Researchers
Michael Dunn
is Professor of General Linguistics at Uppsala University. He has a background in linguistic typology and in language description in Siberia and Melanesia. His current research investigates languages, language structure, and linguistic artefacts (conventional texts) from an evolutionary perspective, using computational models to investigate questions about the transmission of culturally learned systems. He leads a small group of researchers in Uppsala running a research project on the network transmission of text traditions—including manuscripts, oral liturgy, and runic calendars—and another on long term processes of linguistic convergence on Gotland.
Book, Performance & Writing Culture
2021-2024
UU
email
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has a PhD in theology (Aarhus 2014) and was a postdoctoral fellow in Uppsala (2016-17) with a project on the performance and participation in early Byzantine liturgical texts, funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and undertaken within the frame of the research network “Text and Narrative in Byzantium”. He has published several articles on the topic, presented his work at international conferences, and also organized a conference on Byzantine hymnography and performance (Uppsala 2017). He is considered an expert on the application of modern narratology to Byzantine texts, especially within the field of hymnography, and was closely involved with the ERC project “Novel Saints” at Gent University as an advisor in narratological theory and method. He is currently teaching religion in Aarhus.
Book, Performance & Writing Culture 2021-2024 UU email
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has a PhD in Oriental Studies from the University of Uppsala, the title of her thesis being “Christian Arabic Versions of Daniel A Comparative Study of Early MSS and Translation Techniques in MSS Sinai Ar. 1 and 2” (2015; published at Brill, 2016). After her defense, she was involved in the German-Israeli Biblia Arabica project which aimed at mapping out and understanding early Arabic Bible material. She is currently active in the project A Christian Bible in a Muslim context, wherein she surveys the use and perception of the Bible in Arabic speaking communities, and a teacher in Eastern Christian Studies at Enskilda Högskolan Stockholm. She has published mainly on Christian Arabic translation practices, the formation of a biblical canon in Arabic tracts, Christian-Jewish interaction under Islam etc. Hjälm’s work on and competence in early Christian Arabic translations will have much to offer the project both from a detailed historical and from a methodological perspective.
Translation & Rewriting 2022-2026 UU email
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Professor in Byzantine literature at the University of Southern Denmark
Co-director of the Centre for Medieval Literature (Odense/ York)
Visiting professor at Uppsala
University is a specialist in Byzantine hagiography, with a focus on in rewriting (metaphrasis), and in Arabic-Greek translations. He has supervised a number of PhD students and has extensive teaching experience. As co-director of the Centre for Medieval Literature (2012-22), he has organized several seminars, workshops, and summer schools. In this connection belongs also his broader research on medieval literature (see his “World literature is trans-imperial…”). Among other major publications are Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization (2002); and “An early anonymous Greek translation of the Qur’ān: The fragments from Niketas Byzantios’ Refutatio and the anonymous Abjuratio” (2010). His linguistic knowledge includes Greek, Latin, Arabic, with some Georgian, Hebrew, and Slavonic.
Translation & Rewriting 2020-2027 SDU email
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has obtained a BA in German Studies (2014) at the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universtity of Munich, an MA in Byzantine Studies (2020), an MA in German Literature (2016) and another MA in Comparative Literature (2017). During her masters, she completed two ERASMUS exchanges at the University of Aarhus (2015) and the University of Crete (2019) as well as a research exchange at the University of Kyoto (2016/17). Her interests lie in the narratological analysis of Byzantine literary texts and a comparative approach to their various parallels in Middle Eastern and ancient and medieval European literature.
Storytelling and Narratology 2020-2025 UU email
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(PhD, Paris 2006; habilitation, Sorbonne 2017) has conducted research on a wide range of anthropological and literary topics in the history of Byzantine culture and is currently teaching at the University of Athens in Greece, after a long tenure at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. He has written a monograph on Byzantine eunuchs (Paris 2014), several studies on Byzantine fictional and hagiographical texts, as well as on the relationship between Constantinople and the provinces; with Nilsson he also co-edited a volume on Byzantine narratology, as well as collaborated with Nilsson and Papaioannou on several studies.
Book, Writing & Performance Culture 2022-2026 SIA email
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Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University Director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (2019-21)
is a specialist in Byzantine literature with a particular focus on issues of literary adaptation, often from a narratological perspective. Her most recent publications include the co-edited volumes Storytelling in Byzantium: Narratological Approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images (2018), Reading the Late Byzantine Romance: A Handbook (2019) and the monograph Writer and Occasion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium: The Authorial Voice of Constantien Manasses (2021). In 2018 Nilsson was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquity, and in 2019 she was awarded the Thureus award from The Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala. She is editor of the series Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia, associate editor of Brill’s Narratological Commentaries to Ancient Texts, and Byzantine Studies editor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies.
Storytelling and Narratology 2020-2027 UU/SRII email
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obtained a BA in History (2008) from Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University, and MA (2011) and Ph.D. (2019) in Medieval Studies from Central European University, (Budapest). He was a guest researcher and research fellow at the University of Oslo (Faculty of Theology and Department of Archeology, Conservation, and History), University of Uppsala (Department of Linguistics and Philology/Section for Greek and Byzantine Studies) and New Europe College: Institute for Advanced Study (Bucharest). Sandro’s primary interest is Late Antique and Byzantine Studies and Caucasian History. His Ph.D. dissertation studied a political and cultural relationship between the Byzantine Empire and Medieval Georgia, particularly the influence of the Byzantine political culture on Georgian kingship. He has published several articles dedicated to the comparative study of the Byzantine and Georgian conceptions of rulership and royal/imperial rhetoric.
