head of the Center

prof. Ivan Foletti, docteur ès Lettres

Professor at the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Head of Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication and Hans Belting Library
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Ivan Foletti (MA in Art History, University of Lausanne; PhD in Art History, University of Lausanne; Habilitation in Art History, Masaryk University) is an art historian specializing in the study of historiography of Byzantine art and the art of Milan, Rome and Constantinople in the late antique and early medieval period. More specifically, he studies early Christian monuments from the liturgical and ritual point of view. In addition, he is interested in using social and anthropological approaches to explore the impact of the period of migrations on art in the Mediterranean area. Ivan is currently a Professor of Art History at Masaryk University, where he teaches courses on medieval art (Byzantium, West, Islam). He is the head of the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication in Brno, editor-in-chief of the international peer-reviewed journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014–) and director of the Hans Belting Library. He is also director of three Editorial collections Studia Artium Mediaevalium Brunensia (Rome 2013–), Parva Convivia (Brno 2016–) and Convivia (Brno, Rome 2017–). He taught as invited professor at the universities of Fribourg, Lausanne, Naples, Padua, Poitiers, Prague and Venice, and he was also a fellow at the Swiss Institute in Rome, at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte – Bibliotheca Hertziana, and at the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin. Ivan directed the Swiss national found Ambizione project (2013-2017), “Les morts et leurs corps comme lieu d’éthno-agrégation et de contacte: la cas d’Ambroise, de Gervais et de Protais au haut Moyen Âge,” dedicated to the interaction between objects, relics and migrants in Milan and Lombardy in 4-10th century and the experimental project “Migrating Art Historians” (2017, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University). Currently, he is directing the project “Transforming the Spaces and the Minds. Materiality, Performativity and Perception in the Late Antique (4th–6th century) Baptismal Zones” (2017-2019, Grant Agency of Masaryk University). Ivan has published over 20 articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Arte Lombarda, Convivium, Kunstchronik, Perspective, and Zeitschrift für Kunsgeschichte. He is the author of 3 monographs: Da Bisanzio alla Santa Russia, Rome 2011 (English translation in 2017), with Manuela Gianadrea; Zona Liminare. Il nartece di Santa Sabina, le sue porte e l’iniziazione cristiana, Rome 2015; and the forthcoming Oggetti, reliquie e migranti La basilica Ambrosiana e il culto dei suoi santi. Moreover, he is the editor of some 24 conference proceedings and collective monographs.

foletti@phil.muni.cz

Ivan Foletti
staff academic positions

Alžběta Filipová, M.A., Ph.D.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Alžběta studied art history and French at the University of Lausanne. She obtained her PhD in 2017 with a dissertation, co-tutored with Masaryk University, entitled Milan sans frontières, Le culte et la circulation des reliques ambrosiennes, l’art et l’architecture (IVe–VIe siècle), which later became her first published monograph. Within the scope of her post-doctoral project From Alexander III to Stalin: the History of Georgian Precious Arts as an Instrument of Marginalization and of Power, financed by the Swiss National Fund, she spent nearly two years at Tbilisi State University. Within the framework of the Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellowship, she is currently elaborating a reserch project entitled Demarginalizing Medieval Georgia: History of Art History between Colonial Perspective and Nationalist Appropriation (1921–1991), which focuses on the twentieth-century historiography of medieval Georgian art and architecture. This project involves a comparative analysis of relevant contradictory narratives (Russian, Georgian, and ‘Western’). Its objective is to unveil the mechanisms linking national and supranational ideologies and politics with discourse on the past, ultimately stimulating discussions about cultural heritage within the context of intellectual decolonization. In her research and publications, Alžběta thus concentrates on one hand on the art and culture of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages in the Mediterranean and Eastern Christian countries. She is mainly concerned with questions on the cult of relics, pilgrimage and the diffusion and circulation of iconographic and architectural models. On the other hand, she has been interested in the historiography of art history and the links between historical sciences and politics in Europe, Russia, and the Caucasus, with a special emphasis on Georgia.

