Category Archives: Projects

Logo of "Study Group Auditory History"

IMS Study Group “Auditory History”

By Dr. des. Tin Cugelj (University of Bern), Salih Demirtaş (Istanbul Technical University)

Concieved during the 21st Quinquennial IMS Congress in Athens in August 2022, IMS Study Group Auditory History is an international and interdisciplinary forum for scholars at all career stages established to stimulate an exchange of current research on global auditory experiences and sonic environments of the past. To achieve that, the study group favors multisensorial approaches to discourse within sound studies and also encourages inclusion of historical, cultural, and acoustemological perspectives on aurality. It aims to facilitate critical discussion, theory-building, and long-term collaboration across disciplinary boundaries: anthropology, archaeology, architecture and art history, ecology, history, literature, musicology, sociology, philosophy. It focuses on aspects of the acoustic environment such as subjectivity, memory, sonic heritage, emotion and affect, spatial and social dimensions of sound, and history of auditory perception. Importantly, the study group is committed to cultural diversity and inclusivity.

Study Group Website

Logo of Expression Sensible

Expression Sensible

By Rémi Digonnet

Sensory Expression/Expression Sensible aims to be a digital space, with no anchorage in any specific space or time, dedicated to discussions about the senses and their expressions. It is a paradox to try to express a sensory world digitally; to question sensory expression in this way is undoubtedly a challenge, but the constraint of the digital can offer at the same time a useful critical distance from the sensory domain. This tension between the apparent immediacy felt through the senses and their mediated formulations calls into question this double articulation between the experienced and perceived senses on the one hand and the mediated and translated senses on the other. What kind of adequation exists between them, or rather, what kind of inadequacy is generated by such a tension? Besides advertising recent publications on the senses, scientific events, or sensory cartographies, the journal intends to publish thematic issues dedicated to the senses and their expressions.

Project Website

B. Besler, Fascicvlvs Rariorvm Et Aspectv Dignorvm […], Nürnberg 1622

“Sensing the Naturalienkabinett”

By Lisa Brunner, MA

Full title: Sensing the Naturalienkabinett. Apothecaries and their Collections in Early Modern Germany

Stepping into an early modern Naturalienkabinett was a unique (sensory) experience: exotic fruits of every shape and colour hanging from the ceiling, winding snakes on wooden walls, and countless boxes filled with minerals and shells.

During this period, not only aristocrats, clergy, and scholars curated sophisticated collections but also apothecaries. Figures like Basilius Besler or Johann Ambrosius Beurer crafted these cabinets to reflect the expanding European knowledge of nature and engage multiple senses. Their collections, rich with exotic and regional specimens, were designed not just for display but as interactive tools for scientific education. By utilizing collection catalogues, correspondence, and images, apothecaries made complex scientific knowledge accessible to a diverse audience. These cabinets acted as dynamic contact zones, promoting knowledge exchange and cross-cultural interactions. The PhD project explores these strategies of knowledge transfer and the role of material culture in early modern science.

Personal website (Universität Innsbruck)

Project Instagram

Logo of Recipes Project. Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine

The Recipes Project. Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine

By Dr. Amanda E. Herbert, Dr. R. A. Kashanipour, Dr. Sarah Peters Kernan, Dr. Joshua Schlachet, Dr. Jessica Clark, and Dr. Melissa Reynolds

The Recipes Project is a collaborative international research community that brings together and showcases interdisciplinary research on recipes across broad temporal and geographic spans, from the ancient Mesoamerica to twentieth-century Belgium, and from postwar Japan to medieval Egypt. We cover a range of thematic areas, including the history of medicine and science, food history, studies of magic, art and making, and digital technologies and literacies. We also provide resources for anyone interested in searching for and studying historic recipes, and we highlight the wonderful ways in which community members use recipes in teaching and learning. Founded by Elaine Leong and Lisa Smith in 2012, the Recipes Project now features the work of hundreds of international contributors from many different career pathways and stages. We publish quarterly issues on set themes and are always interested in welcoming more contributors to our community.

