"Generative Authority" | FWF-START Award 2024The PI was joined in 2025 by two other researchers, and in 2026 by four other researchers to complete the GenAut project team. Several other scholars, however, are associated to the project in various ways. We are indeed keen on collaborating on broader GenAut related topics: if you have suggestions for collaboration please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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Rachael Helen Banes
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.
Email: rachael.banes@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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Sara Giorgetti
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. Sara is collaborating with the GenAut team on a critical edition of the pseudo-Clementine letters Ad Virgines.
Email: giorgettis93@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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Christoph Scheerer
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”.
Email: christoph.scheerer@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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Maria S. Thomas
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 joined the team in September 2025, working on the Syriac side of the project.
Email: mariast29@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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Andy Hilkens
Before joining GenAut in August 2025, Andy was a postdoc 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 was a research associate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. 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.
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 is currently teaching Coptic at the University of Vienna in the Department of Egyptology, and joined the GenAut team to work on the Armenian side of the project.
Email: andy.hilkens@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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Dan Batovici (PI)
Dan is interested broadly in the reception of early Christian literature and manuscript studies. Trained in Classical Philology in Bucharest, he holds a PhD in Religious Studies from KU Leuven, defended in 2015. In 2024 he moved to Vienna, having been awarded the FWF START 2024 Award by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) for the GenAut Project.
Dan is co-host of the Text and Transmission Research Seminar (with Marion, Giorgia, and Andy below), which hosts online papers from current research projects on various manuscript cultures and historical contexts (check out the Youtube channel!), and co-editor of Reviews of Biblical and Early Christian Studies.
Email: danb76@univie.ac.at | ORCID page
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External collaborators
Armine Melkonyan
Armine is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC project “Armenia Entangled: Connectivity and Cultural Encounters in Medieval Eurasia 9th – 14th Centuries (ArmEn)” at the University of Florence. Her research focuses on late antique and medieval Armenian theological and philosophical treatises, biblical commentaries, liturgical texts and manuscripts.
In 2005-2009, she participated in the project “The Diffusion of Neoplatonic Thought and Texts in Ancient and Medieval Armenia: the Work of David the Invincible” (Fonds Nationale Suisse, Université de Genève). She received her Ph.D. in History from Yerevan State University in 2014 with a dissertation on David the Invincible’s Encomium on the Holy Cross and its Commentaries. She is involved in the preparation of the multi-volume “General Catalogue of Armenian Manuscripts” at the Matenadaran – Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, Yerevan.
Email: armine.melkonyan@unifi.it | ORCID page
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Mina Monier
Mina is an Egyptian British scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity. He earned his PhD from King’s College London in New Testament studies. From 2019 to 2022 he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Lausanne, Switzerland, as part of the MARK16 project.
Mina is currently the Director of the MF Lab for Manuscript Studies and Digital Research (MF L-MaSDR), at the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society. MF L-MaSDR is a research lab that aims to provide cutting-edge tools of digital humanities and training to support the study of ancient manuscripts.
Mina and the MF L-MaSDR will collaborate with the GenAut team for the text/manuscript/paratext database of the project.
Email: mina.monier@mf.no | ORCID page
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Giorgia Nicosia
Giorgia is a Post-doctoral researcher at Ghent University. Trained as a Classicist, she obtained her PhD in History and Oriental Civilizations from Ghent University and the École pratique des hautes études (Paris), with a thesis on Syro-Orthodox historiographical excerpt collections. Her research focuses mainly on the translating strategies of Greek texts into Syriac and on processes of intercultural and interreligious influences.
Currently, she is carrying out the FWO-project: “Setting boundaries. Purity in 4th-9th c. Syriac Christianity and its interreligious context“. The main goal of the project is to analyze (im)purity language and discourses in Syriac sources written in the 4th-9th c., to highlight the specificities of Syriac Christianity vis-à-vis other ancient strands.
Giorgia is collaborating with the GenAut team on Syriac fragments linked to Ignatius of Antioch for an article forthcoming in the Journal of Theological Studies.
Email: giorgia.nicosia@ugent.be | ORCID page
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Marion Pragt
Marion is a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, where she works on marginal annotation in Syriac commentaries on the biblical books of 1-2 Kings. She obtained her PhD from KU Leuven and VU Amsterdam with a thesis on the Syriac reception of Gregory of Nyssa’s Homilies on the Song of Songs.
Her research focuses on the translation and manuscript transmission of late antique texts, practices of authorship, and biblical interpretation in early and eastern Christianity.
Marion has collaborated with the team for a broad overview of the project published in the ‘New Projects’ section of the journal Early Christianity.
Email: marion.pragt@kuleuven.be | ORCID page
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Lara Sels
Lara is a guest professor at the Greek Studies Department of the KU Leuven, where she is responsible for the editorial work on the editions in the Series graeca of the Corpus Christianorum. Graduated as a slavist (1996) and a classicist (1998), she obtained her PhD in East European Languages and Cultures from the University of Ghent (2004).
Her research subjects are the Slavonic reception of Byzantine written culture and palaeoslavistic ecdotics. She is the author of a monograph and several articles on the textual tradition of mediaeval Slavonic translations from Greek, esp. Hexaemeron commentaries, florilegia and erotapokriseis. She is co-promoter of an Innsbruck-Leuven WEAVE project on the Slavonic Metaphrasis of Byzantine Orthodoxy (FWO G0AD124N, 2024-2027).
Lara has been collaborating with the GenAut team for the Ignatian dossier.
Email: lara.sels@kuleuven.be
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Madalina Toca
Trained in Classics (Cluj-Napoca 2009), Madalina holds a PhD in Theology from KU Leuven with a thesis on the epistolary collection of Isidore of Pelusium defended in 2021, which was awarded the J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award 2022 from the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg.
She is currently a Lise-Meitner FWF Fellow in Vienna, working on authorial self-fashioning in late-antique epistolary corpora, having previously held a Saltire Early Career Fellowship in Classics from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for 2022, at the University of Edinburgh (School of History, Classics & Archaeology). In February 2025 Madalina will start a Humboldt Fellowship at the University of Bamberg, working on Greek patristic letters translated in Syriac canonical collections.
Madalina is collaborating with the GenAut team for a critical edition of the Armenian Martyrdom of Polycarp.
Email: madalina.toca@univie.ac.at | ORCID page