alzbeta.filipova@gmail.com

Alžběta Filipová

research fellow

Karolina Foletti, M.A.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Karolina studied History, Russian language and literature, and Art History at the University of Lausanne, and the History of Eastern Europe at the University of Vienna, where she obtained her master’s degree with a thesis on The Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Russia’s Self-Perception. Her current doctoral research is focused on phenomena related to Russian interwar emigration to Europe. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Karolina works as an executive editor of the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean. In 2017, she was part of the Migrating Art Historians team. Currently, she is participating in the project Potential of Emigration. Contribution of (not only) Russian Émigrés to the Interwar Europe, supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic.

karolina.foletti@gmail.com

Karolina Foletti

research fellow

Mgr. Zuzana Frantová, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Zuzana studied Art History at the Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University in Brno. In 2017, she obtained a PhD with the thesis “Ravenna: Sedes Imperii (402–476). Artistic Trajectories in the Late Antique Mediterranean,” co-tutored with the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 2013, Zuzana has worked as an executive editor of the journal Convivium, Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of the Premodern World and has taught various courses on medieval art in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, MU. In her research she focuses on the art of the early Middle Ages in the Mediterranean. She is particularly interested in glass, ivory and goldsmith production and their relationship to liturgy.

zuzana.frantova@mail.muni.cz

Zuzana Frantová

assistant professor

doc. Mgr. et Mgr. Markéta Kulhánková, Ph.D.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Markéta is Associate Professor in Classical Philology, specializing in Byzantine literature. Since 2007, she was affiliated with the Department of Classical Studies at Masaryk University where she taught Byzantine and early Modern Greek literature, theory of literature and Modern Greek language and culture. In 2022, she joined the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, where she offers her philological expertise in various projects related to Byzantine culture. She is also employed at the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses mainly on Byzantine narrative, both in verse and in prose. She published a monograph offering a narratological analysis of the early Byzantine edifying story (Das gottgefällige Abenteuer, 2015) and she currently prepares a book-length narratological commentary on the Digenis Akritis poem (version G). She is also interested in the reception of Byzantium in modern culture and translates Byzantine and Modern Greek literature into Czech.

mkulhanko@phil.muni.cz

Markéta Kulhánková

research fellow

Adrien Palladino, M.A., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor, Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Following studies at the universities of Lausanne, Fribourg, and Brno, Adrien Palladino is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication. He has been part of the Centre’s team since 2014. His interests include the history of art history and image theory, as well as new approaches in the study of late antique and medieval material cultures. His main research foci are understanding the emergence of new media and technologies of devotion in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. His PhD dissertation, soon to be published as a research monograph, is dedicated to boxes with Christian imagery made around the Mediterranean basin from the fourth to the sixth centuries. He aims to place these artefacts, reliquaries and others, into a broad historiographical, historical, and art historical framework. The goal of this study is to untangle the question of their original use and their mental, visual, and ritual functioning. Ultimately, it aims to understand the role played by the shared culture of objects in Late Antique societies. Adrien also carried out a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) on the long-lasting impact of Russian emigration on the field of art history, with a special focus on Seminarium Kondakovianum and the figure of André Grabar. Besides two short books and a series of articles and conferences, the main outcome of this project will be a research monograph co-authored with Ivan Foletti, entitled: Byzantium or Democracy? Kondakov’s Legacy in Emigration: the Institutum Kondakovianum and André Grabar, 1925–1952 (2020). The project reflects another of Adrien’s long-term interests: the history of art history and the uses and misuses of this discipline as a political tool from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century.

