A focus on objects, affects and effects in early modern culture – such as in our research project – will almost certainly have to include bodily practices and bodily experiences. The body is especially crucial when it comes to exploring the dimensions of religious and cultural identities through and in the use of objects and materials. The international conference Bodies in Early Modern Religious Dissent: Naked, Veiled – Vilified, Worshiped (conference program) which took pla

Studying early modern artisans, who specialised in the trade, usage and processing of feathers, I dedicated my last summer to search for the traces that these craftsmen left in the archives. Travelling from archive to archive and museum to museum throughout Central Europe for months, I studied sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts, images and artefacts. All of them document the impressive variety of activities, which such artisans conducted. Archival research is a very spe