Jonas Thorup Thomsen has received funding by the Carlsberg Foundation to go to Oxford as a postdoc researcher. Congratulations!

About the project

In 1770–1830, a media revolution took place in Denmark: Newspapers, libraries, and a lively book trade expanded the reading public and accelerated the circulation of knowledge, but it also segmented the population based on income and social status. Individuals and communities of readers approached different media and had varied reading experiences. The circulation of knowledge potentially expanded horizons in novel ways. The purpose of Jonas Thorup Thomsen’s postdoc project, New Horizons: Reading Culture in the Media Revolution of the Late Enlightenment, is to investigate the societal change and lasting impact of the Enlightenment through the lens of this media revolution. How did different groups of people and individuals read? How did they respond to their meeting with new types of media and literature? Did the circulation of knowledge about the wider world expand horizons and enable tolerance? The project, which is based at the University of Oxford, examines the media revolution on three levels: The overall media environment and its unequal access are charted through newspapers, the book market, and libraries of the period. The media uses of individuals are studied through concrete examples of media use and reading testimonies. The media culture of communities is examined through their reading practices and preferred media.