palladino.adrien@gmail.com

Adrien Palladino

assistant professor

Irene Quadri Ph.D

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Irene is Maître d’enseignement et de recherche in medieval art history at the University of Lausanne, where she obtained her PhD in 2016. During 2018 and 2019 she was a visiting scholar at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome, where she worked on a project concerning the impact of epic literature on medieval Italian visual culture. Between 2020 and 2024 she co-directed, together with Chiara Croci, the Swiss National Science Foundation project Rome aux siècles ‘obscurs’. Les lumières de la communication visuelle, on the visual culture in Rome during the 5th and 11th centuries. She is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, in the framework of a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie project funded by the Czech Ministry of Education: De-Marginalizing Lombardy: The Roots of a Cultural Centre at the Turn of Millennium. Her research fields focus on the central Middle Ages, from the Carolingian/Ottonian period through to the apogee of the Romanesque style. She investigates the intersections between, and common legacies of, Mediterranean, Byzantine and Germanic visual languages – from Germany to Rome, via Northern Italy and the Alps – both in the religious and secular spheres. Her interdisciplinary approach, centered on the material and cultural values attached to the artefacts, interrogates the mechanisms of exchange, hybridization and the construction of artistic traditions between the 9th and 13th centuries. Irene is the author of a monograph – La pittura murale tra XI e XIII secolo in Canton Ticino. Tra gli intonaci medievali di un’altra Lombardia, Milano 2020 – and of numerous essays in edited volumes. She has also co-edited various conference proceedings and edited volumes.

254241@mail.muni.cz

Irene Quadri

research fellow

Ian Randall Ph.D.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Ian Randall specializes in digital humanities, the Early Medieval pottery of the Eastern Mediterranean and southern Balkans, and the relationship between materiality, identity, and dining culture on the Byzantine periphery. He received an MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University. An active field archaeologist, he has excavated in North America, the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Egypt, Syria, and in Scandinavia. His research interests include archaeological ethics, heritage law, and the relationship between the academy and descendant communities. He has also taught broadly in Classics, Art History, and Sociology and Anthropology. He currently has two field projects, at Kourion, in Cyprus, and at Vlochos, in Greece. He joined the Center in 2024 as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities as part of the RES-HUM project Ready for the Future: Understanding the Long-Term Resilience of Human Culture.

Ian.Randall@phil.muni.cz

Ian Randall

research fellow

Seraina Renz, Dr. phil.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Seraina Renz is an art historian of 20th-century Central European art. Her research interests include the history and theory of modernist sculpture and public monuments as well as performance and conceptual art from the 1960s and 70s. She has also been researching transnational artistic exchange between the blocks during the Cold War era. The project that she is leading at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication also relies on a transnational perspective. It is titled Slavophile Art: The Reception of Medieval Art in Monuments for a New Slavic Identity and analyzes the appropriation and exploitation of Romanesque and Byzantine art forms for national purposes in two states that newly emerged in 1918, the Czechoslovak Republic and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The focus on these countries allows us to understand how artistic and aesthetic strategies that wanted to promote a national narrative were applying transcultural strategies. At the center of the project are sculptures, public monuments, and applied arts in the context of architecture of the first half of the 20th century. Before joining Masaryk University, she was a postdoc at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome. Prior to that, she researched and taught at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, among others. She obtained a PhD from the University of Zurich in 2015, and the resulting monograph titled Kunst als Entscheidung: Performance- und Konzeptkunst der 1970er Jahre am Studentischen Kulturzentrum in Belgrad (Art as Decision: Performance and Conceptual Art of the 1970s at the Student Cultural Center in Belgrade) was published in 2018. Her texts have appeared in Kritische Berichte, figurationen, 21. Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, Kunstbulletin, and Art Margins. Several major grants have supported her research, including the Grant Agency of Masaryk University and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

seraina.renz@phil.muni.cz

Seraina Renz

research fellow

Alberto Virdis, M.A., Ph.D.

