This research project involves the international comparison of different capital cities to study the place and role of political power and global urban governance in the creation, making and development of capital cities as well as the impacts of grassroots claims and demands about urban and environmental design on these political processes. The following questions will constitute the core of our interrogation: how are the national imaginaries of capital cities forged by the spatial configuration of political symbols? What are the conflictual and/or consensual relationships between different political actors in the conception of capital cities? To what extent could the nature of the political regime have an important impact on this conception with regard to the highly competitive context of planetary urbanization? What are the specific socio-political and economic flows among these countries and how do they in turn influence capital city building? Finally, how is it possible to tackle the interactions between urban design policies and multiple societal and environmental advocacy programs, considering the growing importance of urban democracy in many countries and international agendas? Our main objective is to study, in a comparative manner, the production of capital cities according to three different but interconnected research themes: 1- The spatial imagination and conception of capital cities by national political power, as a symbolic struggle of different political visions. 2- The influence of global urban networks and the circulation of international models in urban development and urban space. 3- The reciprocal impact between urbanisation policies in capital cities and various demands and protests from divergent actors concerning urban spaces and the environment. In order to study these questions, we propose the cases of Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, Abu Dhabi, Nur-Sultan and Cairo. Our choice to focus on these capitals comes from the fact that the countries in which they are located are often present in the studies of international relations in terms of geopolitics, state and diplomatic relations but less in urban studies. The cities of the project are deliberately chosen as being situated in states perceived among an international community as relatively illiberal and non-democratic. We are interested in analysing how authoritarian governments express themselves spatially in the city. The existing scientific literature on this topic has focused primarily on the fixed staging of illiberal political power in political geography and geopolitics, and less has been said on the dynamics between the political regime and city design as well as the lived and perceived spaces in these cities. The main contribution of the project will be the realisation of an international comparison of cities including their diversity, particularities, and also their shared strategies. What interests us is to observe if they are affected by similar political and symbolic processes among various actors, have similar strategies of integration in global urbanism and use similar tools in urban space in order to reflect an image of a strong state at the international level despite their diverse histories, settings and cultures. The major ambition of the project is to delve into unexplored fields/areas of urban studies. We will link our research themes through multiple threads that will follow state actors at both national and local levels, inhabitants in their lived and conceived spaces, urban activist networks and civil society. We will focus on political decision-making places of urbanism as well as on the historical and symbolic development of cities. We will bring together different methods and tools and will use especially filmmaking and photography for each stage of the work, not only as a research method but also as a storytelling medium.

The utilization of Obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, within the Anatolian communities between 8500 and 5000 BC cal. is the core of the project 'ObsidianUs'. Obsidians are found mainly in two regions Central Anatolia (Cappadocia) and Eastern Anatolia (Bingöl, Van Lake) and were transported over hundreds of kilometres the most probably through exchange networks. The mechanical properties of obsidians allow the manufacture of a wide range of objects through different kinds of techniques and methods of knapping and polishing. Objects are therefore mainly, for the periods under study –Neolithic and Chalcolithic-, tools and secondarily, bracelets, pendants and vessels. Obsidian is for archaeologists a key element to study multiple technical practices related to different kind of subsistence or craft activities: harvesting, hunting, butchery, treatment of vegetal and animal materials (bone, antler, skin, hide) and work of different kind of rocks. Obsidian reveals as well social practices: identification of exchange networks, funeral practices and ritual of foundation. Among the main questions, the way in which the communities adopted the raw material, the rhythms and modalities of the adoption depend on the regional diversity in obsidian procurements, in the economies of the villages and in technical traditions. At the present state of the research, chemical analysis on obsidians allow us to identify the roads of diffusion of the raw material but does not to identify the social mechanisms which were behind. Our aim is to identify such mechanisms with the help of a technological approach, to analyse the way in which the ancient communities manufactured and used their lithic tools, to better understand the organization of these communities and their social links. The French Institute of Anatolian Studies of Isatnbul (IFEA) and the Department of Prehistory of the University of Istanbul (partner 1) are associated within this project. The study of the archaeological assemblages (technological and use-wear analysis) is here based on a fundamental research on the mechanisms of wear held by the Laboratory of Tribology and System Dynamics/Centrale Lyon (Partenaire 2). Tribologists and use-wear analysts analyse wear phenomena with complementary methods.

