How is OIKOS research organized?

Research groups and platforms

OIKOS members are organized in eight research groups and two cross-disciplinary platforms. The research groups and platforms organize i.a. work-in-progress days, conferences, workshops and lectures which all OIKOS members are welcome to attend. The coordinators of the research groups and platforms come together in the OIKOS Research Council.

Find information about the coordinators, the research focus of each group and platform and about their members via the menu on the left. All OIKOS research can be linked back to its program lines.

Anchoring Innovation

The OIKOS Research Agenda Anchoring Innovation (2017-2027), recipient of a Gravitation Grant, has its own academic director and board. Information can be found on their project website.

Global Dynamics in Antiquity

The OIKOS research agenda Global Dynamics in Antiquity (GDA) focuses on the historical experiences of global dynamics in the ancient world. GDA investigates the deep history of human experiences of increased global dynamics and their local impacts. Its main research question is: what difference have global dynamics made to the experience of people and social groups ‘on the ground’ in the ancient wider Mediterranean from ca. 750 BCE to 750 CE? How was this increasing complexity cognitively managed, and how did situated differences impact failure or success in such management?

Global connectivity is not a modern phenomenon. In the Afro-Eurasian sphere, a dramatic (if uneven) increase of the scale of connectivity and intensity of contact took place in the richly-documented period from ca. 750 BCE to 750 CE. Vast empires emerged: the (neo-)Assyrian, Persian Achaemenid, and Roman empires, and the early Islamic Caliphate. All of them both resulted from change and were its drivers. Increased connectivity had a pronounced impact on the wider Mediterranean area (large parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa) and its repercussions are felt until today. While in the West the Greco-Roman world was long considered central to these developments, expanding scholarly horizons have revealed how ‘Classical’ Antiquity in fact depended on supra-regional, global networks. This resulted in imperialism, massive slavery, and identity-wars but equally in crucial and long-lasting innovations in science, economy, and culture. The effects on the lives of people ‘on the ground’ were huge, for better or worse. This human impact and experience is what we investigate. In doing so, we focus on the whole de-centered, ancient world, under one conceptual umbrella (global dynamics) and with one major focus: human experience and cognition. Our shared conceptual background enables a synthetic investigation of phenomena otherwise not studied in combination.

The primary research objective of this agenda is to gain a better understanding of the human experience of change resulting from increased connectivity, through a new combination of the conceptual backdrop of global dynamics and the psychological and cognitive tools developed in the Anchoring Innovation program (cf. anchoringinnovation.nl).

The program aims to bring together scholars working on the ancient Middle-East, ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the early Islamicate world, and the European Middle Ages, fostering collaborations between OIKOS and other (inter)national research schools. Our cross-cultural in-depth analysis of human experiences of a comparable phenomenon over time and space will expose similarities and differences.

Thesaurus linguae Latinae

OIKOS and VCN (Vereniging Classici Nederland) are part of the many international supporters of the Thesaurus project (Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften), which aims to collect all latin texts until ca. 600 CE. Information can be found on their project website.