Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State

Beyond Boundaries: Religion, Region, Language and the State is a research project funded by the European Research Council and hosted by the British Museum, the British Library, and SOAS, University of London. The principal investigators are Dr. Michael Willis, Dr. Sam van Schaik and Dr. Nathan Hill. The project was one of thirteen synergy grants awarded in 2013 and the only synergy grant in the humanities for that year. The project will run from 2014 to 2020.

The project is focussing on the history and culture of early medieval India, specifically the period of the Gupta dynasty (circa 320-510 CE). Although characterised as a ‘golden age’ in modern scholarship — and marked by developments that shaped South Asia for more than a thousand years — research on this pivotal moment is fragmented and compartmentalised. The purpose of the project is to move beyond these limitations and to recover a more compelling picture of this influential period and its impact on India and her neighbours. The project achieves this aim through the development of online research tools, a series of workshops, and traditional paper-based publications.

The project is interdisciplinary in design and aims to:

Concerns about prevailing 'silos of knowledge' emerged primarily in management studies in the 1990s. This analysis has had little impact beyond the commercial sector, however, especially in cultural and historial research where modern nation states, regional languages, and established disciplinary protocols have reinforced the status quo. In moving beyond these constraints, three research themes have been developed to cross the disciplines and regions covered by the project. The project design involves making all core data and analysis freely available online.

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