MA Students 2016-2018

One-Year MA in Late Antique, Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2017/2018)

Ceren Cikin Sungur | Turkey
Topic at CEU: A Critical Analysis of Sarı Saltuk as a Hero in Saltuknâme
Supvervisor: Günhan Börekçi

Ahmet Cem Durak | Turkey
Topic at CEU: Judaism in Halilname
Supervisors: Günhan Börekçi, Carsten Wilke

Ahmet Cem Durak received his BA in Turkish Language and Literature from Bogazici University. His current research interests include the influence of Judaism on Islamic Ottoman manuscripts, the role of religion in societies, and minorities in the Ottoman Empire. He was an assistant at the global seminar course “Jews and Muslims: The Multi-Ethnic History of Istanbul” at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Olga Kalashnikova | Russian Federation
Topic at CEU: A Preacher, a  Prophet, a Humanist? Reconstructing the Life of Iohannes Milicius
Supervisor: Gabor Klaniczay


Olga Kalashnikova graduated with a BA in History of the Southern and Western Slavs from Moscow State University. In her undergraduate thesis she examined the emergence of the criticism of the Church at the University of Prague from 1348 to 1409, and its role in the formation of Hus’s doctrine. Olga’s current project will be devoted to one of Hus’s predecessors, Iohannes Milicius. Her research interests include manuscript research, Latin and Czech paleography, intellectual and religious history, and comparative text analysis.

Katona Csete | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Co-operation between the Viking Rus’ and the Turkic Nomads of the Steppe in the Ninth-Eleventh Centuries
Supvervisor: Jozsef Laszlovszky

Csete has received his BA and MA in History at the University of Debrecen. He obtained an additional MA in Viking and Medieval Norse Studies from the University of Iceland. Csete is currently working on his PhD at the University of Debrecen. His original research interest, Icelandic sagas, has recently shifted to the relationship between Vikings and the various Eastern Nomadic Turkic tribes between the ninth and eleventh centuries.  His research at CEU will focus on the comparison between the Viking raids and the Magyar incursions in Western Europe.

 

Anna Kinde | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Ambulatories in 14th Century Central European Cathedrals
Supervisor: Bela Zsolt Szakacs

Anna graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University with an MA degree in Art History. Her main topic of interest is medieval architecture in Transylvania. her BA thesis entailed the compilation of a catalogue of the Gothic stone fragments found at the restoration of Oradea Castle. Her MA focused on the twentieth-century restoration history of Saint Michael’s church in Cluj Napoca in which she also catalogued the stone fragments in the lapidarium of the church. In addition to Gothic stone fragments she is also interested in medieval music, early medieval art, Norse mythology and the Icelandic language, albeit the latter is hard to practice in Hungary. Anna’s non-medieval interests include game theory, theoretical linguistics, museum management systems and the theory behind live-action role-playing.

Ivan Kis | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Johannes Aventinus's notes about the reign of Henry III (1039-1056)
Supervisor: Balazs Nagy

Ivan obtained his BA degree in history and archival studies from Eötvös Loránd University Budapest in 2016, where he also took Latin courses in the classical philology department. His BA thesis focused on Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in aecclesia, an important twelfth-century work that contains an interesting description of the ecclesiastical groups of its time. The thesis examined the worldview of the unknown author through his work. Ivan’s current research interests include fifteenth-sixteenth-century Bavarian historian Johannes Aventinus. In his most important work, Annalium Boiorum libri septem, Johannes records information about the history of medieval Hungary, which will be the key elements of Ivan’s MA research.

Gaetano Longo | Italy
Topic at CEU: Ramon Llull, Logician and Philosopher of Interreligious Dialogue
Supervisor: Gyorgy Gereby

Gaetano received his BA in Philosophy at the University of Salerno in 2012 where studied the philosophy of Nietzsche, especially his juvenile work On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense. He has been also an Erasmus student at the Humboldt University in Berlin for a semester, where he translated two German books  and conference papers into Italian. He is currently working on his MA in Philosophy at the University of Salerno, writing about Plato's Parmenides. His CEU thesis will focus on Ramon Llull as a logician and philosopher of interreligious dialogue.

