CEU, Cultural Heritage Studies Program
visiting faculty
Eszter Spät holds a M.A. degree in Classical Philology and English Literature and Language from Eötvös University, Budapest, and an M.A. degree in Medieval Studies from Central European University, Budapest. She defended her PhD theses at the Central European University in 2009, on the Late Antique roots of Yezidi mythology. Since then she has held research grants from the Hungarian Scientific and Research Fund (OTKA), the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and was a visiting scholar to the University of Heidelberg within the “Ritual Dynamics” (SFB 619) and a visiting research fellow at Käte Hamburger Kolleg (“Dynamics in the History of Religions Between Asia and Europe), Ruhr-University Bochum. She specialized in the Yezidi religion, its ongoing transformation and its role in idenity formation within the framework of modern Iraqi politics. She has been carrying out regular fieldwork in Northern Iraq since 2002 with the help of several research grants and has also worked there as a war correspondent.
Her publications, beside numerous articles, include two books, The Yezidis (Saqi, 2005) and Late Antique Motifs in Yezidi Oral Tradition (Gorgias, 2010). She also made the anthroplogical movie, „Following the Peacock” on Yezidi ritual life.
Courses in CHSP:
Religious Heritage, Endangered Minorities and Changing Ritual Practices in the Middle East (2016/17)
