The Emmy Noether Project led by Jun.-Prof. Fynn Holm investigates how European ‘alpine’ knowledge shaped mountain regions in the early 20th century, not through European colonial powers, but through the Japanese Empire in East Asia. The focus is on the emergence of the ‘Japanese Alpine Empire,’ the ecological and cultural consequences of the transformation of the central mountain range into the ‘Japanese Alps,’ and colonial uses in Korea and Taiwan. From a longue durée perspective (Little Ice Age to Anthropocene), the project links comparative intellectual history with environmental history, analyses interactions between traditional Japanese mountain cultures and adapted Alpine knowledge, and sheds light on climate change, resource exploitation and local responses. The aim is to create a transnational environmental history that reinterprets global mountain discourses and provides impetus for sustainable policy.

Lead: Jun.-Prof. Dr. Fynn Holm

Funding Period: 2024 - 2030

The project investigates how the interpretation of statements – such as ‘The election result was interesting’ – depends on the background beliefs of the speaker and listener. Such beliefs, including political affiliation, influence whether statements are understood as positive, negative or neutral. Indirect formulations can indicate a desire to avoid conflict or signal uncertainty. The project analyses how speakers pursue multiple communication goals, how expectations shape their expressions, and how listeners draw conclusions about beliefs from utterances. These conclusions are socially significant, especially without direct questioning. In addition, the cognitive effect of accommodating beliefs is being investigated. A key result will be a probabilistic computer model that explains the integration of such beliefs into language choice and interpretation.

Lead: Dr. Asya Achimova

Funding Period: 2023 - 2029

For the first time, the research group is conducting a comprehensive investigation into how religious conflicts in the 8th and 9th centuries, particularly under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, were linked to the mobility of people, ideas and texts in the Mediterranean region. It analyses inter- and intra-Christian disputes, missionary activity, conflicts between Christianity, Judaism and Islam, and their consequences: diplomatic missions, migration, translations, exclusion and cultural exchange. The aim is to create a new cultural history of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages, interpreting events such as the Iconoclastic Controversy and the Photian Schism as the conclusion of late antique conflicts. In addition to a synthesis, the project will produce a postdoctoral thesis, two doctoral theses and the first critical edition of the Council of 879–880. The project emphasises positive cultural-historical effects and questions classical periodisations.

Lead: Dr. Federico Montinaro

Funding Period: 2020 - 2026