivided into three sub-projects investigated by PhD-students. Due to an extension granted by the SNF, the project terminated in August 2017. Im Hafen fahre ich zur See - Sebastian Münster und die Welt ⁄ Ausstellung Universitätsbibliothek Basel Research Project | 1 Project MembersIn the context of the research of the Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies about Basel and the Upper Rhine region, we ran an 'Übung' in the autumn 2012 and a seminar in spring 2013 which prepared an exhibition at the University Library Basel focused on Sebastian Münster's 'Cosmographia' as an example of a cultural topography. The exhibition addressed Basel's important role as a capital of printing and humanist learning and featured rare books and maps from the University Library's holdings. The material is available electronically under https://paperlandscapes.unibas.ch. Literary Depictions of Germany in Contemporary British Fiction Research Project | 2 Project MembersThis PhD project is concerned with contemporary (mostly Post-Wall) British literary discourses of Germany and its culture. It analyses what literary discourses project onto an area that was once known as 'enemy territory' and examines why and how Germany is used as a setting. By choosing a geo-centered approach, in which the site determines the corpus, I hope to discover patterns in British literary discourses of Germany that appear to be specific to that particular place. As first-hand memory of wartime Germany is diminishing, we are experiencing a shift from communicative to a more institutionalised cultural memory which affects the discourses. It seems that this time distance to World War Two has reawakened writers' interest in Germany as a setting and has produced more narratives that move away from themes directly associated with war. A preliminary research phase has unveiled that quantum physics, psychoanalysis and homosexuality are prevalent recurring themes in the British literary discourses of Germany. These themes are now to be examined more closely and in relation to each other. In order to discuss the characteristics of Germany as a setting in British literary discourses, they will also be analysed in connection to their literary space and will be set in context with British cultural memory of Germany and its culture. FAG-Ass.prof. Kulturelle Topographien Osteuropas Research Project | 2 Project MembersDie auf 5 Jahre befristete Assistenzprofessur für Kulturelle Topographien Osteuropas wurde vom Kompetenzzentrum Kulturelle Topographien bei der Freiwilligen Akademischen Gesellschaft eingeworben, Laufzeit 2012 bis 2017. Frau Baleva hat an der Freien Universität in Berlin Kunstgeschichte, Klassische Archäologie und Ost- und Südosteuropäische Geschichte studiert und 2010 an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Kunstgeschichte promoviert. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Kunst- und Bildgeschichte des östlichen Europas mit Schwerpunkt auf Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Gegenwartskunst, Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte von Nationenbildungsprozessen, visuelle Mediengeschichte Europas sowie die Geschichte visueller, kultureller und medialer Transferprozesse im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Der Arbeitstitel eines zentralen Projekts von Frau Baleva lautet Revolution in der Dunkelkammer. Intervisualität und kultureller Transfer zwischen Ostmitteleuropa und dem Osmanischen Reich am Beispiel fotografischer Selbstzeugnisse osmanischer Migranten der hamidischen Zeit (1870er-1910er Jahre). Dieses Projekt passt ideal zum Forschungsschwerpunkt "Grenzen Europas" des Kompetenzzentrums, und es ergeben sich u.a. Anknüpfungspunkte zur Osteuropaforschung mit den Projekten von Prof. Grob zum "Erzählen jenseits des Nationalen" und von Prof. Schenk zu "Imperialen Biographien" sowie zur Arbeit von Prof. Maurus Reinkowski vom Orientalischen Seminar. Im Projekt "Von Basel nach Bursa und Zurück" erforschte Frau Baleva den Seidenhandel mit der Türkei anhand eines von ihr in der Universitätsbibliothek entdeckten Prachtalbums. Im Sommer 2017 fand in der Universitätsbibliothek eine Ausstellung zum Thema statt, und es wurde ein umfangreicher Katalog erstellt. Frau Baleva schliesst ihre Arbeiten in Basel noch bis 2018 ab, was durch eine Förderung des Forschungsfonds der Universität ermöglicht wurde. PhD Daniel Lüthi; Space and Narrative in Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels Research Project | 2 Project MembersIn this PhD-project, Daniel Lüthi undertook an extended analysis of Terry Pratchett's popular Discworld Novels with a focus on the ways in which space is narrated and how Pratchett's fictional world has evolved. 12 12
SwissBritNet: Swiss-British cultural exchange and knowledge networks 1600-1780 Research Project | 3 Project MembersThe SwissBritNet project proposes to make a substantial corpus of 17th- and 18th-century documents available in a user-friendly database which will allow students, scholars and a wider audience to investigate Swiss-British relations in the early modern period and so deepen our understanding of early modern networks of knowledge. The study of early modern transnational relations in Europe has been advanced in recent years by digital humanities initiatives enabling the large-scale collection, visualisation and analysis of data designed to improve our knowledge of the Republic of Letters. Joining this international research community, we will highlight the nature and relevance of Swiss-British relations. While both continental anglophilia and the British enthusiasm for Switzerland are often seen as late-18th-century phenomena, we will show that they have a