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Revolution in medical history: New project at the University of Bamberg!
The University of Bamberg is receiving over 1.2 million euros for the Horizon Europe project StoryPharm to research historical healing narratives.
Revolution in medical history: New project at the University of Bamberg!
The StoryPharm project, run by the University of Bamberg will receive more than 1.2 million euros in funding as part of the Horizon Europe program. The project will start in autumn 2024 and is scheduled to last three years. StoryPharm's goal is to connect historical and current healing narratives to improve modern medicine. In order to achieve this goal, four doctoral positions for doctoral students are being filled in Bamberg.
Under the direction of Prof. em. Dr. Ingrid Bennewitz from the Center for Medieval Studies, the project will establish the pre-modern health humanities as a relevant research field. The basic idea is that medicine is an art of storytelling that can promote trust between healers and patients. The total budget of the project is 4.1 million euros, with the University of Cyprus acting as the coordinating institution.
International cooperation and research
StoryPharm's network includes renowned partner universities such as Lund, Salerno and Cardiff as well as non-academic partners such as AVVA Pharmaceuticals, the Bamberg State Library and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. An important goal of the project is the planning of specialist seminars, training courses and assignments to partner universities and non-university institutions. A total of 19 dissertations are to be funded, which take current discourses in medicine, culture and society into account.
The doctoral projects cover a variety of topics, including art historical analyses, literary studies and cultural-historical work on illness and healing. For example, doctoral student Alexandra Lembke-Ross will examine myths about medieval healers. The supervising professors in Bamberg, including Prof. Dr. Gesine Mierke and PD Dr. Katharina Schüppel, will support the young scientists on their path.
Doctoral positions and applications
The StoryPharm initiative plans to offer a total of 19 PhD positions under the training theme “Storytelling as Pharmakon in Premodernity and Beyond”. These positions also include specific positions in the field of medieval art history, which are scheduled to begin between June and August 2025. The application deadline for the positions mentioned runs from October 15th to December 15th, 2024. Interested parties must submit a research application on the thematic focus.
Special research projects offered as part of the doctoral positions deal, among other things, with the pictorial narratives of medicine in Dioscorides’ “De materia medica” and the ecologies of healing in medieval medical manuscripts. The international travel opportunities and the transdisciplinary perspective are intended to enable doctoral students to gain deeper insights into the subject matter and advance the field of health sciences.
The relevance of medieval research in connection with modern health issues opens up new perspectives on people and medicine. Prof. Bennewitz confirmed this in a recent interview Medieval Art Research, where she emphasized the importance of narrative in the healing arts.