In 2020 Nele Wynants received an ERC Starting Grant for the project ‘Science at the Fair: Performing Knowledge and Technology in Western Europe, 1850-1914’ (2021-2026). This grant enabled her to establish an interdisciplinary research team based at ARIA. This team investigates the interactions between theatre, science and visual media, and their overlapping histories.
We focus on how knowledge and visual culture were circulated through popular entertainment during the long nineteenth century. At the same time, we look at how this culture continues to affect us today with attention to the changing relationship between art and science. Current research focuses on (1) the popularization of science and visual media in theatre and popular culture; (2) the transnational circulation of knowledge, technology, and visual culture through itinerant entertainment; (3) colonial stereotyping in missionary propaganda and popular performance culture; (4) the role of women in popular science and entertainment.
The Team
Principal Investigator : Nele Wynants
Researchers :
- Gitte Samoy: PhD-research project Spectacular Bodies: Performing Anatomy, Medicine and Anthropology
- Tim Overkempe: PhD-research project Spectacular Science: Performing Science and Technology
- Eva Andersen: Postdoctoral project Itinerant Show Businesses Networks
Researchers related projects:
- Hannah Welslau: PhD-research project (BOF) Performances of the Otherworldly: Supernatural Science at the Fair in North-Western Europe (1850-1920)
- Sarah Adams: Postdoctoral project (FWO) Blackface Burlesques: Racialized Subjection in Popular Performance Culture of the Low Countries, 1770-1840.
- Evelien Jonckheere: Postdoctoral project (FWO) Physiognomic Culture in Popular Performance: On the Use of Stereo-‘types’ in Fin-de-siècle Brussels
- Anse De Weerdt: PhD-research project Travelling colonial pictures: Circulation of colonial magic lantern images between science, politics, and religion in Belgium (1885-1950)
More about the team and the ongoing research on the Science at the Fair website.