long and intricate history. These exchanges are hidden in thousands of unpublished manuscripts and obscure print items which need to be digitised, transcribed and made searchable online. SwissBritNet will contribute to a more complete picture of the early modern Republic of Letters by making Swiss-British relations and exchanges visible in context. Building on existing database projects and sharing data with the well-established hallerNet platform, we will develop advanced search options, visualisation tools and linked data solutions. Innovative search options will permit complex network analysis, and case studies will ensure that data is modelled with well-considered research questions in mind. SwissBritNet will offer fully edited and searchable texts of 1300-plus hitherto unpublished documents from Swiss and British libraries and the metadata for thousands more print and manuscript items, innovative linked-data solutions which enable collaborations with existing databases and visualisations for search results such as maps, graphs, timelines and 3-D animations. The SwissBritNet database will enable complex inquiries into the networked structure of the Republic of Letters by providing an interoperable, multi-modal database that connects to and shares data with other platforms. Representative case studies based on the corpus will be published in open access monographs and articles. Publications and outreach activities including conferences, an exhibition and transnational stories on the SwissBritNet website will disseminate findings to the academic community and a wider public. For data access longevity, compatibility will be ensured with the DaSCH platform. We are committed to an open access policy and sustainability according to the FAIR principles so that data and software will be freely and reliably accessible to the scientific community.
PhD Thomas Manson; Remapping the Outmoded in Rural England, 1870-1995 Research Project | 2 Project MembersDrawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and his surrealist-inspired theory of the outmoded, this dissertation project re-reads rural England from 1870-1995 through the works of five authors - Thomas Hardy, Mary Butts, John Cowper Powys, Ithell Colquhoun and W.G. Sebald - whom Manson proposes as central participants in a previously unrecognized tradition of rural modernity. The project examines how these writers stage encounters between outmoded forms (objects, figures, rituals) and modernity which create new spatio-temporal assemblages, refiguring the rural as a dialectical space where outmoded forms are recuperable in combatting capitalist encroachment upon rural landscapes. Utilizing a theoretical approach more usually applied to urban settings, the project asks how Benjamin's urban-focussed conception of the outmoded may be read to incorporate the rural; and how the encounters between the outmoded and modernity staged by these authors provide a means of mobilizing the rural at the intersection of capitalism, globalization and rural traditions. The project employs a methodology that investigates both the formal and narrative strategies deployed by these authors, as well as examining how literature is able to represent performance forms such as folk drama and ritual. Through this methodology, which Manson terms literature as performance , the project aims to show not just how these texts utilize the outmoded as a narrative device, but also how the outmoded becomes a formal part of their expression, realizing Benjamin's radical model of historicity as performance. In doing so, these writers forge new ways of framing the rural, not as a nostalgic pastoral retreat, but as a repository of history that is of equal importance in the formulation of modernity as the metropolitan city.
Sensing Crisis – Writing Towards the Nonhuman in Contemporary Ecopoetry PhD Project | 2 Project MembersThis Ph.D. thesis adds to a vibrant conversation in contemporary literary studies about the challenging nature of ecopoetry in the twenty-first century. With the introduction of the term 'Anthropocene' into the environmental discourse, attention has turned to the ongoing exploitative and destructive domination of the human over the nonhuman. As a result, contemporary poets confront the human-centred perspective on the nonhuman world that has prevailed post-industrialised Western literature. The unease in projecting human feelings, emotions, or expectations onto nonhuman representation challenges them to scrutinise the literary potential of poetic voice and form beyond the human in their work. By looking at a broad variety of texts by British and Irish poets, such as, Jen Hadfield, Kathleen Jamie, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Sinéad Morrissey, Caitríona O'Reilly, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott this Ph.D. project investigates how contemporary poetry reacts to the modern changes in the environment. Next to questioning the legitimacy of their own poetic voice to write about the nonhuman world, their works sound out the representation of anthropomorphic voices as well as human-nonhuman entanglements and ecological forms to rethink nonhuman agency. By applying new materialist, ecofeminist, and posthuman theories, my thesis aims to explore the poetic possibilities of shaping an empathetic dialogue with the nonhuman world.
Zentrum Kulturelle Topographien Research Project | 11 Project MembersThe Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies has been closed, and interdisciplinary research about space at the University of Basel will be carried on from July 2014 within the framework of a Centre Cultural Topographies carried by the Faculty of Humanities.
