About Donal Hasset

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So far Donal Hasset has created 71 blog entries.

Get Involved and Get Funded!

By |2024-03-30T16:47:52+00:00October 22nd, 2020|PIMo Newsletters|

The PIMo team are delighted to draw your attention to a number of exciting opportunities to get involved in our activities and to secure financial support from the network. Please share these calls for applications widely. 1. Training School. El Museo Canario, 24-27 February 2021: Deadline 15 November 2020. The first PIMo Training School, on the topic of Diasporic Communities in the Mediterranean: Between Integration and Disintegration, aims to explore the “visible and invisible networks” between cultures in the Mediterranean area, from the fifteenth century to the present and to show the ways such connections were (and are) artificially separated by ideological and literal borders. Its main objective is to offer an opportunity for research development, training and exchange of ideas for PhD and postdoctoral students working in the fields of Mediterranean Studies, Migration Studies, Cultural Transfers and History of Emotions. Full details of the application process, eligibility requirements and the proposed programme are available here. Please share with doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. 2. Short Term Scientific Missions: Deadline December 05 2020. This scheme supports individual mobility, institutional visits, and collaboration between individual scholars [...]

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Kader Attia’s ‘La Mer Morte’

By |2020-10-02T13:21:24+00:00October 2nd, 2020|PIMo Conversations|

Kader Attia was born in 1970 to Algerian parents in a suburb north of Paris. Now working in Berlin and Paris, he draws on the experience of living in two cultures as the basis for his artistic practice. Attia is not only an artist but also an activist. Until recently, he ran a discourse and exchange platform in Paris, in which people from a wide range of cultures and social backgrounds participated. Attia has been concerned with Europe’s colonial past and its after-effects for many years. The interplay between modern architecture and the history of colonialism is strikingly symbolized by the large sculpture ‘Indépendance Tchao’ (2014), which references the now-abandoned 1960s ‘Hôtel de l’Indépendance’ in Dakar. It is made out of old metal filing boxes used by the French colonial police in Algeria during the war of independence to collate information on the rebels. In his new video installation ‘The Object’s Interlacing’ (2020), which Attia has created specially for the Kunsthaus Zürich, he addresses the much-debated topical issue of ‘restitution’ of non-Western, especially African artefacts. The work is an attempt [...]

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Updated Call for Papers for Second Annual Conference, Paper: Material and Semiotic Mobility, University of Granada, January 28-29, 2021

By |2020-10-15T10:47:36+00:00September 22nd, 2020|Calls for papers|

PIMO SECOND ANNUAL CONFERENCE UNIVERSITY OF GRANADA, JANUARY 28-29 2021 2ND CALL FOR PAPERS Given the exceptional circumstances brought about by the Covid19 pandemic the conference organizers might consider the possibility of holding the conference exclusively online in case international travel restrictions or domestic circumstances in Spain constrain us to do so. In the meantime, we recommend all attendants purchase travel cancellation insurance, which is an eligible expense under COST regulations (see the note towards the end of this document).* Please note that these suggestions only apply to PIMo members whose expenses are covered by the COST association. Hartmann Schopper, De omnibus illiberalibus sive mechanicis artibus. Francofurti ad Moenum, 1574, fol. XIr. (Biblioteca Riccardiana Stamp. 14677, with permission) PAPER: MATERIAL AND SEMIOTIC MOBILITY This call is available in PDF form here: Granada Conference CFP The Paper in Motion Work Group is part of the COST Action CA18140 PIMo and seeks to look into paper as a medium for the codification and exchange of information, ideas, emotions and value. Our forthcoming conference in Granada (January 28-29, 2021) will focus upon the [...]

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Podcast 5: ‘The Yellow Fever and the Italian States in 1804,’ Paul-Arthur Tortosa, A PiMO-CROMOHS Contagion Podcast

By |2020-07-01T09:09:48+00:00July 1st, 2020|PIMo-CROMOHS 'Contagion' Video Podcast Series|

Since the plague pandemic of the 13th century, Italian states have created sanitary institutions to deal with epidemics. However, even though all the Italian states had similar sanitary institutions they reacted quite differently when yellow fever struck Livorno in 1804. This paradox – a variety of political answers to the same biological threat – reveals the inextricable nature of the political, economic, social and diplomatic stakes in the management of epidemics. First, health magistrates played a crucial diplomatic role, for the territories suspected of being infected were subjected to quarantine with serious economic consequences. Second, although health policies were based on uncertain and changing medical knowledge, they were meant to be universal and legitimate. Meanwhile, the population did not remain passive in the face of health measures: the richest managed to circumvent the regulations while the poor fled the infected city.

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Writing History in the Time of COVID-19: Historian Timothy LeCain on the Third Warning, Microscopic Records and Societal Change, A Conversation with Stefan Hanß

By |2024-02-23T10:36:31+00:00May 25th, 2020|PIMo Conversations|

Stefan Hanß: COVID-19  changes people’s lives, fears, hopes, and behaviours across the globe right now. In his recent Cambridge University Press monograph The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past, Professor Timothy James LeCain (Montana State University) writes about the “fellow travelers” that “make us human”: “an average human body has about three times more bacterial cells than human ones.” You call this an ever-evolving relationship “that can be both wonderfully creative and horrifically destructive.” How do you experience the coronavirus pandemic these days? Timothy James LeCain: Honestly, I’ve been feeling rather useless these days. While skilled doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals are leading the fight against a pandemic, a historian like myself doesn’t seem to have much to offer. Still, if there’s one thing history is good for, it’s spotting bigger patterns in the chaos—and maybe even extracting some useful silver lining lessons from dark clouds. As an environmental historian, it seems to me that the current COVID-19 crises should be recognized as just the latest and loudest of three major warning alarms that first began going [...]

