Three research projects – a history of skin, a study of the Russian birch, and securing the archive of a German ethnologist in Bolivia – are to receive funding, as resolved by the boards of the Gerda Henkel Foundation at their autumn meeting. Last week, the Foundation already announced it was approving 50 new research projects in total. The three abovementioned research projects are united by their different approaches to the notion of identity formation.

Skin: style and stigma
The Early Modern period is hugely significant for skin and how it is perceived: Global trade, not least the slave trade, led to accelerated cultural exchange. The inking that was widespread and perceived as honourable in pre-colonial West Africa and the two American continents met European ideas of beauty. There were voluntary adaptations of tattoos, but by the same token the stigmatization of enslaved people by branding them. Historian Prof. Craig Koslofsky at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (USA) pinpoints this historical intersection as the origin of modern-day conceptions of skin colour and race. Under the working title “The Deep Surface”, he is busy writing a history of skin between 1450 and 1750.

The Russian birch
The birch is considered an (unofficial) symbol of Russia and an expression of “Russianness” for many citizens of the Russian Federation. Yet it was not until Soviet times, under the rule of first Josef Stalin and then Nikita Khrushchev that it found its way into the world of official images and signification. The goal of Prof. Igor Narskii at the University of Perm (Russia) is to trace the “invention” and “success” of the birch tree as a national symbol. The historical analysis covers the period from the 1940s to the collapse of the Soviet Union and also takes into account the knock-on effects in Russia today.

The legacy of ethnologist Jürgen Riester
When the young scholar Jürgen Riester arrived in Bolivia in 1963 to conduct field research for his doctoral thesis, little was known about the indigenous peoples of the Bolivian lowlands. Their accounts and memories were not considered to be part of official history. In 1980, the ethnologist moved permanently to the Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, and until his death in 2019 this academic, filmmaker, and human rights activist documented the tangible and intangible culture of various indigenous peoples of the Bolivian lowlands, but also the curtailment of their rights and the threat to their way of life. The non-governmental organization he founded, APCOB (Apoya para el Campesino-Indígena del Oriente Boliviano), is currently home to his extensive photographic and audio-visual legacy. A team led by Lenny Roxana Rodríguez Espinoza will digitize and catalogue the collection there, and make it available to the indigenous population, scholars, and the general public.

Contact:
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