PhD Blanka Blagojevic; Europe East and West: Literary Negotiations of a Blurry Borderline Research Project | 2 Project MembersThis PhD thesis emerged from Ina Habermann's SNF-funded project on British Discourses of Europe. It focusses on British travel writing on Central and Eastern Europe and the construction of discursive boundaries between the East and the West.
British Literary and Cultural Discourses of Europe Research Project | 4 Project MembersThis project investigates contemporary British cultural discourses of Europe with a particular focus on literature and travel writing. The project is subdivided into three sub-projects investigated by PhD-students. Due to an extension granted by the SNF, the project terminated in August 2017.
Im Hafen fahre ich zur See - Sebastian Münster und die Welt ⁄ Ausstellung Universitätsbibliothek Basel Research Project | 1 Project MembersIn the context of the research of the Centre of Competence Cultural Topographies about Basel and the Upper Rhine region, we ran an 'Übung' in the autumn 2012 and a seminar in spring 2013 which prepared an exhibition at the University Library Basel focused on Sebastian Münster's 'Cosmographia' as an example of a cultural topography. The exhibition addressed Basel's important role as a capital of printing and humanist learning and featured rare books and maps from the University Library's holdings. The material is available electronically under https://paperlandscapes.unibas.ch.
Literary Depictions of Germany in Contemporary British Fiction Research Project | 2 Project MembersThis PhD project is concerned with contemporary (mostly Post-Wall) British literary discourses of Germany and its culture. It analyses what literary discourses project onto an area that was once known as 'enemy territory' and examines why and how Germany is used as a setting. By choosing a geo-centered approach, in which the site determines the corpus, I hope to discover patterns in British literary discourses of Germany that appear to be specific to that particular place. As first-hand memory of wartime Germany is diminishing, we are experiencing a shift from communicative to a more institutionalised cultural memory which affects the discourses. It seems that this time distance to World War Two has reawakened writers' interest in Germany as a setting and has produced more narratives that move away from themes directly associated with war. A preliminary research phase has unveiled that quantum physics, psychoanalysis and homosexuality are prevalent recurring themes in the British literary discourses of Germany. These themes are now to be examined more closely and in relation to each other. In order to discuss the characteristics of Germany as a setting in British literary discourses, they will also be analysed in connection to their literary space and will be set in context with British cultural memory of Germany and its culture.
FAG-Ass.prof. Kulturelle Topographien Osteuropas Research Project | 2 Project MembersDie auf 5 Jahre befristete Assistenzprofessur für Kulturelle Topographien Osteuropas wurde vom Kompetenzzentrum Kulturelle Topographien bei der Freiwilligen Akademischen Gesellschaft eingeworben, Laufzeit 2012 bis 2017. Frau Baleva hat an der Freien Universität in Berlin Kunstgeschichte, Klassische Archäologie und Ost- und Südosteuropäische Geschichte studiert und 2010 an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Kunstgeschichte promoviert. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Kunst- und Bildgeschichte des östlichen Europas mit Schwerpunkt auf Ostmittel- und Südosteuropa im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Gegenwartskunst, Geschichte und Kulturgeschichte von Nationenbildungsprozessen, visuelle Mediengeschichte Europas sowie die Geschichte visueller, kultureller und medialer Transferprozesse im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Der Arbeitstitel eines zentralen Projekts von Frau Baleva lautet Revolution in der Dunkelkammer. Intervisualität und kultureller Transfer zwischen Ostmitteleuropa und dem Osmanischen Reich am Beispiel fotografischer Selbstzeugnisse osmanischer Migranten der hamidischen Zeit (1870er-1910er Jahre). Dieses Projekt passt ideal zum Forschungsschwerpunkt "Grenzen Europas" des Kompetenzzentrums, und es ergeben sich u.a. Anknüpfungspunkte zur Osteuropaforschung mit den Projekten von Prof. Grob zum "Erzählen jenseits des Nationalen" und von Prof. Schenk zu "Imperialen Biographien" sowie zur Arbeit von Prof. Maurus Reinkowski vom Orientalischen Seminar. Im Projekt "Von Basel nach Bursa und Zurück" erforschte Frau Baleva den Seidenhandel mit der Türkei anhand eines von ihr in der Universitätsbibliothek entdeckten Prachtalbums. Im Sommer 2017 fand in der Universitätsbibliothek eine Ausstellung zum Thema statt, und es wurde ein umfangreicher Katalog erstellt. Frau Baleva schliesst ihre Arbeiten in Basel noch bis 2018 ab, was durch eine Förderung des Forschungsfonds der Universität ermöglicht wurde.
PhD Daniel Lüthi; Space and Narrative in Terry Pratchett's Discworld Novels Research Project | 2 Project MembersIn this PhD-project, Daniel Lüthi undertook an extended analysis of Terry Pratchett's popular Discworld Novels with a focus on the ways in which space is narrated and how Pratchett's fictional world has evolved.
