The Body
This interdisciplinary research group focuses on the body as a bio-cultural construct in antiquity and modernity.
Some of our research addresses the funerary contexts and mortuary rituals of Medieval and Classical Antiquity, and others focus on bodily experience and emotions as lived experiences. Some of our projects lay emphasis on pain and aging as complex processes with culture-specific elaborations and socio-political ramifications, while others engage closely with disability studies, ancient and modern patient history, pain history, the juxtaposition between human and divine bodies, the spirituality and materiality of the body (dead vs alive; free vs enslaved; polluted vs purified, etc.) as well as the culture-specific conceptions and elaborations of the body in its various environmental, socio-cultural, and religious contexts. Modern and ancient artistic representations of bodies and body parts also lie at the heart of this group’s research interests.
Group members
Georgia Petridou (group lead)
Recent research projects and collaborations
Current research projects and collaborations evolve around the fields of socio-anthropology of body and pain, as well as the materiality of healing dedications and related socio-religious practices. The group also works closely with the Centre for Health, Arts, Society & Environment (CHASE).
Modern anatomical votives from private collection © Georgia Petridou
Examples of individual projects include:
The Human Remains: Digital Library of British Mortuary Science & Investigation (UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship Round 2, directed by Nugent) establishes the first archaeological history of exhumations and investigations of human remains buried in Christian contexts from the 7th-19th centuries CE culminating in an open access digital library of texts, images, and records for complex research interrogation and to assist with historical burial management.
The De/Constructing the Body: Ancient and Modern Dynamics project (Wellcome Trust, co-directed by Petridou/Liverpool) and Eidinow/Bristol).
Extraordinary Bodies and Where to Find Them in collaboration with the Being Human Festival and World Museum Liverpool.
Recent events
The (In)Complete Body: Ancient and Early Modern Approaches, International and Interdisciplinary Workshop, 13.11.24, Walbank Theatre, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool.
An interdisciplinary exploration of the mapping processes of the (in)complete body in all its complexity, multiplicity, and ambiguity in the various medical, socio-cultural, and religious contexts from antiquity to early modernity.