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From the beginning of September 2023 to the end of February 2024, I enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Max Weber Kolleg as a Mercator Fellow. Mercator fellows are visiting professors funded by the Deutsche Foschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
At Max Weber Kolleg, a uniquely interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Erfurt, I worked alongside numerous excellent colleagues who conduct research in various disciplines (from Economics, Sociology and Anthropology to Classics, Ancient History, and History of Religions) and come from all over the world. My colleagues and I co-supervise young researchers who are pursuing their doctoral degrees within the wider framework of the International Graduate School (IGS) ‘Resonant Self–World Relations in Ancient and Modern Socio-Religious Practices’, a research collaboration between the University of Erfurt (Germany) and the University of Graz (Austria). Whilst living and working in Erfurt, I also worked on my own research project entitled ‘Healing Rituals, Patient-Physician Resonance, and the Lived Body: Experiencing, Communicating, and Managing Chronic Pain in Antiquity and Modernity’.
‘Healing Rituals’ was a project that foregrounded the ritualisation of the chronic pain-stricken body and considers ritualisation as a means of dealing with world-wide health crises and chronic suffering in both antiquity (e.g., the so-called Antonine plague that struck the Roman Empire in 165 CE) and modernity (e.g., the recent Covid-19 induced pandemic). The project encompassed three distinct but interrelated topics: healing rituals, patient-physician resonance, and the experience, communication, and management of chronic pain in antiquity and modernity. In terms of broader theoretical orientation, the project built on: a) the Erfurt-led methodological paradigm of ‘Lived Ancient Religion’ (LAR) and its emphasis on individual agency and appropriation in the history of religions; b) Catherine Bell’s concept of ‘the ritual body’; and, finally, c) the so-called ‘Affective Turn’ and its emphasis on affective phenomena and their impact on cognitive functioning. It also built on my earlier work on the concept of the ‘Lived Body in Pain’ as well as on recent studies in the history of emotions, ancient history of medicine, medicine, and medical humanities. These studies have broken new ground in prioritising the role of both the patient’s perspective and emotions in effective communication, management, diagnosis, and treatment of acute and chronic pain (physical and mental alike).
By patient-physician resonance, I refer to a special kind of rapport that develops between the chronic sufferer and her or his healthcare provider. Borrowing the sociological concept of ‘resonance’ from the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, I employ the terms ‘patient’ and ‘physician’ in the broadest possible sense as encompassing sufferers of all ages and genders and healthcare providers of all possible backgrounds and levels of expertise. Patient-physician resonance is essential for both the timely diagnosis and the effective management and/or treatment of chronic and life-altering and -limiting pain. Unsurprisingly, a great part of this rapport rests on the communication of emotions via narratives constructed and delivered by those partaking in the medical encounter of the past and the present.
Most importantly, putting pain into words is a sine qua non for effective pain communication between the sufferer and health-care provider, which is in turn an integral constituent of the patient-physician resonance. My project compared the autopathographies of ancient chronic pain sufferers, such as the famous orators Aelius Aristides and Libanius, with those of modern chronic pain sufferers, such as the American investigative journalist Cathryn Jacobson Ramin. In doing so, it foregrounded how effective communication about and management/treatment of chronic suffering is enabled by an empathetic relationship between sufferers and their healthcare providers. Particular emphasis was placed on a) the ineffability of pain; b) the integral role played by empathy and careful listening in unearthing the patient’s lived experience of chronic pain; and c) chronic pain’s “socially negotiated subjectivity” and ritualisation within the critical contexts of ‘global’ health crises (e.g., the Antonine plague and the Covid-19 pandemic).
Whilst residing at Erfurt, I also worked on 2 related projects: a) a co-edited volume (with Esther Eidinow, University of Bristol) entitled De/Constructing the Body in Antiquity and Modernity, forthcoming with Routledge, and b) my monograph, which is entitled Medicine and Mysteries in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi: The Mysian Patient, forthcoming with Oxford University Press. I also got the opportunity to celebrate the publication of a co-edited volume entitled ‘Magnification and Miniaturisation in Religious Communications in Antiquity and Modernity’, that came out of an earlier collaboration with faculty members of the IGS (https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/archaeology-classics-and-egyptology/blog/2021/measuring-the-world-against-the-body/) and was published by Brepols in December 2023.
Cover of the book Magnification and Miniaturization in Religious Communications in Antiquity and Modernity. Materialities and Meanings. Eds. Elisabeth Begemann, Diana Pavel, Georgia Petridou, Anna-Katharina Rieger, Rubina Raja, and Jörg Rüpke.
Moreover, I got the chance to travel widely delivering papers in conferences and workshops all over the world. During one of these visits at Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies Aarhus (Denmark), I delivered a research paper on ‘Death, Re-birth, and Pilgrimage Experience in Aelius Aristides Hieroi Logoi’, now a published article (Religions 15.8), and got the chance to meet up with CHASE’s director Ciara Kierans, at the same time was also conducting her own fascinating research programme on ‘Articulations of filtration: Rethinking disease etiology, inequality and care in uncertain ecosystems' at the same research centre.
Georgia with Ciara Kierans at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies
I have very fond memories of my visits to both Erfurt and Aarhus and hope to go back soon and work alongside my excellent colleagues. My last Mercator fellowship brought together the 4 things I love most: friendship, interdisciplinarity, lateral thinking, and Christmas decorations!