Eylül Cetinbas | Turkey
Topic at CEU: A Bride of Christ and an Intercessor of Muhammad: Comparative Saints Cults of St Catherine and Rabia of Basra
Supervisors: Gabor Klaniczay, Günhan Börekci

Eylül received her BA in English Language and Literature from Hacettepe University in 2016 and went on to complete her first MA at Bilkent University in 2019 where she examined the cult of St. Catherine of Alexandria in late medieval Scotland. At CEU, she will broaden this topic by studying cross-cultural and interreligious exchanges, and the manifestations of saints’ cults between the Christian and Muslim communities. Her comparative case study on female saints will focus on the Christian St. Catherine of Alexandria and the Muslim Rabia of Basra. Eylül’s research interests lie in the cults of saints, religion in late medieval Scotland, comparative religion and theology, interreligious dialogue, mysticism, historical theology, and Quranic exegesis (tafsir). 

Mónika Gácsi | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Looking at the Past through Medieval Glass
Supervisors: József Laszlovszky, Alice M. Choyke

Mónika Gácsi has received her BA and MA in Archeology at the Eötvös Loránd University. Her main interest is medieval glass, as well as glass workshops in Hungary and in Central Europe. Her BA thesis focused on medieval and early modern glass findings from two excavations in Szécsény, and her MA thesis was a comprehensive catalogue of medieval and early modern glass artefacts found at the castles of Regéc and Sárospatak.

Katrine Mira Sand Kristensen | Denmark
Topic at CEU: Jewish Neoplatonist Texts, 850-1150
Supervisors: György Gereby, Carsten Wilke

Katrine obtained her BA and MA degrees in Hebrew and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Copenhagen. While her BA thesis focused on early Hasidism, her subsequent MA investigated the concept of divine creation in the thought of the North African Jewish Neoplatonist, Isaac Israeli. Currently, her research interests include Judeo-Arabic philosophical and religious literature, medieval Neoplatonism and interreligious relations.

Merve Savas | Turkey
Topic at CEU: Sociopolitical Aspects of "Ordinary People" in Late Antiqueity and the Early Byzantine Period, Unrest in Society
Supervisors: Baukje van den Berg, Volker Menze

Merve obtained her undergraduate degree in EU Studies and Sociology at Istanbul Bilgi University in 2015, and holds a master’s degree in History from Boğaziçi University. She completed her MA thesis entitled People and Politics in Eleventh-Century Constantinople, 1025-1081 in 2019. Her research interests lie primarily in the political participation of people and subversive popular practices in Byzantine history.

Petra Vrucina | Croatia
Topic at CEU: The Role of Sacred Trust in Raising Income: Administering Zagreb Cathedral Chapter Estates in the 14-15th Century
Supervisors: Katalin Szende, Balázs Nagy

Petra graduated in history at the Department of Croatian Studies of the University of Zagreb in 2018. During her MA studies in Zagreb, she took part in the activities organized by the student’s association of history, also acting as a president for some time. She spent one semester at the Université-Paris Sorbonne (Paris IV) as an Erasmus Exchange student. Her research focuses on the institutional and economic late-medieval history of Zagreb cathedral chapter. Examining the functioning of a complex economic system in late medieval Slavonia, her MA thesis will address the role of “sacred trust” in the administration of the Zagreb chapter’s income in the fifteenth century. Petra is also enrolled in the PhD program at the University of Zadar working on her dissertation Landholding Economy on the Example of Zagreb Cathedral Chapter Estates in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth century (provisional title), which she will resume after finishing her studies at CEU.

Antonia-Oana Avram | Romania
Topic at CEU: The role of travel literature collectors in 16th century: ideologies, knowledge and the construction of otherness
Supervisor: Marcell Sebok, Gerhard Jaritz

Antonia-Oana received her BA in History at the University of Bucharest in 2018, where her undergraduate thesis studied the construction of national identity in Elizabethan England in the works of English promoters of colonization. At CEU she will study perceptions as a historical problem focusing on the ways in which fifteenth-century European travel accounts about the Levant played a role in creating and disseminating national stereotypes and identities. Her current research interests revolve around the history of ideas, intellectual history, power relations, travel literature and cartography in the Early Modern period.

