Biography

Marie-Louise B. Nosch is Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Copenhagen. She studied history, philology and archaeology at universities in France, Italy and Austria. Together with Ulla Mannering and Eva Andersson Strand, she founded the Center for Textile Research (CTR) in 2005 and was its director until 2016. She has edited and written numerous books and papers on ancient textile technology, terminology, and the organization and administration of textile production in Aegean palace economies. Her research also focuses on clothing and its relation to emotions and memories, both in Homer and women with refugee and migrant backgrounds living in Denmark today. In 2020-2024, Nosch was president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. Nosch is one of the founders of the EuroWeb COST Action.

Project Abstract

Textiles - because of their universality - capture very well the dynamics of time; first as the long historical perspective; then, at the same time, biographies of textiles and the fragility of textiles make us focus on quite short time period; hence the topic of textiles moves us between long-, medium-, and short-term time scales. Time can be perceived in material culture through objects, and textiles capture and condense time, both as memory and as materiality. Two aspects that I especially wish to explore are the biographies of textile objects, and the temporality expressed in clothing and textiles in Homer.

Curriculum vitae

Education

Ph.D. (2000), University of Salzburg

Cand. mag. in history and classical philology (1996), University of Copenhagen

Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (1996), Université Nancy II, France

Maitrise d’historie (1995), Université Nancy II, France

Academic Positions

2020-2024

President, Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters

Since 2017

Professor, SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen

2005-2016

Director: Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre for Textile Research 

2009-2017

Research professor, SAXO Institute, Copenhagen

Selected Publications

2023 (co-author with Caroline Sauvage). “Ancient Loom weights at the J. Paul Getty Museum.” Getty Research Journal 18, 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1086/726883.

2017 (co-author with Lazaros Kolonas, Christina Margariti, Irene Skals, Kalliope Sarri and Ina Vanden Berghe). "Heirs of the Loom. Funerary Textiles from Stamna (Aitolia, Greece). A preliminary analysis.” In Hesperos. The Aegean seen from the West. 16th International Aegean Conference, Ioannina, 18-21 May 2016, edited by Michael Fotiadis, Robert Laffineur, Yannos Lolos and Andreas Vlachopoulos, 533-544. Leuven: Peeters.

2016 (co-editor with Giovanni Fanfani and Mary Harlow). Spinning Fates and the Song of the Loom: The Use of Textiles, Clothing and Cloth Production as Metaphor, Symbol and Narrative Device in Greek and Latin Literature. Ancient Textiles Series 24. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

2014 (co-author with Mary Harlow). “Weaving the Threads: methodologies in textile and dress research for the Greek and Roman World - the state of the art and the case for cross-disciplinarity.” In Greek and Roman Textiles and Dress: An Interdisciplinary Anthology, edited by Mary Harlow and Marie-Louise Nosch, 1-33. Oxford: Oxbow Books. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh1dh8b.5.

2014. “Mycenaean Wool Economies in the Latter Part of the 2nd Millennium BC Aegean.” In Wool Economy in the Ancient Near East and the Aegean: From the Beginnings of Sheep Husbandry to Institutional Textile Industry, edited by Catherine Breniquet and Cécile Michel, 371-400. Oxford: Oxbow Books. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1djjn.23.