ERC Starting Grant for project on existential philosophy of religion and female thinkers in the 19th century
Elizabeth X. Li from the Faculty of Theology is among five UCPH researchers to receive a prestigious ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. The grant will fund the project REEXIST, which explores possible connections between the development of 19th-century Scandinavian women’s movements and contemporary existential philosophy of religion – with Søren Kierkegaard as one of its central figures.
Although many female writers and reformers of the time were early readers of, among others, Kierkegaard, there is still no comprehensive analysis of whether existential thought may have influenced the development of the women’s movement – and, conversely, how women read, understood, and may have contributed to this mode of thinking.
REEXIST will therefore shed new light on the historical and philosophical links between two significant movements in Scandinavia’s cultural and intellectual history.
The project aims both to build bridges between existential philosophy of religion and women’s thought in the 19th century, and to recover women’s intellectual contributions that have often been overlooked in the history of philosophy.
The approach is interdisciplinary, drawing on methods from intellectual history, existential philosophy of religion, literary theory, feminist theology, and feminist history of philosophy. The project is awarded €1.5 million in funding from the European Research Council (ERC) and is hosted by the Systematic Theology Section.