Notre Dame hosts two Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellows in Medieval Studies

For the 2023–25 academic years, the University of Notre Dame will, impressively, host two Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellows in Medieval Studies. 

The Medieval Institute is joined by Dr. Manolis Ulbricht, who earned his Ph.D. in Byzantine Studies from the Free University in Berlin and who carries out his work at the Georg August University in Göttingen. During his time at the institute, Dr. Ulbricht will study Qur’anic and anti-Islamic texts from the Byzantine world.

His project, "Documenta Coranica Byzantina (DoCoByz). Byzantino-Islamica in the Age of Digital Humanities," will trace the exact transmission lines of the Greek translation(s) of the Qur’an (Testimonia Coranica Christiana) in order to document their reception and (re)use within Greek-Orthodox polemics (Episteme Islamica Orthodoxa), and to distill diachronically the common topoi and stereotypes of anti-Islamic argumentations and synchronously comparing them with the pre-13th century Latin polemics (Traditio Islamica Medievalis). The project is based on a genuine interdisciplinary approach: it combines Greek, Latin, and Arabic philologies with historical, paleographical and theological work as well as methods of digital humanities.

Italian Studies is hosting Dr. Giovanna Corazza, who holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Medieval Italian Literature and Dante Studies from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, where she actively pursues her research. Dr. Corazza's primary interests lie in the exploration of forms, sources, and rhetorical elaborations of geographical knowledge in early Italian literature from the 14th century to the Renaissance. Her scholarly contributions include publications in esteemed international journals such as L’Alighieri, Studi Petrarcheschi, Dante Studies, and Tenzone.

Dr. Corazza is presently engaged in the GEODETIC-Geography and Cartography in Dante’s Comedy project (2023-2026), supported by a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship under the EU HORIZON Europe for Research and Innovation Programme 2021–2027. The project aims to explore Dante's poem and its unparalleled geographical awareness, offering a groundbreaking perspective on the renewed connection with the environment, characteristic of the urban culture of Dante's era. Dr. Corazza's research will be conducted at Ca’ Foscari University-Department of Humanities, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Padua-Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World.

The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral Fellowships support research by European scholars conducted both in and outside of the EU or associated countries. The fellowship runs two to three years, with one to two years of work spent outside the EU and a year spent inside. 

Material on Dr. Corazza originally published at dante.nd.edu on February 22, 2024.