Two or more European cultures meet whenever a king or prince takes a bride from another country. She often speaks a different language to that of her new court, professes a different version of Christianity, and has been brought up in a different court culture. In order to investigate the role of foreign consorts as agents, instruments or catalysts of cultural transfer, a team of scholars from the UK, Germany, Poland and Sweden will work on a number of transnational case studies, covering the period 1500 to 1800. The Polish Principal Investigator, dr hab. Almut Bues, will research the Polish princesses Zofia Jagiellonka, who married Heinrich II, Duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel in 1556 and her sister Katarzyna Jagiellonka, who married Duke Johan of Finland (later Johan III, King of Sweden) in 1562. The Polish part of the project will result in, inter alia, an exhibition organised in cooperation with the Museum of Polish History and a learning module for schools in Krakow.
More information on this research project can be found here.