Interview with Sarah Cramsey about her ERC grant
Sarah Cramsey, Special Chair for Central European Studies and Assistant Professor of Judaism and Diaspora studies, recently received an ERC grant for historical research into early child care in Central and Eastern Europe. In this short interview, she will give some more information on her grant, her motivation for this research and the formation of her research team.
You received the ERC grant - congratulations! Could you briefly explain what this grant entails and how you received it?
'Thank you! The European Research Council offers scientists many different grants to do cutting-edge and ambitious research. I was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant which is a €1.5 million grant that lasts for five years. The grant allows me to build a research team at this early stage of my academic career. I received the grant by applying. It’s a competition open to anyone who received their PhD recently and has a European institution that promises to support them and employ them for the duration of the grant. I wrote a very long and detailed application which got me through the first selection round. The ERC staff then sent my application out to external experts (8 in total!) and I had an interview with the selection committee related to my field. It was a huge undertaking to write this grant and prepare for the interview. I am really grateful to my colleagues at LUCSoR, LIAS and the History Institute for all their help.'
The subject of your research will be what socio-cultural factors influence early childcare in region of the former Habsburg Empire. What sparked your interest in this topic?
'Yes, I will research early childcare (before the age of 2) and the invisible work which supports it across one hundred years (1905-2004) in central and eastern Europe. I focus on the Habsburg Monarchy, its immediate successor states and all the diverse populations that lived there across a very dynamic century. I became interested in this topic when I had my own children and I realized that there were histories which documented an experience that all of us who are grown share: care given to us during the fragile first years of early childhood and our time in the womb. I started to think about how history looks different from the standpoint of caregivers, who are often doing taboo work, dirty work, and undocumented work. From there, I began thinking about how families, communities, states and societies care for the very young. Thanks to my interests in conceptual history, the history of material culture and visual studies, I found innovative methods to visualize what is often invisible: care given to the very young and how it changes and does not change over time.'
What makes this topic relevant today?
'Human beings always need to think about how we raise our offspring and how we do that collectively and individually. We all carry assumptions about early childcare, be they about how mothers should breastfeed their kids or about how much time children should spend “outside” of their parent’s care. The policy implications are explicit. Where should public funding go related to very young children? Should every family have access to full-week public daycare and financial support to stay at home? Should we vaccinate our kids? What kind of care should doctors give pregnant mothers? All these questions permeate all our lives: we all were little children and many of us will care for children. Questions of early childcare are universal, seemingly timeless and always highly contingent. That’s what makes this research so interesting historically. '
You've placed a job opening for two PhD candidates specifically for this research project. Will others besides these two candidates be joining your research team?
'Yes, I am currently hiring two doctoral students, one who will focus on play and playgrounds for the very young and another who will focus on the materiality of early childcare. I will, later, hire a postdoctoral researcher who will focus on care policies from 1989 to 2004 as most of this region transitioned away from Soviet-style communism and towards European Union integration. At some point, I will also hire a student worker to help coordinate our conferences and visiting scholars. I am super excited to kick off my ERC Research Project in September when I co-program a conference with the Austria Centre Leiden and the Leiden Jewish Studies Network called “Care and the Jewish Experience.” This will take place on September 17, 2025 so mark your calendars now!'