Building on the community of COPIUS, this project aimed to create a transdisciplinary network exceeding traditional disciplinary boundaries and utilizing digital tools. It was aimed to achieve that through online and hybrid teaching events, strengthening information exchange. The overarching theme was (Uralic) language history, appealing across disciplines due to its connection to speaker community history. Thus, prehistory scholars (e.g. archeologists, geneticists) and those studying genealogically unrelated languages (e.g. Indo-European, Turkic) historically in contact with Uralic languages, are attracted. While no single event was relevant for all disciplines, each was suitable for at least one, designed for broad accessibility. Planned events fell into 3 categories: 1) Winter schools: annual hybrid events with courses and workshops, continuing a tradition since 2013. 2) Language e-learning: courses on less accessible key-languages for diachronic contact studies. 3) Thematic e-learning: courses on key aspects of language history. Both e-learning types were recorded (with student consent and anonymity options) and published online for sustained accessibility to the international scholarly community.
Uralic (Finno-Ugric) studies are a small field, with a small number of scholars covering a wide thematic range, meaning no single department can cover all aspects of our discipline. To give students a view on the diverse research and access to leading scholars in this area, international collaboration is essential. Our discipline was already strongly internationalized, both out of necessity for survival and due to previous strategic partnerships, most recently COPIUS (www.copius.eu). While collaboration within this consortium was strong, it was limited by traditional academic structures subdividing scholarship based on language families. In REMODUS we aimed to transcend these by utilizing existing local co-operations transcending traditional boundaries between disciplines (e.g. Uralic Studies <> Turkology at one university and Uralic Studies <> Indo-European Studies at another) and making the fruits of these accessible to an international audience, i.e. to create a truly holistic network including Uralic language students and scholars, along with those of all relevant related disciplines. The creation of such a network has been greatly facilitated by the digital transformation of recent years.