We are delighted to announce that Dr. David Zbíral has been awarded the prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for a five-year (2021-2026) research project: “Networks of Dissent: Computational Modelling of Dissident and Inquisitorial Cultures in Medieval Europe”, also known as DISSINET. The grant is worth 2 million Euros. 

Building on the progress already made by the project team under the funding of a Czech Science Foundation EXPRO grant (awarded in 2019), the new, expanded DISSINET project will provide an unprecedented “networked” understanding of dissident religious and inquisitorial cultures in medieval Europe through a vast computational analysis of the social, spatial, and textual relationships by which they were formed and recorded. Employing cutting-edge digital techniques well-adapted to this purpose  – social network analysis, geographic information science, and computational text analysis, the project will also open up a significant new dimension in the conversation between history and the social sciences.

Dr. Zbíral is the first ever recipient of any ERC grant at the Faculty of Arts.