Artyom Kachurin | Russia
Topic at CEU: Implications of post-structuralist concepts of discourse and knowledge in medievalist historiography
Supervisors: Carsten Wilke, Nenad Miscevic

Michal Machalski | Poland
Topic at CEU: Concepts of Fidelity in the Earliest Central European Historiography: A Comparative Study in the Mentalities of Regional Elites
Supervisors: Balazs Nagy, Katalin Szende

Michał received his BA in History at the University of Wrocław. His undergraduate thesis focused on depiction of fidelity in Gallus Anonymus’s Gesta principum Polonorum. During his studies he participated in an international research project “Constantinople-Kucukcekmece: The Destination Port of the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks, a Centre of “Byzantinization” of the Rus’ Community,” organized by the Polish Academy of Sciences. His main research interest remains in Central European narrative sources and in the way they reflect the cultural and social development of the region. At CEU Michał will focus on the mentalities and political imagination of Central European elites by examining concepts of fidelity depicted in the earliest surviving Polish, Bohemian and Hungarian narrative sources.

Iskander Rocha Parker | Mexico
Topic at CEU: Comparative analysis between Lodovico Lazzarelli’s version and Marsilio Ficino’s version of the Corpus Hermeticum
Supervisor: Endre Gyorgy Szonyi

Iskander obtained his BA in Classic Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), completing a thesis about The Hermetic Celestial World in De Vita Coelitus Comparanda. He actively participated in the International Congress of Philosophy in Mexico organised by the Mexican Association of Philosophy, presenting his research on the Liber Alchimiae.  Before his studies at CEU, he taught Spanish and Latin language and literature in a secondary school. Iskander’s main research interests include Hermetism and its reception during the Renaissance.

Halit Serkan Simen | Turkey
Topic at CEU: The Changing Power Relations in the Late Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: Transformation of the Patrimonial Empire and the Network Analysis of the Pasha-households
Supervisor: Günhan Börekçi

Serkan obtained his BA degree in History from Middle East Technical University (METU). His field of interest lies in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ottoman history, focusing on the network and power relations of pasha households and the transformation of the patrimonial structure of the Empire. As an undergraduate, he examined the “Decline Paradigm” in the context of the advice literature, which emerged during the General Crisis of the seventeenth century. Serkan’s current research focuses on the competition of elite pasha households between 1580 and 1594 and the role of appointment (tevcihat) as a tool for the consolidation of power. His other interests include military history, Ottoman historiography, ideology and imperial institutionalization, foundation period of the state and Anatolian civilizations in antiquity.

Cevat Sucu | Turkey
Topic at CEU: Aceb’ul-Üccab and its Students: Occultism as a Science among the 15th Century Ottoman Literary Circles
Supervisor: Tijana Krstic, Günhan Börekci

Cevat Sucu received his BA in History from Middle East Technical University. He completed his MA from Bilkent University, Turkish Literature Department with the thesis entitled “Making a Cosmopolitan Model in Rum: Ahmed-i Dai and 15th Century Ottoman Textual Culture”. He currently focuses on the occult sciences, encyclopedic culture, and the learning of littérateurs in the late medieval and early modern Ottoman and Islamic world.

Lili Toth | Hungary
Topic at CEU: The Painted Textile from Riggisberg Against the Background of Hellenistic Judeo-Christian Art
Supervisor: Bela Zsolt Szakacs, Gyorgy Gereby

Lili obtained her BA degree in art history and religious studies at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. Her research focused on a Late Antique painted textile artifact decorated with Old Testament scenes. She spent a semester in the University of Florence in 2016, and in 2018 she worked as a research assistant with the International Archeological Institute of Tel Aviv University. She participated in the 2018 CEU Undergraduate Conference in History. Her research interests include the iconography and the common roots of the Classical, Jewish and early Christian art. Her research at CEU will focus on how Roman iconography influenced Hellenistic Jewish and ancient Christian artistic language. She is interested in the study of ancient and modern languages and she is a member of an art colony as a practicing artist.

