‘Reaching for Atlantis’ focusses on telling the history of objects that were subject to the massive reinterpretation of material culture under the Swedish Empire (ca. 1650–1720). Establishing a digital repository will allow to bring together contemporary as well as previous and later contextualisations of selected objects. Opening up a diachronic view on their multi-layered ‘cultural biographies’ with the help of a digital visualisation, the project will break new ground to make objects the oculars of paradigmatic shifts in antiquarianism and the pre-Linnaean history of science, permitting deep insights into the social dimensions and epistemological frameworks of early modern collecting.
VolkswagenStiftung (Freigeist Fellowship)