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication / Postdoctoral Fellow MSCA-CZ
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Alberto studied literature and art history at the Faculty of Arts in Cagliari, Italy, obtained an MA at the Johns Hopkins University, specialized in Medieval Art at the University of Parma, and completed his PhD at the University of Cagliari with a dissertation entitled The role of colour in the 12th and 13th centuries. Theories and applications in the art of stained glass (1100–1250) . His dissertation, soon to be published, focuses on the role played by color in medieval culture, through the analysis of medieval aesthetic theories, theological writings, optical treatises, encyclopedic works, literary sources, and handbooks for artists, combined with stained glass production developed between 1100 and 1250. Alberto is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, with a Marie-Sklodowska-Curie-Actions project funded by the Czech Ministry of Education, entitled Visible God. This project investigates the interconnections between the theories of the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th–6th c.) and the development of stained glass production in the Medieval West via Latin translations and commentaries produced between the 9th and 13th centuries as instruments for elevating the souls of the faithful to God in order to conceive a visible God through the forms of the sensory world. His main research interests include the artistic production of Medieval Sardinia seen in a broader Mediterranean context of cultural exchange; the status of sacred images and achiropita in early modern Spain between Judaism and Christianity; and the role of colors in Medieval aesthetics and artistic production. Alberto has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals, as well as contributions in multiple-authors books. He is the author of two monographs: Gli affreschi di Galtellì. Iconografia, stile e committenza di un ciclo pittorico romanico in Sardegna (Cagliari, 2011) and San Nicola di Trullas. Gli affreschi. Intersezioni Mediterranee nella Sardegna del XIII secolo (with a forward by Herbert L. Kessler), Rome 2014. He is also the author and co-editor, with Luca Vargiu, of the collective monograph Esperienze e interpretazioni della morte tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, Ancona 2020.

245765@mail.muni.cz

Alberto Virdis

research fellow

Mgr. Margarita Khakhanova

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Margarita is a Bachelor student at the Department of Art History and at the Museology Department at Masaryk university in Brno. She has been interested in art history for a long time but only recently she has become interested in medieval art, therefore, she really appreciates the possibilities offered by the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication. She is currently writing her thesis devoted to blind and visually impaired people in art museums, while conducting research also on the Georgian church Ateni Sioni. At the Center she helps with Russian translations and the promotion of the Center on social networks.

499807@mail.muni.cz

Margarita Khakhanova

research fellow

Dr. Mariana Bodnaruk

Research Fellow at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Mariana Bodnaruk (MA in Cultural Studies, National University of ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’; MA in Comparative History: Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies, Central European University; PhD in Medieval Studies, Central European University) is currently a post-doctoral research fellow at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication. Mariana specializes in art, epigraphy, and cultural history of Late Antiquity and the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire, as well as gender and sexuality. Their PhD dissertation, soon to be published as a research monograph, An Empire of Elites: The Self-Representation of the Senatorial Aristocracy in the Later Roman State in the Fourth Century AD (London: Routledge, forthcoming), uses the epigraphic evidence of the self-representation of the late Roman senatorial aristocracy to study the cultural, social, and political contexts of the empire that produced it, offering a new interpretation of the relationship between the imperial state and the ruling elite. Their recent work centers on historical materialism, queer studies, and trans-feminist theory. In 2019–2023, Mariana was an Assistant Professor at Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences in East Jerusalem. They were a Visiting Faculty Member at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, in 2023. They also taught at Palacký University Olomouc and Central European University (Budapest/Vienna). Mariana held postdoctoral fellowships at New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Study in Bucharest (2020–2021), Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia (2021–2022), and Institute for Advanced Study at Central European University in Budapest (2022–2023). They were also a postdoctoral researcher at Zentrum für Altertumswissenschaften, Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg; Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz; Friedrich-Meinecke Institute, Free University of Berlin; and Département d’histoire de l’art et d’archéologie, University of Fribourg. Their forthcoming edited volume Artistic Practice, Materiality and Ideology in the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire and Neighboring Polities (under contract with Routledge), explores the intersection of materiality and ideology of the artistic practice and production in the Medieval Eastern Roman Empire. They are also an author and co-editor, with Anna Adashinskaya, of the collective volume Art and Power in Medieval Societies: Authority, Visuality, and Public Function in the Eastern Euro-Mediterranean in the Late Medieval Period (in preparation), examining the relationship between art and power in late medieval South-Eastern and Central Europe in a transregional perspective.