Zoltan Pallag | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Reading the Seuso Hunting Plate: Text, Image and Identity in the Later Roman Empire
Supervisors: Volker Menze, Cristian Gaspar

Zoltán received his BA in Classical Archaeology and Roman Provincial Archaeology from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (ELTE) after his studies at ELTE and University College London. Before his degree he worked as a journalist and editor for fifteen years. His main research interests include various genres of Late Antique visual and material culture, such as mosaics, silver plates, and metalware, as well as the circulation of images across the highly connected world of the Roman and Post-Roman Mediterranean, especially in Late Antique Egypt. He is currently working on the wandering iconography of the Roman picnic in Late Antiquity, the mechanisms by which these compositions were transmitted and their diverse social contexts. He also enjoys inventing true stories.

Juan Rubio Arevalo | Colombia
Topic at CEU: Biblical tropes and salvation history on the preaching and recording of the Second Crusade
Supervisors: Marianne Saghy, Matthias Riedl

Juan obtained his BA in History and Political Science, as well as his MA in History  from University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia. He has taught history both in Colombia and in Mexico. Last year he taught history at Institute of Technology and Superior Studies in Monterrey. His BA thesis focused on the demonization of Muslims, heretics and heathens in Crusader chronicles linked to the First Crusade, the Albigensian Crusade and the Baltic Campaigns. His MA research dealt with the experience of medieval history in videogames.

Samrat Sil | India
Topic at CEU: Witchhunts in West Bengal in a Global Context
Supvervisor: Gabor Klaniczay

Samrat received his BA in History from Presidency University, Kolkata in 2015. His work primarily focused on the influence and wider reconstruction of El Dorado, an early modern colonial conquest in a post-colonial world. Another project in which he was involved focused on exploring the images of the Rape of Nanking and their reception in the West and South Asia. Samrat obtained his MA in Applied and Interdisciplinary History at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg Russia in 2017. His MA thesis focused on the visual imagery of beards in imperial portraits of Byzantine emperors, and its implications in the wider socio- political realm. His work at CEU will deal with concepts of witchcraft in Bengal with a special focus on the persecution of women, as compared with the European grand narrative.

Dorottya Uhrin | Hungary
Topic at CEU: The Cult of Saint Dorothy in Medieval Hungary
Supvervisor: Gabor Klaniczay

Dorottya Uhrin is currently a PhD candidate in Medieval Hungarian History at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Previously, she received her MA in Medieval History (2014) there, as well as BA degrees in History and Religious Studies, and Eastern Languages and Cultures with Mongolian language and Buddhism specialization in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Dorottya also works as the secretary of the Hungarian Association for Hagiographical Studies. Her research focuses on medieval ecclesiastical history and medieval religiosity. Her specific interests are ordeals, the cult of saints, especially the cult of virgin martyrs and the cult of Hungarian saints in Europe.

Two-Year MA in Comparative History: Late Antique, Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Year Two (2016/17-2017/18)

Levente Bajan | Hungary
Topic at CEU: The Transformations of Vrana from the 12th to 14th Centuries: A Comparative Analysis of the Templar and Hospitaller Periods
Supervisors: Katalin Szende, Jozsef Laszlovszky

Levente received a BA in History from the University of South Florida in 2015, where he studied the political relations between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Byzantine Empire in the twelfth century. Continued interests in the economic status of the Crusading States and the Byzantine Empire led him to take part in a GIS Coin Research Project, in which a database was built of coin hordes that were plotted on a map with various details. His current research interests focus on the Templar holdings in the Kingdom of Hungary, and the economic and political roles it had on the local and crusading communities.

Kelsey Brunasso | USA
Topic at CEU: The Archaeology of Extramural Churches in Late Antiquity: Revisiting the Early Christian Basilicas outside Stobi, Macedonia
Supervisors: Jozsef Laszlovszky, Bela Zsolt Szakacs

Kelsey spent the last two years working as an Archivist and Museum Technician with the National Park Service in Sitka, Alaska. Previously, she received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from Wells College and her MLitt in Archaeological Studies from the University of Glasgow. Her previous research explored archaeological theory, specifically the different approaches archaeologists use to study material cultural. Her current research interests include Byzantine archaeology and architecture, the archaeology of buildings, and the application of archaeological theory to the study of medieval architecture. Her thesis at CEU will focus on the role of extramural basilicas in the development of Late Antiquity through the case study of Stobi, Macedonia.

