Dr. Zbíral has been awarded the ERC Consolidator Grant for a five-year research project “Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe”.
We are delighted to announce that Dr. David Zbíral has been awarded the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for a five-year (2021-2026) research project: “Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe”, also known as DISSINET. The grant is worth 2 million Euros.
Building on the progress already made by the project team under the funding of a Czech Science Foundation EXPRO grant (awarded in 2019), the new, expanded DISSINET project will provide an unprecedented “networked” understanding of dissident religious and inquisitorial cultures in medieval Europe through a vast computational analysis of the social, spatial, and textual relationships by which they were formed and recorded. Employing cutting-edge digital techniques well-adapted to this purpose – social network analysis, geographic information science, and computational text analysis, the project will also open up a significant new dimension in the conversation between history and the social sciences.
Dr. Zbíral is the first ever recipient of any ERC grant at the Faculty of Arts.
It is a familiar image: a woman in distress, surrounded by men examining her soul in a dimly lit inquisitorial chamber. In fear of physical torture, she confesses to crimes she never committed. We bring you an online version of our article originally published in History Today.
DISSINET has developed an interactive map of the occupations, dissident religious affiliations, and locations of residence of nearly 900 persons suspected of heresy in the inquisition register of Bologna, 1291–1310.