Jordan Voltz | USA
Topic at CEU: Medieval Hungary and Modern Memory: The Politics of Tragic National Narratives Hypothesis
Supervisors: Gabor Klaniczay, Marcell Sebok

Aleksandar Andjelovic | Serbia
Topic at CEU: Spiritual Terminology in the Latin Letters Attributed to Saint Anthony
Supervisors: Cristian-Nicolae Gaspar, György Geréby

Aleksandar holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Belgrade, from 2016 and 2018 respectively. For his BA degree, he translated parts of Macrobius’s Saturnalia and Ovidius’s Fasti concerning ancient Roman religion in the classical period and Late Antiquity. At the MA level his thesis, Dictys Cretensis and the Trojan War in John Malalas’s Chronographia, focused mainly on John Malalas and the reception of the classical myth of the Trojan War in Early Byzantine historiography. Aleksandar studied Modern Greek in Athens and Thessaloniki, and actively participated in regional conferences in Ljubljana (Slovenia), Skopje (North Macedonia) and Zadar (Croatia). His main interest is Greek spiritual terminology during Late Antiquity/Early Byzantium, influence of the Scripture on Byzantine Literature and Early Medieval Greek language in general.

Ágnes Font | Hungary
Topic at CEU: Medieval Bone Working in Buda
Supervisors: Alice M. Choyke, Katalin Szende

Ágnes received her bachelor’s degree in Medieval and Classical Archaeology at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. During her MA studies at ELTE, she specialized in archaeozoology. Before commencing her studies at CEU, she worked on archaeological projects in France, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary. In addition to archaeozoology, her current academic interests include medieval bone, antler and ivory working, medieval topography and urbanization, connection between workshops, and medieval handcrafts in general. She also likes flowers.

Sebastian Krasnovsky | Slovakia
Topic at CEU: Satire and lampoon in the works of humanist authors from modern day Slovakia
Supervisor: Marcell Sebők

Sebastian received his MA degree in Archival Studies and Auxiliary Sciences of History from Comenius University Bratislava. He is also a proud alumnus of Accademia Vivarium Novum in Italy. His research interests lie in medieval and early modern Central Europe, focusing on intellectual and cultural history, reception of classical culture, and relations with Western humanism. He is also interested in archival science and linguistics in general.

Glenn Mills | UK
Topic at CEU: Christianity's Legalistic Voice: The Intersection between Law and Theology in the Late Roman Empire
Supervisors: György Geréby, Volker Menze

Glenn began his academic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, where he embarked on an MA (Hons) in English Literature and Medieval History, graduating in 2019. His literary studies encompassed medieval romance, Older Scots and early Tudor writing, while his historical interests lie in late antique religious and legal history. He was the editor of the student-led St Andrews Historical Journal and has completed research assistantships with the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research and the Medieval and Renaissance Research Group. Beyond this, he has been involved in conservation and heritage projects, fundraising and educational quality review.

Vania Buso | Italy
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Topic of MA: Family structures in early Merovingian Burgundy

Vania completed her BA in History at the University of York (UK) specializing in Merovingian Gaul. The title of her dissertation was Food, Seclusion and Royalty: Portrayals of Authority in the Lives of St Radegund. Currently she is an MA student at Ca' Foscari University of Venice in Storia dal Medioevo all'Età Contemporanea. Her thesis focuses on family structures in early Merovingian Burgundy. Besides the Early Middle Ages, especially gender and kinship in the sixth-seventh-century Merovingian period, Vania is also interested in the field of Digital Humanities and Public History.