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Mari Eyice

About me

I am a PhD from Stockholm University. Presently, I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at University of Copenhagen and assistant professor in Early Modern history at Linköping University. 

Read more about my work and find up-to-date contact details here:

University of Copenhagen

Linköping University

Research

I have conducted the following projects at Stockholm University:

The Outer Periphery of Empathy

The project was funded by the Swedish Research Council’s international Post doc grant (project number 2019-06278) and included research stays at Tampere University, Finland and Cambridge University, UK. The project was running from 2020 to 2024.

The project studied empathy through the lens of early modern disability. Research about empathy has grown rapidly during the last decade. However, while there are a number of studies showing the importance of an historical perspective on empathy, there is a lack of scholarship that sufficiently considers the role of the body for empathy. 

This study combined the two research fields of history of emotion and disability history to argue that bodily practices are vital in the shaping of emotions and that differently functioning bodies are socially significant. Using a variety historical sources where disabled people were active agents, the project aimed to analyse how physical disability was experienced, how disability correlated with other social categories such as age, gender and social status, which emotional practices were formative in the experience of disability and which norms were formative for the understanding of disability. 

The project resulted in new knowledge about the lived experience of people with disabilities during the 16th- and 17th centuries and new insights into the emotional practices of the period. The study also highlighted the benefits of combining history of emotion with disability history, thus providing theoretical insight valid for both fields.

The project results are presented in a number of publications visible below under the heading Publications. 

I have also presented my research on these topics in podcasts, available here:

Bildningspodden Anekdot- Empati (Swedish)

Öppna föresläsningar - Vetenskap för vetgiriga (Swedish)

Research and Circuses – a podcast on premodern times nr 24: The religious lives of people with disabilities

An Emotional Landscape of Devotion

An Emotional Landscape of Devotion is my doctoral thesis, in which I explore how the Reformation in Sweden was experienced by 16th century people through an examination of emotional practices. I argue that religious texts such as prayer books, sermon collections and instruction manuals were formative for the religious setting of the 16th century and that the use of these texts would therefore involve emotional practices for the 16th century Christian, thus creating an emotional experience of the Reformation for the Christian who used these texts.

The thesis has shown that religious texts from the early Reformation, ca 1526–1571, were abundantly emotional but that the emotions they would create in the Christian who used them would vary both depending on the type of emotional practice that the texts would entail and depending on when during the period examined the texts were from. There was a greater span of different emotions in the earlier texts examined, while the emotions in the later texts examined were more uniform, thus possibly creating a more forceful emotional experience of the Reformation.

The results of this thesis question the view in previous research that the Reformation in Sweden lead to an intellectualisation of religion. It shows that emotions were central in 16th-century religious experience, which concurs with recent research on the Reformations around Europe, in which the spatial, social, corporal, material and emotional aspects of religious experience in the 16th century have been highlighted.

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • An emotional landscape of devotion

    2019. Mari Eyice, Gabriela Bjarne Larsson, Leif Runefelt.

    Thesis (Doc)

    This thesis explores how the Reformation in Sweden was experienced by 16th century people through an examination of emotional practices. It argues that religious texts such as prayer books, sermon collections and instruction manuals were formative for the religious setting of the 16th century and that the use of these texts would therefore involve emotional practices for the 16thcentury Christian, thus creating an emotional experience of the Reformation for the Christian who used these texts.

    The thesis has shown that religious texts from the early Reformation, ca 1526–1571, were abundantly emotional but that the emotions they would create in the Christian who used them would vary both depending on the type of emotional practice that the texts would entail and depending on when during the period examined the texts were from. There was a greater span of different emotions in the earlier texts examined, while the emotions in the later texts examined were more uniform, thus possibly creating a more forceful emotional experience of the Reformation.

    The results of this thesis question the view in previous research that the Reformation in Sweden lead to an intellectualisation of religion. It shows that emotions were central in 16thcentury religious experience, which concurs with recent research on the Reformations around Europe, in which the spatial, social, corporal, material and emotional aspects of religious experience in the 16th century have been highlighted.

    Read more about An emotional landscape of devotion

Show all publications by Mari Eyice at Stockholm University

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