 

Fatma Deniz | Turkey
Topic at CEU: The Use of Space by Sûfîs in Seventeenth-century Istanbul in Light of Seyyid Hasan’s Diary, The Sohbetnâme
Supervisors: Tijana Krstic, Brett Wilson

Fatma Deniz graduated in history, political science and international relations from Istanbul Şehir University. She was involved in the Taha Toros Archieve Project describing Ottoman Turkish documents and assisted an Ottoman Turkish course at the same university. Her research interests include daily life, as well as religious and cultural life in the Ottoman Empire in the early modern era.

Dyese Elliott-Newton | USA
Topic at CEU: TInvading Her Space: The Violent Dismantling of Female ‘Enclosures’ in Shakespearean Comedy
Supervisor: Zsuzsanna Reed

Dyese received her B.A. in English Literature and Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her undergraduate thesis used Shakespearean literature to look at the clash between religious and civil authorities concerning the requisites for valid marriage contracts in Early Modern England. Her current research interests involve looking at the transformation(s) in marriage vows and contracts and gender roles following major religious movements in Europe--particularly the Protestant Reformation.

Tamas Juhasz | Hungary
Topic at CEU: “Let`s Ban Applause!” The Cultural Politics of Music in Ninth and Tenth Century Iraq
Supervisors: Brett Wilson

Tamas obtained his BA in Arabic Studies from Pazmany Peter Catholic University. During his BA studies he was involved in an archaeological excavation in Syria and completed a ten-month Arabic language program at Kuwait University. He is currently taking time out from completing his MA program in Islamic Studies at Eotvos Lorand University Budapest (ELTE). His current research focuses on the sociopolitical changes in eleventh-century Iraq and how these affected the adjudication of music and musicians. 

Chloe Miller | USA
Topic at CEU: Oldcomers and Newcomers: Changes in Medieval-Early Modern Cemetery Formation and Mortuary Practices at the Városfalva Site in Transylvania
Supervisors: Alice M. Choyke, Jozsef Laszlovszky

Chloé graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Archaeology and Anthropology from Dickinson College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania in 2015. In 2014, her interests in bioarchaeology took her to Transylvania, Romania to work on a medieval church site. She returned to Transylvania in 2015 to continue working with the human remains excavated from medieval church sites in the region. Her MA thesis at CEU is a continuation of her work in Transylvania. Chloe's goal is to continue assisting communal Székely archaeological projects and to increase awareness of Central European archaeology within the United States.

Jose Osorio | Peru
Topic at CEU: Alan of Lille’s Concept of Trinitarian Personhood in the Summa Quoniam Homines
Supervisors: Gyorgy Gereby, Istvan Perczel

Jose Osorio was born in Lima, Perú. He received his BA and MA in philosophy from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He was an Erasmus Mundus student at the University of Bologna. Before coming to CEU, he worked as a college professor teaching undergraduate courses on ethics and history of philosophy in Lima. His dissertation will be about Alain de Lille's Trinitarian theology.

Krisztina Peter | Hungary
Topic at CEU: ‘Wie Die Truck Sagt…’ Transmission of News from Print to Manuscript in the Diary of Hermann von Weinsberg
Supervisors: Gerhard Jaritz, Katalin Szende

Krisztina completed her MA degrees in History (2010), Ethnography (2012) and Geography (2013) at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest, and she is currently taking time off from completing her PhD program at ELTE. Her primary research interests lie in the cultural and social history of the sixteenth century, especially in the history of news and pamphleteering. Her current research at CEU will focus on the circulation and transmission of news between print and manuscript. She is also involved in a publication project at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, working with the correspondence of nineteenth-century Hungarian writer and politician József Eötvös.

