Georgetown Historian Awarded €10 Million to Solve Enduring Mystery of the Black Death
Dr. Timothy Newfield and an international interdisciplinary team have been awarded a prestigious Synergy Grant from the European Research Council, totaling €10 million to investigate one of history’s most enduring medical mysteries, the uneven spread and impact of the Black Death. This collaborative project brings together historians, paleogeneticists, paleoclimatologists, and other experts from multiple institutions to disaggregate more than 50 plague epidemics and examine what biological, environmental, societal, and climatic variables shaped their course and consequences. By situating epidemics within their cultural, economic, and ecological contexts, the team aims to deepen our understanding of how disease, human behavior, and environment interact, a central concern of the medical humanities.