University of Kiel archaeologist wins ERC Advanced Grant to study Roman visual culture

What effect do images have? Why do we look at them? What is our attitude towards them? Professor Annette Haug will be exploring these questions. She is the first scholar at Kiel University (CAU) to receive an ERC Advanced Grant, which is how the European Research Council (ERC) supports senior top researchers with exceptional projects that promise ground-breaking findings. "This is a major milestone for the CAU and my research," says the archaeologist. She will receive a total of 2.5 million euros over five years for her project on "Fragile Images". It is expected to start at the beginning of 2025. 

This is the second EU grant awarded to Prof. Haug, who is the Director of the Collection of Classical Antiquities, as well as a board member of the ROOTS Cluster of Excellence. From 2016 to 2022, she researched architecture and design in Roman antiquity with an ERC Consolidator Grant. Now she wants to master the field of images and is very much looking forward to it: "I read a lot for the funding application and opened up a new world for myself. To be able to bring this to life now is a dream come true." The idea and the design convinced the European Research Council. Haug is one of just under 14 percent of applicants who have been awarded a grant. The Research Council is funding a total of 255 researchers with the ERC Advanced Grant 2023. 50 of these researchers are in Germany, and eight of them are from the social sciences and humanities. The funding is part of the EU's "Horizon Europe" programme for research and innovation.

The question of power: how images and viewers influence each other

With a team of three doctoral candidates and three postdocs, Annette Haug wants to dispel the widespread assumption that images fundamentally exert power. "In my opinion, this is too one-sided," emphasises the scholar. "We will include the viewers and their interests in the image analysis. What interests a person about an image: is it the aesthetics, the shapes, the content or perhaps nothing at all? And what does the person then do with the image: ignore it, remodel it or even destroy it?" Her research focuses on images from Roman antiquity, such as wall paintings, reliefs on ceramics or architecture, images woven into fabrics and statues. The period being investigated extends from the Roman Republic in the 2nd century BC to late antiquity in the 4th century AD. During this time, changing interests and tastes as well as different political, cultural and religious influences strongly characterised and changed the visual culture of the Roman Empire.

The researchers will therefore analyse wall paintings, statues of gods and images of nature from Italy. Their fragility is the focus of attention: images were altered over time due to social upheavals, for example, or even destroyed, such as in the case of some imperial statues. In addition, viewers assigned different meanings to images depending on their own interests and circumstances. Other images, on the other hand, address their own nature as images – by transgressing their pictorial boundaries, for example. Annette Haug explains further: “This may seem abstract, but our research can also be understood in very fundamental terms, since we are exploring how images and viewers influence each other. If we apply this to our present time, we could ask ourselves something like, why do I look at brutal images of war? Do they fascinate me, put me off or do I turn to them for information? So I am reflecting on my attitude towards a picture and what I do with it – but also on why and how pictures captivate me."

From an archaeological perspective, Annette Haug's aim is to formulate a new narrative for the culture of Roman antiquity: "It is not only the robust images that tell us something, but also those with a fragile element." If the image and the viewer are more closely brought into relation to one another, a different, new understanding of Roman visual culture emerges.

This article was first published on 11 April by Kiel University.