Project Blog (Hypotheses)

Project X / Twitter and Instagram

Swearing day at the Weinhof in Ulm. Gouache by Jonas Arnold (um 1650)

“Sensory Communities”

By Prof. Dr. Philip Hahn

Full title: Sensory Communities: Perception, Order, and Community Building in the Early Modern Town, ca. 1480-1880

The timeframe of this book project is deliberately broad and proposes an over-long early modern period. Spatially, it is the opposite, as it offers a case study on Ulm, a middle-sized free imperial city (until 1802/03) on the river Danube. The goal of this study is to uncover long-term transformations and short-term changes in the meaning and function of sense perception in urban society over 400 years. While it is meant principally as a contribution to urban history, the book will also relate to research in the history of natural science and medicine, environmental history, the history of religiosity and confessionalization, and the cultural history of politics.

Project Website (Universität des Saarlandes)

Augsburg leaflet: copper engraving by Raphael Custos, around 1635, 17,5 x 25 cm.

Sensing Danger. Material Threats and Citizen Prevention in Early Modern Augsburg

By Dr. Brendan Röder (Contact: brendan.roeder@lmu.de)

The project examines the multiple ways in which early modern urban dwellers perceived and aimed to prevent material dangers. Concentrating on the three critical areas of infectious disease, contaminated food, and fire in the Southern German city of Augsburg, it highlights the active involvement of citizens in prevention practices. Far from being fatalistic or indifferent to collective threats, inhabitants creatively drew on their bodies and senses in food control as well as disease and fire prevention. At the same time, who could authoritatively “sense danger“ in the city and what it meant to be a good citizen in the face of threats was highly contested and underwent considerable transformation during the early modern period.

Personal Website (LMU München)

Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia Universalis, unpaginiert, 1650.

Network “Soundscapes in the Early Modern World”

By Dr. Rachel Willie and Dr. Emilie Murphy

Funded by AHRC

‘Soundscapes in the Early Modern World’,  is an AHRC-funded international research network that examines how sonic interaction shaped identities c. 1500-1800. It aims to develop new approaches to hearing the sounds of the early modern world, reflect on how we engage with historical soundscapes, and consider the multifaceted relationship between meaning and hearing.

Project Website

Logo of SFB 1369 "Cultures of Vigilance"

Cultures of Vigilance. Transformations – Spaces – Practices

By Prof. Dr. Arndt Brendecke

Funded by DFG, Project No. 394775490

The Collaborative Research Center “Cultures of Vigilance” at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München investigates the historical and cultural foundations of vigilance understood as a linking of individual attentiveness to goals set by others. This happens on a daily basis, whether in the field of public safety, religion, law or healthcare, and it shows how the sensory perception of the individual is at the centre of various functions in historical and contemporary societies.

Project Website (LMU)

Project Blog (Hypotheses)

A man holding his nose to avoid breathing in a miasma. Drawing after Michiel Sweerts „Plague in an Ancient City“ (17th c.).

Smelling the Metropolis: Emission, Infection and Olfaction in Early Modern London

By Dr. Birgit Näther

Funded by DFG, Project No. 450128971

Ambient air was an important subject of scientific, social, legal and political discourses in early modern London: What constituted air as an element, what could influence, pollute or purify it and how it affected human bodies and urban life were questions that were intensely observed and debated by contemporaries. In this context the sense of smell served as an instrument to analyse and monitor air. The project investigates these topics based on three case studies: the early modern plague outbreaks associated with air in London, urban air pollution, and the first wave of cholera in the 1830s.

Project Website (DFG)

Logo of SENSIS. The Senses of Islam.

SENSIS. The Senses of Islam

By Prof. Dr. Christian Lange (Contact: C.R.Lange@uu.nl)

Funded by Utrecht University

SENSIS, Utrecht University’s Islamic sensory history research project, works toward a cultural history of the senses in the Islamic world, from the emergence of Islam in the 7th century CE to the 20th century. Focusing on the early centuries of Islamic history, phase 1 of this project, “The Senses of Islam,” ran from 2017 to 2022 and resulted in the publication of the Handbook of Islamic Sensory History, 600-1500 (Leiden-Boston, 2024). Phase 2, “Rosewater, Nightingale, and Gunpowder” (2023-2028), deals with the three early modern empires often referred to as the “gunpowder empires”: the Ottoman Empire (c. 1281–1924), the Safavid Empire (c. 1501–1722) and the Mughal Empire (c. 1526–1858). Phase 2 will lead to the publication of a Handbook of Islamic Sensory History, 16th-20th Centuries (Leiden-New York, fc.).

Project Website