Research Clusters

StoryPharm’s research develops around four interrelated research clusters:

Healers

The first cluster concerns the various types of health-care providers who were active in a large variety of premodern cultures and offered holistic treatments by considering the sufferer’s body, mind, and socio-cultural situation.

Sufferers

The second cluster focuses on the quantity, variety and diversity of ancient and medieval sufferers. It examines the sufferers’ pluralism and their different characteristics, according to their origin, gender, age, religion, and social and financial status along with their active role in the healing process.

Pharmaka

This cluster concentrates on therapy, the last part of the dynamic triangular relationship of healing (healer – sufferer – pharmaka). The word pharmaka stands for a plurality of therapeutics either used, consumed or performed in various healing spaces.

Medical Medievalism

In this final cluster, the study moves from the Middle Ages to the examination of postmedieval recreations of actual medieval cultures. More specifically, it refers to appropriations and adaptations of medieval medical cultures and traditions.