PP 1173/3: Integration and Desintegration of Cultures in the European Middle Ages

From 2005 to 2011, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) has funded and will fund the Priority Programme 1173: Integration and Disintegration of Civilizations in the European Middle Ages. The research in this programme is informed by the insight that Europe has never been a monolithic culture. In consequence, the Middle Ages are not perceived as a purely Christian epoch, but as a time of widespread intercultural exchange between civilizations that are each characterized by religion. In incessant processes of integration and disintegration, these civilizations formed and altered their different religious identities.
Investigating and analysing these multifarious interactions is impossible within a single discipline; a transdisciplinary cooperation is necessary. Accordingly, in the second half of its period of funding term (2008-2011) the Priority Programme brings together 24 different research projects based at 16 German universities and representing 14 different disciplines, such as History of Art, Medieval History, German Language and Literature, Medieval Latin Language and Literature, Arabic Studies, Philosophy, Theology, Byzantine Studies, and Jewish Studies. Being based at a number of German universities, the research projects are coordinated by the programme s speakers, Professor Michael Borgolte (Humboldt University of Berlin) and Professor Bernd Schneidmüller (University of Heidelberg). At both universities two young scholars work as coordinators of the Priority Programme and take part with their own research projects.
The 24 projects in the Priority Programme are grouped into seven teams; each team is composed of no more than four persons representing no fewer than two disciplines. Each research team defines and investigates a different aspect of the transcultural processes of integration and disintegration, thus transgressing the conventional borders between disciplines. The members of the Priority Programme will present their findings in a publication in 2011. A first volume has already been published in 2008 with the title “Mittelalter im Labor. Die Mediävistik testet Wege zu einer transkulturellen Europawissenschaft“ (Middle Ages in the laboratory. Medieval Studies testing paths towards transcultural European Studies). This publication presents the findings of the first term of the Priority Programme as well as it reflects on the process of close transdisciplinary cooperation. It is available in German on the internet (https://www2.hu-berlin.de/sppedia). The book was also presented at an International Spring School in 2008. The volume Hybrid Cultures in Medieval Europe (Akademie Verlag Berlin 2010) brings forward the lectures and workshops of this conference.