"Generative Authority" | FWF-START Award 2024

Starting in June, Rachael is working on the presence of GenAut figures in epigraphic sources. Welcome aboard, Rachael!

Rachael is interested in the epigraphy and wider visual culture of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean. Her past work has focused on graffiti, and the placement, distribution, and content of informal inscriptions, in order to reconstruct the behaviours and experiences of past communities.

Rachael completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2023, titled: “Scratch That: A Comparative Approach to Graffiti in the Late Antique Eastern Mediterranean”, for which she received the Rodney Hilton Prize in Medieval Studies. Between 2021 and 2025 Rachael was a team member on “Epigraphies of Pious Travel”, an FWF project examining graffiti associated with pilgrimage in the Byzantine Sphere. As a member of the team, Rachael was responsible for collecting, editing and publishing the Greek graffiti.

Starting in June, Sara will be collaborating with the GenAut team on Ps.-Clementine literature across all languages of the project. Welcome aboard, Sara!

Sara is trained in Philology, Literature and History of Antiquity at Roma Tre University, where she completed her Master’s Degree in 2017 with a thesis in the History of Early Christianity. In July 2023, she completed her PhD at the University of Roma Tre (PhD in Civilizations and Linguistic-Literary Cultures from Antiquity to Modernity, curriculum in Greek and Roman Civilization and Tradition) in co-tutorship with the Université de Fribourg (Faculty of Theology). Her doctoral research focused on the pseudo-Clementine letters Ad Virgines in their Syriac, Coptic, and Greek versions.

She is Lecturer in Greek Literature at the Faculty of Christian and Classical Letters of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome. Her research interests include the history of early Christianity and Syriac studies, with particular attention to pseudo-Clementine literature and gender history.

We’re thrilled to share with you the programme for the 2026 online seminar of the project! This year’s topic is “The Followers of the Apostles in Cultic Contexts,” and the series is curated by our colleague Maria S. Thomas.

Starting on September 1st, Maria is the second researcher to join the GenAut team. She will be working on the Syriac side of the project. Welcome aboard, Maria!

Trained in art history and theology at the Universities of York, Oxford, Salzburg, and VU Amsterdam, Maria is interested in the textual, material, and visual cultures of premodern Syriac Christian communities. Her research broadly focuses on the materiality of texts and writing across media, and on their social, and particularly liturgical, value.

Maria’s doctoral thesis at VU Amsterdam examined the “textual memorials” produced at two Syriac monasteries—the Monastery of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem and the Monastery of Moses in Nebk—between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, analysing how these texts constructed and articulated collective identity and memory.

She serves as the Middle Eastern Studies editor for The Digital Orientalist. Her forthcoming publications include contributions to Visual Culture in Medieval Syriac Traditions (De Gruyter) and Speculations: The Centennial Issue of Speculum.

Maria had already collaborated with the project having given a paper in the online seminar of the project: “Mary Magdalene in Twelfth-Century Syriac Fenqitho Manuscripts from Jerusalem.“

Starting on August 1st, Andy is the first postdoc to join the GenAut team; he will be working mainly on the Armenian side of the project. Welcome aboard!

With research experience in Syriac, Armenian, Greek, Coptic and Arabic Christianity, as well as a background in Egyptology and archaeology, Andy is interested in the interaction between religious and secular traditions in the Eastern Mediterranean and its consequences, positive (intercultural exchange of information and texts, multilingualism and translation) as well as negative (religious debate and polemic).

Andy previously worked in the ERC StG project ‘Reviving the Ascetic Ideal in the Eastern. Mediterranean (969-1375 AD)‘ (PI: Adrian Pirtea) at the Institute for Medieval Research (IMAFO) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He previously held fellowships and positions at the University of Florence, University of Oxford (British Academy Newton International Fellowship), Ghent University, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He currently teaches Coptic at the University of Vienna in the Department of Egyptology, and is co-editor of the book series Eastern Christian Cultures in Contact (Brepols).

Andy and Dan have previously collaborated in preliminary stages of the project, for the project description, and in the long run for the TeTra | Text and Transmission Research Seminar.

A GenAut overview was just published in Early Christianity‘s “New Projects” section:

• Dan Batovici, Andy Hilkens, Mina Monier, and Marion Pragt, “The Followers of the Apostles as Literary Characters, and Paratext,” EC 16.2 (2025) 225-239.

Full program here; 2025 theme: The construction of GenAut characters in relation to the apostles. Recorded papers are available on the GenAut youtube channel.

The 2026 theme, GenAut figures in cultic contexts, is curated by Maria S. Thomas.