Brill publishes two new Open Access book series with funding from the European Research Council

Leiden / Boston / Paderborn / Singapore / Beijing - 27 February 2018

In conjunction with the European Research Council (ERC) projects Mediterranean Reconfigurations and Localizing 4000 Years of Cultural History, Brill will publish more than 25 volumes in Gold Open Access in the coming years.

The ERC project Mediterranean Reconfigurations: Intercultural Trade, Commercial Litigation, and Legal Pluralism (15th-19th centuries), led by Professor Wolfgang Kaiser (Sorbonne, Paris) aims to provide a new analysis of historical change in the Mediterranean over the long run (15th-19th centuries). Taking into account the variety of socio-cultural and political forces in the Mediterranean, the researchers concentrate on commercial litigation as the most telling indicator for the intensity and changing modes of inter-cultural trade.

The second ERC project, Localizing 4000 Years of Cultural History. Texts and Scripts from Elephantine Island in Egypt, is led by Professor Verena Lepper of the Egyptian Museum (Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz), and the Free University of Berlin. Elephantine is a small island in the Nile where, since the beginning of the 20th century, thousands of papyri were discovered, including Aramaic papyri from the Jewish community that lived on Elephantine. Although much has been published, dozens of boxes filled with thousands of papyri (approximately 80% of the total discoveries) have never been catalogued, let alone been studied or published.

The monographs, edited volumes and text editions in both series will be peer reviewed, and published in print and online. Brill Open books are discoverable through DOAB and distributed free of charge in Brill's E-book Collections, and through OAPEN and JSTOR.

For more information please contact Hans van der Meij, Director Academic Relations and Publishing Partnerships at Brill, via meij@brill.com.

About Brill
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in  Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Literature & Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Biology, Education, Social Sciences and International Law. With offices in Leiden (NL), Boston (US), Paderborn (GER) Singapore (SG) and Beijing (CN), Brill today publishes over 270 journals and close to 1,400 new books and reference works each year, available in print and online. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. The company's key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For further information, please visit www.brill.com.