Meet our team: Christoph Scheerer

Starting on February 1st, Christoph is the third researcher to join the GenAut team. He will be working on the Greek side of the project. Welcome aboard, Christoph!

Christoph studied theology, Renaissance trombone and musicology at the Universities of Tuebingen, Berlin and Trossingen. He found his passion for manuscripts and patristics in 2006 working with Volker Drecoll for the edition of Augustine, Späte Schriften zur Gnadenlehre (CSEL 105). He is also working on editions of the ascetic writings of Nilus of Ancyra, and of the commentary on Isaiah of (Ps.?) Basil (both forthcoming).

His doctoral thesis in Musicology, defended in Trossingen in 2023, focuses on “Die Bedeutung und Verwendung von ₵ in musikschriftlichen Quellen zur Mensuralnotation des 15. bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts”, and examines more than 100 theoretical writings on music about the meaning of the stroke in the sign for tempus imperfectum.

Before joining the GenAut-team in February 2026 to work on the Greek side of the project, Christoph collaborated in several projects of Uta Heil at the University of Vienna, Institut für Christentumsgeschichte: “Formatting European Christianity” (about dogmatic writings on trinity and christology of Fulgentius of Ruspe); “Athanasius Werke III,2. Die Entwicklungen in den Nachfolgestaaten des Römischen Reiches bis zum Symbolum Quicumque”; “The apocryphal Sunday in Late Antiquity”; and “Digital edition of (Ps.-)Athanasius of Alexandria: Expositiones in Psalmos”.

January 20, 2026 by Uncategorized

ERC Consolidator Grant for Dan Batovici

We’re happy to announce that Dan Batovici, the GenAut project’s PI, was awarded an ERC CoG for the complementary project CLAIM | “Secondary Pseudepigraphy.“

Photo credit: Sameer Khan/Fotobuddy.

If the FWF GenAut project “Generative Authority” studies the complex literature where minor figures of early Christianity become main literary characters (in apocrypha or hagiography), the ERC CLAIM project “Secondary Pseudepigraphy” will investigate the literary phenomenon where these figures became authors (of letters, theological tracts, canons, or indeed apocrypha) in the context of ancient practices of authorship.

You can find the press release and the full list of winning projects here: The ERC selects 349 mid-career researchers for €728 million in Consolidator Grants

December 9, 2025 by Uncategorized

Meet our team: 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.“

August 27, 2025 by Uncategorized

Meet our team: Andy Hilkens

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.

July 31, 2025 by Uncategorized

Postdoctoral Researcher in Syriac Studies (4 years)

Join our team! We’re looking for a specialist in Syriac studies who will either hold or is close to obtaining a PhD in a relevant field, and has significant experience in working with Syriac manuscripts. | See the by now expired announcement here.

Deadline: 1 June 2025 | Position available for up to 4 years from 1 August 2025.

April 17, 2025 by Uncategorized

The Followers of the Apostles as Literary Characters

The GenAut Project is focused on the network of late antique and medieval literary works – both apocryphal and hagiographic – with early Christian figures connected to apostles as main characters.

The project is funded through the FWF START 2024 Award for five years (2024-2029) by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), and is hosted at the University of Vienna, in the Institute of Church History, Christian Archaeology and Ecclesiastical Art. | Grant DOI 10.55776/STA214

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“The martyrdom of the blessed bishop and martyr of Christ, Abba Polycarp, the disciple of the apostles, which he suffered on the 29th day of the month of Mechir. In the peace of God. Amen.”

This is the title of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in Coptic as found in Vat. copt. 58, a Bohairic manuscript of the tenth century, emphasising the apostolic connection of the main character. Below can be seen the first page of the work (folio 78r), with the superscript title at the top:

November 11, 2024 by Uncategorized