Translation & Rewriting 2020-2022 SDU email
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Professor of Byzantine Philology at the University of Crete
specializes on Byzantine literature. He has taught at the Catholic University of America (2000-2005) and at Brown University (2006-2018), and also teaches regularly Byzantine Greek summer schools at Dumbarton Oaks and the Gennadeios library. He has also worked as Nominated Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (Oslo, 2002-2003) and received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2018. His publications include: a monograph on Michael Psellos (Cambridge and New York 2013—revised and updated version: Herakleio 2020); a critical edition and translation of six texts from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes (Cambridge Mass. 2017); a 2-vol. critical edition of Psellos’ letter collection (Berlin and New York 2019); and a multi-authored Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature (Oxford and New York 2021).
Book, Writing & Performance Culture 2020-2027 SIA email
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has studied Byzantine history and literature at the Saint Petersburg State University and at the Ural State Gorky University. She completed her PhD Thesis (Brown University, Classics, 2018) on the history of re-writing and intra-linguistic translation in Greek hagiography during the ninth and tenth centuries. For this work she received scholarships and grants from the Onassis Foundation, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, and Dumbarton Oaks. She has published articles on Ioannes of Sardeis, and the Byzantine theory of metaphrasis, and has reviewed work on Slavonic literature. Together with David Konstan (NYU), she is currently working on the hagiographical dossiers of Sts Barbara and Katherine.
Translation & Rewriting 2021-2026 SIA email
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is completing his Ph.D. (Oslo) on the topic of collaborative face-to-virtual systems for augmenting social processes, knowledge management and dialogue. He has a MA in CS&E (Belgrade) in the domain of distributed computing, encryption and Internet protocols. He held research positions at Umeå University and Queen Mary University of London. As part of the Prismatic Jane Eyre research project (Oxford), he works on close and distant reading (NLP/NLU, stylometric and comparative analyses) of South-Slavic and Russian translations of “Jane Eyre”. He founded and co-leads ChaOS NGO and LitTerra Foundation (digital support of literature, writing, cultural heritage, and digitally under-supported, mainly South-Slavic, languages and dialects). Through them, he organises trans-disciplinary projects involving researchers, writers, and artists in the domain of socially-engaged art, sustainability, culture and ecology.
Book, Writing & Performance Culture 2021-2023 UU email
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(PhD, Oxford 2008) is Research Associate at Oxford University working (since 2015) as cataloguer of the Greek Manuscripts from the Holkham Hall Collection, now at the Bodleian Library. His PhD dissertation is titled Studies in the Three Iambic Canons attributed to John of Damascus: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary and is currently being revised for publication. Skrekas has extensive experience in, and several publications pertaining to, Greek palaeography and codicology as well as the history of the Byzantine sacred song. His project topic will examine trends in Byzantine book culture of the long eleventh century, with an emphasis on hymnography.
Book, Writing & Performance Culture 2021-2023 SIA email
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is specialized in Byzantine studies through Archaeology (PhD Athens 2007) and Philology (PhD Uppsala 2020). She also holds degrees from the University of Athens (BA 1995), the University of Birmingham (MPhil 1998), and the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (DEA 2002). She has held prior academic positions and appointments at the University of Crete, the University of Athens, the University of Cyprus, the Open University of Cyprus and the Hellenic Open University. Myrto’s research explores the notions of space in medieval cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean. Since 2009 she has been publishing on the themes of Byzantine land and water use, medieval settlement, theory of Byzantine settlement and spatial practices, landscape archaeology of art, as well as narratological analyses of Byzantine literary texts from a spatial perspective. She is the author of two books: Byzantine Epirus: A topography of transformation – Settlements of the Seventh-Twelfth Centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece (2012) and Spatial Paths to Holiness – Literary ‘Lived Spaces’ in eleventh-century Byzantine saints’ Lives (forthcoming) and co-editor of From the Human Body to the Universe: Spatialities of Byzantine Culture (with Ingela Nilsson, forthcoming). Her current work is concerned with intercultural affinities and contrasts among perceptions, conceptions and experiences of space by medieval cultures around the Eastern Mediterranean, as expressed in literature, art, and landscape.
Storytelling & Narratology 2020-2023 UU email
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is a Yugoslav Byzantinist. He holds a shared PhD in history from the EHESS in Paris and the University of Belgrade on subjectivity and spatiality in the thirteen-century naratives from Byzantium and Serbia. He was a junior researcher (2015-2019) at the University of Belgrade and a GABAM-ANAMED postdoctoral fellow (2019-2020) at Koç University, Istanbul. His main research interests are narrative, space, and ideology. He participated in activities of the research network “Text and narrative in Byzantium” between Paris and Uppsala. He has written and published on medieval historiography, hagiography, narrative, political agency, spatiality and gender. He has an associate degree in library studies and cultural mediation.
Storytelling & Narratology 2020-2027 UU email
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obtained a Ph.D. in Medieval studies from the Central European University in Budapest in 2015, and another Ph.D. in Religious and Literary History of the Middle Ages from the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas of the University of Oslo (2018). In 2018, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Warsaw, within the ERC Project “The Cult of Saints from its origins to circa AD 700, across the entire Christian world.” The outcome of the project, based at the University of Oxford, is the Online Database of the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity (CSLA). Her revised dissertation from the Central European University, entitled Remembering a Lesser Saint: Irenaeus of Sirmium and his Story in the Medieval East and West, is planned for publication with Routledge. She wrote several articles on the subject of saints, hagiography, and the transmission of ancient literature in the Middle Ages, the latest one in the Bulletin for the Study of Religion (2019). Her experience in working on texts in several languages (including Greek, Latin, Slavonic, and Georgian) is an asset for the project.
Translation and Rewriting 2020-2022 SDU email
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