As opposed to studies which analyze the diffusion and circulation of practices, instruments, norms, and forms of knowledge as a stage subsequent to their localized production, the TRANSFAIRE project aims to study symbolic and technical instruments that are produced and reproduced by circulation. Instead of employing the notion of “transfer,” which assumes that there are elements which are allegedly “specific” to each of the regions concerned, our approach focuses on modalities of “trans-action”, and pays close attention to processes of translation and co-production of normative vehicles and of the fabric out of which politics is made. The project focuses on a broadly defined (post-)Ottoman Mediterranean as its main field of inquiry. Our goal is dual in nature: on the one hand, we propose a new approach to connections, concomitances, and interdependencies in which (post-)Ottoman spaces are to be considered an integral part, contrary to studies which limit themselves to considering exchange in terms of one-way diffusion and importation. On the other hand, we aim to draw up a revised chronology of the modalities of governance and extroversion of the Empire and the Republic, detached from the great rifts which have marked narratives of political history. The TRANSFAIRE project builds upon the results of the ANR-funded research group TRANSTUR in 2008-2012. It brings together 25 scholars from the fields of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, and geography, 9 of them being Istanbul-based. Its priorities are organized along three main axes: 1) The forms of materiality of political objectivization; 2) The analysis of devolutions and normative (re)investment; 3) The challenges and actors of translation. Each of these axes is treated by a small team, whose activities are coordinated by one member, able to work autonomously or as a part of horizontal projects. The general organization is structured around two geographical poles, one in Paris, the other in Istanbul. At each one of the two sites a permanent correspondent, recruited as a postdoctoral research assistant, sees to the organization of the team’s activities and assists the main coordinator, while ensuring the pooling and sharing of activities amongst the team members. Bimonthly seminars ensure coherence and exchange within each “pole.” Yearly work meetings, held in executive session, will allow individual difficulties to be addressed, completed work to be presented, and publishing projects to be discussed by the entire team. Scientific dissemination and visibility will be carried out by multiple methods: academic workshops; an international conference presenting the results of completed research; collaboration with members of the TEPSIS LabEx (EHESS / HESAM), of which the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBAC), the main partner of the current project, is an integral part; public outreach activities; and the creation of an internet site. The TRANSFAIRE project will equally contribute to higher education and training: the seminars will contribute to expanding the offer of academic courses in Paris and Istanbul; graduate workshops will be organized, and presentations for undergraduate students are also planned. In sum, the financial support of the ANR will reinforce an active research network already well in place, and will help promote the formulation of generalizable theoretical ideas. This will be made possible by the broad multidisciplinary background of the team members, as well as their profound knowledge of the historical and geographical themes under discussion. The knowledge produced by this project will equally be of interest to an ever-growing number of scholars, decision-makers, and members of the general public, given the significant transformations of the regional equilibrium in which are engaged the current states of the post-Ottoman space.

The necropoleis and the great tumuli of Pergamon and the Eolian cities of Kyme and Elaia represent a priceless archaeological heritage for understanding the political, social and cultural dynamics in a key region of Hellenistic Asia Minor. They offer a wide range of sociological and historical contexts: on the one hand they provide information on every stratum of the society, from the Attalid princes and the prosperous citizens to the more modest section of the population; on the other hand, the studied area offers a large variety of political, social and cultural situations: the residential city of Pergamon, Kyme (the heart of Eolid, which long remained under the Seleucid control), and Elaia (both an Eolian city and the naval base of Pergamon). This situation gives an ideal background to approach a series of questions that are under discussion in the scholarly milieu: 1. The structure of the society through the funerary practices and behaviors; 2. The transformation of the forms of the urban ideological representations under the influence of the Hellenistic kingship; 3. The cultural impact of the interactions between the capital of the Attalid kingdom and the autonomous poleis; 4. The transformation of local identities and the circulation of ideological models from the Hellenistic Kingdoms in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. Following the most recent research, our aim is to approach the funerary behaviors as a subtle and complex expression of the social, cultural and religious habitus that need to be tackled through new historical problematics and considered through their great diversity, both locally and regionally. In order to renew such approaches one first has to reconsider the archaeological documentation produced since the 1880s and create a collaborative French-German program with the teams already working in this area: the German archaeological mission of Pergamon and the French archaeological mission in Eolid. The project aims at developing a common strategy in order to enhance the exploitation of scientific data by combining the most innovative aspects of French and German research in funerary archaeology. Our goal is to constitute an interdisciplinary French-German team that will be capable of intervening throughout this three-years project based on different sites of the region and that will also be able to develop collaboration with the other Turkish and foreign archaeological missions. The case studies are the urban necropoleis of Elaia and Kyme, as well as the large tumuli of Pergamon and Kyme. A series of common methods will be applied by the main French-German-Turkish team, including but not limited to: - Remote sensing, geophysical and geoseismic survey; - Excavation of strategic areas, chosen after the result of the surveys, in the necropoleis and among the large mounds; - Double program of funerary anthropological studies (archaeo-thanatology and biological anthropology) and archaeometry analyses (physico-chemical and paleo-genetical) on unearthed remains; - Concerted archaeological, epigraphic, iconographic and architectural studies; - Global and joint archaeological and historical processing and interpretation of the achieved results. Fieldwork and laboratory analyzes will be accompanied by an interdisciplinary practical and theoretical training program for French, German, Turkish and foreign PhD students. The collaborative work will result in annual interdisciplinary meetings. The dissemination of the results will be carried out through joint publications of the preliminary reports and monographies, an international colloquium at the end of the program and a specific website dedicated to the ANR/DFG project. The conservation and the long-term presentation of the data will be operated by the iDAI-field system.