10.04.2025

DFG: Priority Programme “On the Way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere”

Deadline: 20 June 2025

In March 2021, the Senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) established the Priority Programme “On the Way to the Fluvial Anthroposphere” (SPP 2361). The programme is designed to run for six years. The present call invites proposals for the second three-year funding period (2026–2029). The submission deadline is 20 June 2025.

SPP 2361 investigates the pre-industrial floodplains in Central Europe and the fluvial societies that operated there. Floodplains are global hotspots of sensitive socio-environmental changes, exceptionally dynamic landscapes and key areas of cultural and natural heritage. Due to their high land-use capacity and the simultaneous necessity of land reclamation and risk minimisation, societies have radically restructured Central European floodplains. This anthropogenic restructuring can be so significant that former floodplains are no longer recognisable as such. The question therefore arises as to whether or when it is justified to understand specific floodplains as a “Fluvial Anthroposphere” and which socio-ecological processes have been involved in their development.

The Priority Programme aims to answer the questions of when and why humans became a significant controlling factor in floodplain formation and how humans in interaction with natural processes modified floodplains. It will clarify the extent to which short-term and long-term natural floodplain dynamics together with early human impacts affected subsequent developments and led to path dependencies. The Priority Programme encourages project proposals from archaeology, the geosciences and history that analyse the interaction of humans and their environments in the emergence of the Fluvial Anthroposphere through multidisciplinary and cutting-edge methodological approaches.

The spatial focus of individual projects must be on the Elbe, Rhine and Danube river systems, either one system, two systems or all three, in order to compare specific pathways of the gradual build-up of anthropogenic impacts on the floodplains as well as the development of interrelated fluvial societies.

Projects must focus on the medieval and pre-industrial modern periods and be based upon the systematic overlay of historical, archaeological and geoscientific data that requires the methodological expertise of at least one discipline in the natural sciences and one in the humanities.

Each project must contribute to and theoretically reflect the concept and key hypothesis of a pre-modern emergence of a Fluvial Anthroposphere in the context of the global Anthroposphere/Anthropocene debate. All projects must contribute to innovative thematic and/or methodological developments of this research field and commit to a systematic cross-project classification framework based on (semi-)quantitative indices of anthropogenic impacts and their further joint development. This should particularly build on the results and research data management infrastructure of the first funding period.

Projects should explore new methods and approaches that are critical to understanding the transition to the Fluvial Anthroposphere.

Please submit your proposal to the DFG by 20 June 2025.

The DFG strongly welcomes proposals from researchers of all genders and sexual identities, from different ethnic, cultural, religious, ideological or social backgrounds, from different career stages, types of universities and research institutions, and with disabilities or chronic illness. With regard to the subject-specific focus of this call, the DFG encourages female researchers in particular to submit proposals.

Further Information:
https://www.dfg.de/de/aktuelles/neuigkeiten-themen/info-wissenschaft/2025/ifw-25-26 

Contact Persons at the DFG Head Office
Programme contact
Dr. Christoph Kümmel, Humanities and Social Sciences 1
phone +49 228 885-2294
christoph.kuemmelspam prevention@dfg.de 

Administrative contact
Sabine Thomas, Humanities and Social Sciences 1
phone +49 228 885-2810
sabine.thomasspam prevention@dfg.de