Gabrielle van den Berg receives prestigious VICI grant
Dr. Gabrielle van den Berg received a prestigious VICI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for her project "Turks, texts and territory: Imperial ideology and cultural production in Central Eurasia".
The project
Turkish nomadic rulers established large empires in the Middle East and Asia between the 11th and 14th centuries. This project will explain the link between their new political ideology and the production of art and literature, via the cultural heritage of five cities along the Silk Road: Kashgar, Samarkand, Ghazna, Tabriz and Konya. The grant application was also submitted as part of the Central Asia Project, funded by Asian Modernities and Traditions.
Gabrielle van den Berg
As a scholar Dr. Van den Berg combines classical Persian philology with cultural history, focusing on the connection between text and image in manuscripts and issues of orality versus textualty, in past and present Central Asia and Iran. In her research collaboration networks, she looks beyond boundaries set by academic disciplines or linguistic fields.
Gabrielle van den Berg’s present research focuses on the Persian epic tradition and the Shahnama of Ferdowsi. Her other research interests include:
- The literary history of Central Asia, in particular contemporary Tajik literature and on oral poetry and prose in Tajikistan, both in Persian and in the eastern Iranian Pamir languages.
- The cultural heritage and history of the Ismailis of Tajik Badakhshan.
- The Pamir languages, in particular Shughni-Rushani.
Dr. Van den Berg is also the project leader of the the Central Asia project at Leiden University.
NWO VICI grant
The Vici grants are awarded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) on a science-wide basis. With this scheme NWO encourages scientific talent by offering scientists in various stages of their career the opportunity to do groundbreaking research. Vici is one of the largest grants for individual scientists in the Netherlands and is part of NWO's Talent Scheme.