PD Dr. Isabelle Künzer
My research is phenomenologically oriented in terms of cultural history and combines analyses of the ancient world with modern theories and the contemporary relevance of the research topics dealt with. In addition to the decidedly phenomenological orientation on a thematic level, human perception, emotions and horizons of knowledge and experience in ancient societies always play a role in my core research areas. For this reason, I regularly cross the bridge to cognitive science in my research projects and apply approaches from the field of Distributed Cognition to problems in ancient studies.
In this context, I work, among other things, on the discursivization of taste perception in Roman society. The focus is on the complex relationship between perception, experience and knowledge. This perspective makes it possible both to draw an impressive picture of ideas of taste perception in Roman antiquity and to accentuate the complex lines of connection between knowledge, experience and perception in the Roman world . I am particularly interested in the ways in which a wealth of sensory knowledge and experience was generated and functionalized in narratives on the basis of specific gustatory expectations and experiences in the Roman world. My research questions in the field of sensory perception in the ancient world thus focus on the problem of how questions of perception and memory interact with each other. Such findings, in turn, are of considerable importance in order to gain a better understanding of man's orientation in his environment, his view of the world and the literary narratives relating to it.
