Research

The research centre Roots of Europe – Language, Culture and Migrations (funded by the UCPH Programme of Excellence from 2008 to 2013) serves as a coordinating unit for a range of externally funded research projects that are concerned with the linguistic, cultural and ethnic prehistory of Europe in a cross-disciplinary co-operation between, above all, Indo-European comparative linguistics, , archaeology, comparative mythology and population genetics. Besides providing a framework for research co-operation, the centre coordinates other activities such as contact to external collaborative partners, guest
lectures, conferences and cross-disciplinarily oriented education programmes. Currently,
the following projects are affiliated with the centre:

• The Linguistic Origins of Europe: Word-formation and Lexicon in Anatolian and Core Indo-European (Marie Curie scholarship)

• The Homeland: In the footprints of the early Indo-Europeans (funded by a grant from the Carlsberg Foundation and the department 2015)

• Individual, kin and family in prehistoric Europe - what words can tell (funded by a grant from the Velux Foundation 2013)

• Towards a New European Prehistory (funded by Svenska Riksbankens Jubileumsfond)

• Family Myths: Phraseology and Inherited Indo-European Thematic Structures in Greek Myth (two-year Marie Curie-stipend)

  Laura Massetti, postdoc project, financed by the EU Marie Sklodowska Curie program.
  

  Laura Massetti's project concerns how linguistic strategies of storytelling preserved traditional themes the Indo-European linguistic family. The starting point is Greek mythological accounts of archaic and classical ages (8th –5th cent. B.C.), which retain reflexes of inherited thematic material, i.e., entire stories or parts of stories paralleling those of other Indo-European languages on points of detail. The project aims at deepening our insight into cultural dimensions of Indo-European society (institutions, religion), as they are reflected in literary texts.

 
Completed projects:

• The projects Roots of Europe - Language, Culture and Migrations (funded by UCPH's Programme of Excellence (completed)
   
• Individual, kin and family in prehistoric Europe - what words can tell (funded by a grant from the Velux Foundation 2013) (completed)
   
• Postdoctorate Talking Neolithic – recovering the Language of the first European Farmers (Funded by the the Danish Council for Independent Research Sapere (completed)
   
• Aude career programme DFF-Ung Eliteforsker (2012) (completed)