Research projects in Research Area A

Text in Space and Time: Studies on the textual and iconographic programme of the Temple of Edfu

Department: Egyptology
Job Vacancy: 1x Postdoc (100% E13)
Project Description: The goal of “Text in Space and Time: Studies on the textual and iconographic programme of the Temple of Edfu” is to produce a new edition with a translation, philological commentary and analysis of a specific spatial entity in the Temple of Edfu. Here, a diachronic and synchronic analysis will be conducted, investigating the writing system and the relationship between text and image. Thus, the research project will elucidate how inscriptions have a textual-historical dimension, being located in a room that connects with the wider structure, containing references to the cardinal points and to the other rooms of the temple and their representational programme.
Responsible PI: Prof. Dr. Martin Andreas Stadler (JMU)
Research Area: A (Writing Systems)

Department: Scandinavian Studies
Job Vacancy: 1x Postdoc (100% E13)
Project Description: The project explores the intersection between writing and the body in premodern Scandinavia, focusing on metal amulets, particularly those made of lead – a small and less commonly researched segment of the runic corpus, with several recent finds that remain unedited to date. It will pay particular attention to folded lead amulets, which often incorporate hybrid scripts (runic and Roman) and languages (Old Norse and Latin) and blur the boundaries between written object, ritual device, and material culture.
Responsible PI: Prof. Dr. Verena Höfig
Research Area: A (Writing Systems)

Department: History of Science
Job Vacancy: 1x Postdoc (100% E13)
Project Description: The project develops a new perspective on the history of philology through the example of the history of alchemy and alchemic research. Alchemy was a heterogeneous field of knowledge, which was practiced, discussed, and transmitted in different linguistic and cultural contexts, taking on different meanings and formats that ranged from artisanal experimental recipes to occult rituals. Using long-term comparative analysis, this project will reconstruct how knowledge about nature, materials, and artisanal skills was generated philologically, and conveyed in texts. The project spans multiple eras and relies on cooperation within the cluster: it links the alchemical-philological practices of the pre-modern era with their reception in 19th- and 20th-century history of science (e.g. by Julius Ruska), and contrasts these earlier discourses with current methodological approaches such as digital or performative methods. In this context, “philological practices” are understood as a multi-perspective form of knowledge production that has developed historically and is culturally influenced, and which has also exercised an impact far beyond philology in its narrow sense.
Responsible PI: Prof. Dr. Kärin Nickelsen
Research Area: A (Writing Systems)