The 19 successful projects of the AHRC/DFG open call were selected through a highly competitive joint review process, leading to a joint peer review panel meeting in Bonn in autumn 2019. Demand under this first call was much higher than anticipated with over 170 joint applications submitted from across a wide range of humanities subject areas. In the light of the unanticipated high demand, both funders agreed to increase the budget for the first call to enable 19 projects to be supported, with total funding of over 5 million GBP in the UK matched by over 6 million EUR for research teams in Germany. The projects, which span a wide range of research subjects, will start in early 2020 and are expected to run for three years until 2023.
Both funders recognise that some of the best research in the arts and humanities can only be achieved by working with the best researchers internationally. Executive Chair of the AHRC, Prof. Dr. Andrew Thompson and the former President of the DFG, Prof. Dr. Peter Strohschneider, jointly state:
“We are delighted to see the launch of this first round of projects funded under the bilateral agreement between the AHRC and the DFG. Both organisations are strongly committed to supporting international collaboration and we are delighted to work in a partnership to create this new collaborative funding opportunity. It sends a strong message that the first call generated such high levels of interest in both the UK and Germany and that through this first call we have been able to support such a fantastic range of outstanding projects, indicating the far reaching cross-national importance of arts and humanities research. We hope that this first cohort of projects will help to strengthen and deepen research cooperation between the UK and Germany in the arts and humanities and contribute to the growth of a transnational collaborative research culture in both countries”.
At the same time Prof. Dr. Thompson and Prof. Dr. Strohschneider remark that:
“The current joint funding initiative of AHRC and DFG brings to light the need for further commitment of funding agencies to pay particular attention to scholars that work in research fields that are politically less prioritised and appreciated but that at the same time are of paramount societal importance”.
AHRC and DFG underline this further commitment by a second bilateral open funding call for joint applications between arts and humanities researchers based in Germany and the UK, which will again address the entire spectrum of the arts and humanities (including law and linguistic) that fall within the remits of DFG and AHRC. This second round will build on the success of the first round and will be managed by the AHRC in close partnership with the DFG. The second call will largely follow the same jointly agreed policies and procedures as set out in the first call, with applications being directed towards the AHRC’s application systems in the first instance.
Besides these funding calls AHRC and DFG will support efforts to better bring out the value of the humanities as these disciplines are essential for the interpretation of the world.
Prof. Dr. Thompson and Prof. Dr. Strohschneider jointly assert that:
“Across the world we face uncertain and politically challenging times, and in this context the AHRC and DFG seek to intensify their cooperation to make a better case for scholarship in the humanities”.
Funded projects
- “Twisted Transfers”: Discursive Constructions of Corruption in Ancient Greece and Rome
Filippo Carlà-Uhink, Universität Potsdam; Marta García Morcillo, University of Roehampton
Discipline: Ancient History - Historicising Natures, Cultures and Laws in the Etosha-Kunene Conservation Territories of Namibia: From Deutsch Südwestafrika’s “Game Reserve No. 2” to “Kunene People’s Park”?
Ute Dieckmann, Universität zu Köln; Sian Sullivan, Bath Spa University
Discipline: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology - Complexity in Derivational Morphology: Theory and Experimental Evidence
Carsten Eulitz, Universität Konstanz; Aditi Lahiri, University of Oxford
Disciplines: Linguistics; Cognitive Neuroscience - The Intertwined World of the Oral and Written Transmission of Sacred Traditions in the Middle East
Alba Fedeli, Universität Hamburg; Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge
Disciplines: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies - Jewish Pimps, Prostitutes and Campaigners in a Transnational German and British Context, 1875–1940
Stefanie Fischer, Technische Universität Berlin; Daniel Lee, University of Sheffield
Disciplines: Modern and Current History; Religious Studies and Jewish Studies - The Íslendingasögur as Prosimetrum
Stefanie Gropper, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; Judy Quinn, Cambridge University
Discipline: European and American Literature - Seascapes: Tracing the Emergence and Spread of Maritime Networks in the Central and Western Mediterranean in the 3rd Millennium BC
Lucy Cramp, University of Bristol; Maria Ivanova-Bieg, Universität Heidelberg
Discipline: Prehistory - Reading the Library of Ashurbanipal: A Multi-sectional Analysis of Assyriology’s Foundational Corpus
Enrique Jiménez, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; Jonathan Taylor, The British Museum
Discipline: Ancient Near Eastern Studies - Beethoven in the House: Digital Studies of Domestic Music Arrangements
Johannes Kepper, Universität Paderborn; Kevin Page, University of Oxford
Discipline: Musicology - The Law of Protracted Conflict: Overcoming the Humanitarian-Development Divide
Robin Geiß, University of Glasgow; Heike Krieger, Freie Universität Berlin
Discipline: Law - Looking in from the Edge (LIFTE) – The Impact of International Commercialisation on North-West Europe’s Peripheral Communities 1468–1712: Production, Commerce and Consumption in Orkney and Shetland
Sarah Jane Gibbon, University of Highlands and Islands; Natascha Mehler, Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum
Disciplines: Prehistory; History - Risky Hormones, Pregnant Patients and the Contested Science of Birth Defects: the Rise and Fall of Hormone Pregnancy Tests in the FRG and UK, 1950–1981
Birgit Nemec, Universität Heidelberg; Jesse Olszynko-Gryn, University of Strathclyde
Discipline: History of Science - From Icon to Abstraction in Sign Language: how Iconicity Shapes the Lexicon in the Visual Modality
Gerardo Ortega, University of Birmingham; Pamela Perniss, Universität zu Köln
Discipline: Linguistics - Corridor Talk: Conservation Humanities and the Future of Europe’s National Parks
Graham Huggan, University of Leeds; Katie Ritson, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Disciplines: European and American Literature; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies - How Does it Feel? – Interpersonal Understanding and Affective Empathy
Neil Roughley, Universität Duisburg-Essen; Thomas Schramme, University of Liverpool
Discipline: Philosophy - Finance, Law and the Language of Governmental Practice in Late Medieval Towns: Aberdeen and Augsburg in Comparison
Jackson Armstrong, University of Aberdeen; Jörg Rogge, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Discipline: History - Conquest, Ecology and Economy in Islamic North Africa: The Example of the Central Medjerda Valley
Corisande Fenwick, University College London; Philipp von Rummel, Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin
Disciplines: Prehistory, Physical Geography - The Restitution of Knowledge: Artefacts as Archives in the (Post)Colonial Museum, 1850–1939
Dan Hicks, University of Oxford; Bénédicte Savoy, Technische Universität Berlin
Discipline: Art History - The History of the Jewish Book in the Islamicate World
Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, University of Oxford; Ronny Vollandt, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Discipline: Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
