Antti

Lampinen

My research project during my TIAS Collegium Fellowship period forms a detailed, interdisciplinary and critical series of studies in the literary reception of Latin ethnographic writing from the 5th to the 9th century. The project will cast entirely new light on the literary and ideological aspects of Late Antique and Early Medieval Latin writing on ‘foreign peoples’ (real or imagined), and on how ethnographically presented information crossed generic borders. The results of my three-year project will be published in the form of internationally peer-reviewed articles and will seek to critically discuss several important but hitherto neglected routes taken by the literary and ideological transmission of ancient ethnographic writing. The research will lead to four research articles and a collected volume reassessing the reception of Late Antique ethnographic tradition in the Latin and Greek traditions.

Generally, my previous and ongoing research has been gravitating towards the following topics: Greek and Roman ethnography, geography, and historiography; descriptions of 'barbarians' in antiquity; religious rhetoric in antiquity; oracular centres; the classical tradition; history of ideas.