At the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz the position of a doctoral researcher (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter/in)(salary scheme13TV-L, 65%) is to be filled by 01.05.2021 (or as soon as possible thereafter) for a period of three years.

The position is situated within the project “Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society: Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic (ca. 850-1550)” (MAMEMS), which is funded by a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). MAMEMS constitutes the first comprehensive examination of the monastic communities of Mount Athos as independent actors in medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society. This “monastic republic” was intimately connected with the Byzantine Empire, the various Orthodox principalities of the Balkans and Caucasus, South Italy, as well with the Ottoman Empire. By taking advantage of considerable advances in subfields like prosopography, analyzing and making available a set of sources (lists of commemoration) that are either poorly studied or unedited, and by bringing together an interdisciplinary team (a Byzantinist, Slavicist and Kartvelologist) under the direction of the Principal Investigator (Dr. Zachary Chitwood), MAMEMS will transform the way the Holy Mountain is viewed within scholarship and the general public via a triad of leitmotifs: wealth, ethnicity and gender (WEG). The exploration of these topics is undergirded by the creation of a prosopographical database, Prosopographica Athonica, built with OpenAtlas and containing entries for every monk to have resided on the Holy Mountain, every Athonite benefactor and every person to have visited there from ca. 850 to 1550, that is from the time of the first surviving documents in the Athonite archives until the founding of the last of the major Athonite houses, Stavronikita. This database will finally allow a concrete analysis of how medieval Mount Athos was embedded within wider networks of economic interests, church leadership, intellectual exchange and patronage.

Duties

• Participating in the creation of a prosopographical database, which is to encompass all documented benefactors, monks and visitors associated with the Holy Mountain.
• The researching and writing of a dissertation on a list of commemoration from an Athonite monastery under the joint supervision of Dr. Zachary Chitwood (primary advisor) and Prof. Johannes Pahlitzsch (secondary advisory).
• Regular participation in project events, including regular meetings every two weeks and three major international workshops.

Requirements

• An outstanding master’s thesis in Byzantine Studies, Classics, Medieval Studies or a related field.
• Reading knowledge of medieval Greek; knowledge of further project-relevant languages (Modern Greek, Rumanian, Slavic languages) is advantageous. Experience in interdisciplinary work.
• Oral proficiency in English or German.