mariana.bodnaruk@phil.muni.cz

Mariana Bodnaruk

research fellow

staff non-academic positions

Mgr. Gajane Achverdjanová

Audiovisual specialist and documentarist at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Gajane graduated from the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. Her art historical research was devoted to the art of late antiquity – ritualized spaces and small portable objects. In 2019, she won with her thesis project “Minor Objects? Combs, the Hidden Tresaures of Late Antiquity 300-600 AD” a one-year grant from Masaryk University for outstanding students. During her tenure at RE:CENT, she has held several positions since 2018 that have had one thing in common – popularizing research and science, medieval art and art history. She has organized RE:CENT events for the public, the StředověC JinaX lecture series or a project in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Armenia in the Czech Republic. Since 2020, she has been part of RE:CENT’s graphics team, where together with her colleagues she takes care of RE:CENT’s audiovisual content – podcasts, educational video series, short range documentary movies and more.

gajane.achverdjanova@gmail.com

Gajane Achverdjanová

audiovisual specialist and documentarist

Mgr. et Mgr. Libuše Bělunková

Journalist at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Libuše studied the theory and history of theatre, film, and literature (specializing in literary theory) at Palacký University in Olomouc and Russian studies at Charles University in Prague. She has taught literature at the Prague Menza grammar school, worked as an editor at Literární noviny and together with her colleagues founded the cultural magazine A2 where she was the editor-in-chief for the first seven years. She has worked as an editor in the street paper Nový prostor and Czech Radio 7. She has edited books (for the publishing house of the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Akropolis, G+G, Paseka, Větrné mlýny, Baobab, LePress), has written literary reviews, and her Czech translations of poems by Semyon Khanin (Nezvládnuté pohyby, Unmastered Movements) and Sergei Timofeyev (in: 15x Poezie Lotyšško, 15x Poetry Latvia) have been published in book form. As an employee of Caritas Prague she took care of the elderly for two years. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she now works as an editor of the journal Re:vize.

252962@mail.muni.cz

Libuše Bělunková

journalist

Mgr. Natália Gachallová, Ph.D.

Project Administrator and a Coordinator of Editorial Activities at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Natália graduated in Latin and English languages and literature from Masaryk University in Brno, where she also completed a PhD in Classical Philology. In her PhD thesis, she dealt with the so-called Second Sophistic movement and its influence on elite literary-rhetorical production, with a focus on the unification and blending of Greco-Roman intellectual discourse. She is professionally interested in the Greco-Roman prosaic and rhetorical production of the 2nd–3rd centuries CE. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Natália works as a project administrator and coordinator of editorial activities. Her tasks also include the organization of the Center’s other activities, such as conferences, roundtables, public lectures, and hosting of foreign researchers. Her philological training is useful in various research activities at the Center requiring the study of Latin primary sources.

natalia.gachallova@phil.muni.cz

Natália Gachallová

administrator, coordinator

Bc. Marie Hvozdecká

Referent of the Association of Friends at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Marie studied ethnology at the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University in Brno. During her studies, she became a founding member of the Ethnological Student Association and organized several successful cultural and educational events. Culture has become her passion and, in addition to concert dramaturgy and review writing, she has been an external folklore redactor of Český rozhlas since 2019. She joined the Center in 2023 as a PR expert. Her job is to communicate with members of the Association of Friends of the Center, take care of the promotion of events and published books, as well as many other things that are needed at the moment. Since she became interested in the activities of the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she has been excited about interdisciplinarity and active exploration of new possibilities of academic work.

