This is the web presence of the ERC Synergy team.
With four teams, we are pursuing a six-year research project on the post-war history of Europe. The project is funded by the European Research Council.
When studying post-war Europe, the focus is on ideological divisions, competing economic models and on the different political systems separating Western and Eastern Europe.
The EU-funded LEVIATHAN project challenges existing east-west interpretations of European identity. Rather than studying post-war Europe’s two halves separately, we aim to understand Europe as one. European history, we argue, is characterised by a preoccupation with health as the common good. By taking medicine as an analytical lens, we will develop a common history of Europe beyond the usual east-west dichotomy. LEVIATHAN takes a multidisciplinary approach: neither economics nor politics nor ideology nor everyday life, but an integration of these perspectives makes it possible to understand the pursuit of the European common good.
The team of four distinguished scholars includes:
VOLKER HESS (Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany),
ANELIA KASSABOVA (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria),
JUDIT SANDOR (Central European University, Hungary), and
ULF SCHMIDT (University of Hamburg, Germany).
This part of the project aims to focus on body politics and reproduction in post-war Europe.
The Leviathan studies expand the understanding of reproduction as part of biopolitics that encompasses all questions of the (institutionalised) life course from the beginning to the end of human life. Read more
The domain of Risk encompasses the ways in which societies managed threats to the individual and the social body. Read more
Medicine became one of the main means to define, manage, and distribute risk in post-war Europe. All social domains became involved: professionals reflected upon their ethical standards, authorities enforced regulative practices, business and industry anticipated legal restrictions, undue publicity, and expensive court procedures, and the “common man” (and woman) became in equal measure the object and the subject of precaution, prevention and prophylaxis. Read more
9th-10th June 2023
University of Hamburg, Hamburg
10/11 November 2021
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