Ante Vucic | Croatia
Topic at CEU: Christianity in the Territory between the Neretva and Cetina Rivers from the Fifth to the Eleventh Century
Supervisors: Jozsef Laszlovszky, Bela Zsolt Szakacs

Ante Vucic was born in Metkovic in 1987. He finished elementary school in Metkovic and high school in Ploce, Croatia. In 2013 he graduated in History from the Department of  History at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. His fields of interest are late antiquity, the early middle ages, the transformation of Roman world, identity formation in early medieval Europe, and the process of christianization.

Arina Zaytseva | Russia
Topic at CEU: Shaping the literary image of the devil in reformation Germany
Supervisors: Gabor Klaniczay, Gerhard Jaritz

Arina obtained her BA degree in Cultural Studies from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow in 2016. Her BA thesis focused on the literary tradition of the “devil’s lawsuit”, specifically the treatise Processus Satanae contra genus humanum and its reception in late medieval Italy. Arina's research interests include medieval demonology, medieval literature, as well as visual and performing arts.

Year One (2017/18-2018/19)

Eva Bardits | Hungary
Topic at CEU: A Portrait of Christ (Christian Museum, Esztergom, Inv. No. 55.348.)
Supvervisors: Bela Zsolt Szakacs

Eva graduated with a BA in Art History from Eotvos Lorand University in 2017. Formerly she spent a semester at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts studying painting and completed an internship at Varfok Gallery in Budapest in 2016. Her research has dealt with the works of Petrus Christus and Gerard David, especially those in Hungarian collections. Her current research interest remains in early Dutch painting, but might broaden to include other related developments such as the Northern Renaissance and late Gothic Hungarian art.

 

Sofia Bougioukli | Greece
Topic at CEU: Palladas' Epigrams
Supervisor: Floris Bernard

Sofia received her BA in Classics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 2016 and in the same year she attended the 6th International Summer School in Greek Palaeography at Lincoln College, Oxford. She is the co-author of “Κατάλογος Χειρογράφων της Εταιρείας Μακεδονικών Σπουδών”, the catalogue of manuscripts in the library of the Society for Macedonian Studies, forthcoming in Μακεδονικά in 2017. Her academic interests include the literature of Late Antiquity, Greek palaeography, textual criticism and the reception of classical literature in early Christian and Byzantine times. Her research at CEU will focus on the epigrams by Palladas of Alexandria, revisiting major scholarly questions related to this Greek poet and his epigrams.

Karen Gallegos Ceballos | Mexico
Topic at CEU: Labor, Body Changes and Diseases: A Medical and Visual Perspective
Supervisor: Gerhard Jaritz
 
John Kee | USA

Topic: Landscapes of Authority and Danger in 11th-12th Century Byzantine Anatolia
Supervisor: Floris Bernard

John received his BA in Classical Languages and Literatures at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where his interests ranged from Latin Stoicism to Pindar. Those interests have since shifted decisively eastward and later: in addition to learning Syriac at CEU, he is pursuing an MA project on representations of space in Byzantine literature during the time of the arrival of the Turks.


Anna Romsics | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Aspects of Jewish -Christian Relationships and the Topography of Jewish Quarters in Medieval French Cities
Supvervisors: Carsten Wilke, Katalin Szende

Anna received her BA degree at Eötvös Loránd University, with a major in History and minor in Latin. During her BA, she studied the methods of conflict management in French territories in the Early Middle Ages, and Jewish quarters in medieval European cities. Currently, she is doing her MA at CEU, focusing on town history, and as a continuation of her BA thesis, she is looking at the topography of Jewish quarters in medieval France.

Lev Shadrin | Russia
Topic at CEU:’O wondrous and strange mystery’: angelophany of Saint George. Comparative study of four manuscripts
Supervisor: Floris Bernard

Lev Shadrin graduated in art history from Ilya Glazunov Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow. His undergraduate thesis focused on the iconography and imagery of St. George, their development in Byzantine tradition and Russian culture between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. His academic interests include manuscript research; Byzantine paleography, epigraphy and codicology; comparative analysis of late antique and early Christian art; hagiography and cults of warrior saints. He participated in archaeological excavations of Graeco-Scythian settlements at the Belyaus and Kulchuk sites on the Black Sea shore for several seasons.

