Dr. Lidewijde de Jong receives a Vici grant

In April 2021, the Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded Vici grants worth of € 1.5 million each to three Groningen-based researchers. The laureates can use the funding to spend five years developing their ideas for research. The Vici laureate from the Faculty of Arts is dr. Lidewijde de Jong.

Dr. Lidewijde de Jong

The advent of Rome meant new ways of presenting the dead in cemeteries in the Near East. This project explores the ways in which trends in epitaphs, portraits and decorative monuments were incorporated into local burial rites. This will provide new insight into cultural change.

Bringing Back the Dead: investigating mortuary rituals in the Roman Near East

In the Roman provinces of the Near East some people never passed away completely. Memories of the deceased were prolonged after death through portraits and epitaphs, monumental stone coffins, and roadside tombs. We know that these forms of displaying the dead had arrived through the cultural networks of the Roman Empire, but so far, we have failed to grasp how they were embedded in mortuary rituals. This project will incorporate the mortuary context in the debate on culture change, and investigate how the dead were mobilized in ongoing negotiations between the global (empire-wide) and the local.

>>> More information about De Jong's research