Thinking the European Republic of Letters

Just as diversity is essential to the European Republic of Letters itself, the foundation of our group lies in the individual research of its members. We will pool these efforts and our many different scholarly and linguistic skills into larger units in order to achieve a complexity of inquiry unavailable to the individual.

Our aims are:

• To encourage new thinking and new publications in the field.
• Promote and foster interdisciplinary dialog.
• Invite leading scholars to Copenhagen, Lund, and Malmö and contribute to conferences nationally and internationally.
• Organize major national and international conferences.
• Share research findings through teaching, conferences, both academic and non-academic publications, and media talks.
• Provide a robust research environment for graduate students and visiting researchers, while also attracting postdoctoral researchers, Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellows, and securing ERC grants or similar funding opportunities.
• Engage in discussions with a broader public, also in non-academic contexts.
• Learn from each other across the Øresund in terms of teaching and the connection between research and teaching.

The modern European history of human skin

In its first year, the group will focus on the modern European (medical) history of human skin. This ties in with a wide range of CEMES research topics (European history, culture, philosophy, philology, art and literature) and has a clear interdisciplinary perspective: human skin has always been both (writing) material, metaphor and our first medium of communication. But it was not until the late eighteenth century that it was recognized as the complex biological organ we think of today. The cultural history and even philology of the skin continues to provide important insights into the interrelated narratives of European medical history, philosophy, literature, and art. Historically, the study of human skin has relied on both images and detailed (clinical) descriptions to document and diagnose disease. Dermatological atlases, for example, in which image and text are inextricably intertwined, prove to be inexhaustible resources for exploring fundamental philosophical and aesthetic ideas that are intimately intertwined with the context of European intellectual history, but also with European colonialism. In the first year, the activities of the research group will revolve around this historically changing cultural construction of human skin in the context of European intellectual history.

We welcome proposals for collaborative research on any aspect of our research group. If you would like to become part of our research environment, please contact one of our directors.

The group will add to and benefit from the following projects:

• Sabrina Ebbersmeyer: “Women in the Nordic Enlightenment (WHENCE). Changing the narratives of early modern philosophy and uncovering women’s contribution to Scandinavian gender equality” (ERC, 2024–2028).
• Christian Benne: “Transformative Transmissions: German-Scandinavian Intellectual Communities 1790-1860” (DFF, 2023–2025).
• Irina Hron: “Dermography. Ethics and Aesthetics of Skin Writing” (DEAS) (Horizon 2020, 2022–2024).
• Sabrina Ebbersmeyer: “Archaeology of the Female Intellectual Identity, Denmark and Germany 1650-1800” (DFF, 2019-2023).
• Elisabet Göransson/Katarzyna Anna Kapitan: TextVid Øresund Network (Einar Hansens Forskningsfond & Einar Hansens Allhemsfond 2020).

• Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Department of Communication (Director)
• Irina Hron, Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies  (Director)
• Christian Høgel, Professor, Lund University, Centre for languages and literature (Director)
• Christian Benne, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studies (Deputy director)