Jason Snider | USA
Topic at CEU: The Role of the Teutonic Order in King Sigismund's Defense of Hungary
Supvervisors: Jozsef Laszlovszky

Jason M. Snider graduated Summa cum Laude with a B.A. in History, and a minor in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from the State University of New York at Oswego in May 2015. He presented a paper as an undergraduate titled: “Warfare and Prayer: Principles of the Teutonic Order in The Chronicle of Prussia” at the Thirty-Fifth Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum, Plymouth, NH in 2014, and another paper as an undergraduate titled: “The Adoption of Gutsherrschaft in the Medieval Baltic Region” at the Thirty-Sixth Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum, Keane, NH in 2015. In 2014 he received the Mahar Memorial History Award honoring one senior each year in the field of history. He is also a member of Tau Sigma, Phi Alpha Theta, Phi Kappa Phi, and Alpha Sigma Lambda academic honor societies.

Roman Tymoshevskyi | Ukraine
Topic at CEU: The Idea of the State and Social Order in John Gower's Poetic Works
Supervisor: Zsuzsanna Reed

Roman received his BA in History from V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. During his studies he took part in various archeological excavations of ancient and medieval sites in Ukraine. His current research interests lie in the shaping of etchnocultural and national identity in the Late Middle Ages. His proposed research topic at CEU focuses on images of national identity in fourteenth and early fifteenth-century England.

Agota Unger | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Book Production in Late Medieval England: The case of Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.4.24
Supervisor: Zsuzsanna Reed

Agota studied English literature as an undergraduate at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Hungary. Her paper concentrating on the cultural background of Cambridge University Library Dd.4.24, Canterbury Tales manuscript was awarded second place at the conference of the National Scientific Students' Association. Her proposed thesis at CEU, “Book Production in Late Medieval England: The Case of Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.4.24” continues this research with regard to the person of the scribe, the possible commissioner, and codicological details, such as the scribe's possible personal mark. This piece of research, based on archival research, is expected to assist in the mapping of the network of scribes and their practice in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century London.

Armand Zacelici | Albania
Topic at CEU: A Paleographical Study of Byzantine Musical Manuscripts, Fund 488 in Albanian National Archive
Supervisors: Istvan Perczel, Floris Bernard

Armand earned his BA in Music Composition and MA in Musicology from the University of Arts in Tirana, Albania. After graduation he worked at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Arts Studies in Tirana where he conducted research on Albanian urban music. His research interests rest mainly in the historical study of urban musical tradition in Central Albania. Armand’s MA project at CEU focuses on a musicological and paleographical approach to Byzantine musical manuscripts in the Central State Archive of Albania. In the future Armand intends to gain more insight into the cultural-historical context of the intersection of music and religion.

Erasmus 2017-18

Julian Hallmann | Germany
Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany

Julian obtained his BEd degree in German and History at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität of Mainz in 2016. His main research project was about Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg, and his achievements in paving the way for Brandenburg to rise to the Kingdom of Prussia. Among others, Julian also conducted research into Emperor Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices, and his latest project discussed the Jews in the Ptolemaic Empire.

Friedrich Asschenfeldt | Germany
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munich, Germany
Topic of Research: Jewish medieval history; The Peasant's Private Plot in the USSR 1933-1941

František Brázda | Czech Republic
Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

František’s bachelor degree thesis was entitled Comparing the Concept of the Freedom of Religion and Tolerance: The Edict of Nantes, Letter of Majesty and Patent of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Although the relationship between state and church and the process of secularization in Europe remains one of his main interests, František will focus on cognitive science about religion in his forthcoming studies.

Valentino Piccolo | Italy
University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, Italy

Valentino obtained a three-year degree in Archeology and Art History at the University of Naples Federico II, with a thesis on the circulation of Cultural Heritage abroad. He is presently working on his master’s thesis about nineteenth-century Neapolitan sculptor Tommaso Solari. Valentino is a member of the Youth Committee of the Italian National Commission for UNESCO, whose central theme (UNESCO and its mission) will be the subject of his studies on the legal and cultural protection of the cultural heritage of Europe and the world.