Following on from a successful round of applications last academic year, PhD candidates from the department have again been awarded three Marietta Blau Grants. These are given by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research to excellent PhD scholars at Austrian universities. Samuel Beňa, Julia Boechat Machado, and Osman Yüksel Özdemir will all be enriching their doctoral research elsewhere in Europe this academic year.
Samuel Beňa’s dissertation is titled War and State Formation in Late Medieval Bohemia: The Reign of George of Poděbrady (r. 1458–1471). The core aim of his research is to test the so-called bellicist model of historical state formation in the late medieval Bohemian context. Samuel will spend his grant period in Prague (Czech Republic) at the Center for Medieval Studies.
Julia Boechat Machado is currently writing her dissertation, Editing Tamizdat: The Cold War Politics of Paratext, Copyright and Book Piracy. She studies the work of three publishing houses engaging in Tamizdat, the publishing of books outside of the Soviet Union so they could be smuggled there. Julia divided her grant in order to have research stays in two different Book History departments, first in Lund University, Sweden, and then in Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.
Osman Yüksel Özdemir's dissertation title is From Bible to Story Worlds: A Comparative Narratological Approach to Romanos the Melodist and Jacob of Serugh. The dissertation compares the narrative strategies of these two Late Antique liturgical poets based on case studies. Osman will spend his grant stay at Uppsala University (Sweden) under the guidance of Prof. Ingela Nilsson.
We wish all three recipents a rewarding and fruitful period of study!
Image taken by Eloise Adde, showing the Golden Lane in Prague