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Claudia Stella Valeria Geremia, The Spanish Inquisition in the Canary Islands and Objects of Witchcraft (15th-18th centuries)

By |2021-02-09T15:44:41+00:00May 25th, 2020|Research in Progress|

This research aims to study traditional practices of witchcraft and the circulation of witchcraft objects by examining the trial records of the Spanish Inquisition in the Canary Islands from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The purpose is to focus on the cultural melting pot of the Canaries, where the so-called magic ritual practices of enslaved African people, coming from Maghreb and West Africa, merged with those of the indigenous people, also known as the Guanches, and the conversos. My research explores how people accused of being witches and wizards reused, replaced, and reconfigured the use of daily objects to perform magic rituals. Ordinary objects, such as scissors, mirrors, stones, and bags, became tools of magic in the hands of a witch. Inquisitors were often astonished when they found these items in the houses of people accused of being a witch. My hypothesis is that when the witch uses and puts into motion such objects, power and authority is conferred upon her. In other words, it is the relationship between the woman and how she uses the objects that makes [...]

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Chiara Cecalupo, Movement of Ideas: Giovanni Francesco Abela of Malta and his collection under European, Italian and Roman influence

By |2021-03-01T18:10:04+00:00May 25th, 2020|Visual Reflections|

From 1550, Ulisse Aldrovandi, one of the most important scholars of Bologna, began to collect the objects that would be the founding nucleus of his museum, in particular dried fish and natural objects. The growth of his collection went hand in hand with his scientific and teaching experiences (when he began to teach botany and mineralogy, the section of the herbarium took shape) and with his growing contacts with many scholars in Europe. This allowed him to receive substantial donations of objects, but also to become a reference point for every early-Baroque private collectors of antiquities and curiosities. His museum was hosted in his house in Via del Vivaro in Bologna, where the objects were arranged in four rooms contiguous to the library, in which were kept books, manuscripts and drawings. The collection was a visual appendix to the library, and proved extremely varied, in order to give an effect of simultaneous evocation of natural heritage (naturalia) and the intelligence of men (artificialia) through the centuries. There was a very wide typological, diachronic and geographical discrepancy and, following the typically [...]

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Chiara M. Mauro, Vives Escudero and the rising interest in Phoenicio-Punic archaeology in Spain

By |2024-02-19T09:54:03+00:00May 25th, 2020|Visual Reflections|

Vives Escudero and the rising interest in Phoenicio-Punic archaeology in Spain   Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the rising interest in Phoenicio-Punic antiquities fostered an intense movement of ideas amongst different scholars. Such a flow aimed at developing a framework for studying the Phoenicio-Punic culture, poorly known until that time. Although some Phoenicio-Punic items were already known in the 18th century, when they were forming part of European nobles’ and bourgeois’ private collections, it was not until the 19th century that a real interest in Phoenicio-Punic culture eventually developed. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, Phoenicio-Punic objects began, in fact, to be studied not only for their artistic value but mostly in light of the importance they had in relation to Phoenician presence along the Mediterranean shore. In Spain, amongst the main actors involved in this changing cultural scenario, there was certainly Antonio Vives, one of the most controversial figures in Spanish historiography (Fig. 1). Fig. 1: Antonio Vives y Escudero (1859-1925). The date of origin of [...]

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Podcast 4: ‘Thucydides and the Plague of Athens,’ Dr Spyridon Rangos, A PIMo-CROMOHS Contagion Podcast

By |2020-05-25T15:20:57+00:00May 25th, 2020|PIMo-CROMOHS 'Contagion' Video Podcast Series|

In 431 B.C. a war exploded in Greece between the two major political, economic and military powers of the time, Athens and Sparta, and their allies. Generally known as the Peloponnesian War, this great war spanned an entire period of 27 years and led to the total defeat of Athens (404 B.C.). In the summer of 430 B.C., a deadly epidemic broke out in Athens. The first phase of the disease lasted two whole years. In 427 B.C. the epidemic struck back in a somewhat weakened form for about a year. The Athenians lost 5,450 heavy-armed warriors, 300 equestrians of noble birth, a high number of auxiliary soldiers and a still higher of civilians (citizens, resident aliens and slaves). It is estimated that one quarter to almost one third of the entire population passed away (c. 60,000-80,000 people). Our main evidence for the plague of Athens is the work of Thucydides, an Athenian historian and general. For him, it was the greatest epidemic recorded in history. His eye-witness account of the physical symptoms, the psychological impact and the ethical consequences [...]

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PIMo Update

By |2020-05-15T11:43:19+00:00May 15th, 2020|PIMo Newsletters|

  PIMo in the Time of Corona Dear Colleagues, Hope you and yours are all well in these challenging times. The PIMo Core Group would like to offer you a brief update as to the continued work of our project, much of it in direct response to the ongoing health crisis, and to flag up our future plans for the coming months and years. As ever, we are looking for network members and collaborators to contribute to the ongoing work of the project, so please do not hesitate to get in contact if you have any ideas for future events and/or if you would like to contribute to our Contagion podcast series or offer a Reflection for publication on our website. All the best and stay safe, Dónal Hassett PIMo Science Communication Officer Recent PIMo Activities The port of Marseille during the plague in 1720. Coloured etching after M. Serre. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Although network members have been grappling with the challenges of adapting to methods of working and living in the midst of [...]

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PIMo Grant Holder

Università degli Studi di Firenze

Dipartimento di Storia, Archeologia,
Geografia, Arte e Spettacolo (SAGAS)

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