marie.hvozdecka@phil.muni.cz

Marie Hvozdecká

referent of the association of friends

Mgr. Míla Janišová

Journalist at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
After studying French philology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague, she taught French for several years, interpreted and translated. From 2012 to 2015, she held the position of media coordinator for the international humanitarian and medical organization Doctors Without Borders, and participated in a mission in Iraq as a media consultant. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer in Francophone Literatures and Cultures at the Faculty of Arts, UK, with an emphasis on the Maghreb countries, which are also the focus of her research. Her publishing and research focuses on autobiographies of intercultural engagement, both postcolonial and exilic. She also reflects on the crossovers of visuality and words, forms of representation, and is fascinated by Islamic ornament and its significance in visual art and literature. She has completed several research stays in France, Morocco and Tunisia. Between 2020 and 2022 she participated in the project Centre and Periphery: Changes in the Postcolonial Situation of Romance-language Literatures in the Americas, Africa and Europe. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she is a journal editor for the project Ready for the future: understanding long-term resilience of human culture. She enjoys any form of work with people and words, and enjoys bringing the two together, both theoretically and practically. She also translates from French, writes about Francophone literatures, conducts interviews with authors and edits books and shorter texts.

245950@mail.muni.cz

Míla Janišová

journalist

Mgr. Anna Kelblová

Animator and Graphic Designer at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Mgr. Anna Kelblová works at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication as a graphic designer, science communicator, and audiovisual specialist. Anna manages the Center‘s graphic design team, handles book typesetting, photo editing, poster design, and other promotional material. In addition, she is involved in the production of documentary and animated films produced by the Center, which have been gradually expanding in recent years. Anna studied art history at Masaryk University and during her studies she was interested in late antiquity. However, she finished her studies with a thesis on the French church of Notre-Dame-du-Port in Clermont-Ferrand, in which she focused on the movement of the medieval visitor in the interior of this Marian church. Anna had already collaborated with the Center during her studies, and among her first graphic works within this collaboration was the typesetting of the magazine Convivium (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014-) and the graphic design of Michele Bacci‘s book, The Mystic Cave (2017). As part of the project The Potential of Migration. The Contribution of (not only) Russian Emigrants to Interwar Europe, she collaborated on all animated films, for which she took care of both animation and post-production. In addition to the animated films, she also contributed to the documentary film Refugees and Czechoslovakia in 1918–1948. Russian Auxiliary Action. Anna‘s recent graphic works include the book The Theory of the Image in the Early Middle Ages edited by Chiara Bordino (2020), the book by the writer Irène Némirovsky Autumn Flies or Woman of the Ancient Times (2022), and the last book The Presence of Images. Hans Belting Interviewed by Ivan Foletti (2023).

annna.kel@gmail.com

Anna Kelblová

animator, graphic designer

Helena Konečná

DTP Specialist at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Helena is from Brno. She studied at the Studio of Packaging and Book Design in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Ostrava, and has been working on increasing her IT qualifications for a long time. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Masaryk University, she works as a desktop publisher for the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014–) and a webmaster of the RE:CENT website.

helena.konecna@phil.muni.cz

Helena Konečná

webmaster, DTP

Mgr. Marie Okáčová, Ph.D.

Project Manager at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Marie graduated in Latin and English languages and literature from Masaryk University in Brno, where she also completed her PhD in Classical Philology. Her PhD thesis was devoted to the study of late-antique centos, i.e. patchwork poems fashioned from Virgil. Her research focuses on experimental forms in late-antique poetry (especially visual poetry and centos), which she examines using various tools from (post)modern literary theory. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Marie works as a project manager. Her tasks include national and European project schemes. Her philological training is of use in various research activities of the Center where the study of Latin literary sources is required.

52294@mail.muni.cz

Marie Okáčová

project manager

MgA. Barbora Satranská

Illustrator and Graphic Designer at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Barbora Satranská studied Illustration and Graphic Design at the Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague. She honed her skills through internships in Television and Film Graphics at her alma mater and under the tutelage of Georg Barber, also known as ATAK at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle. Her focus lies in graphic printing techniques, graphic design and drawing. Barbora’s documentary books, Spořilov and Hospodský, průvodčí, truhlář, cukrářka, farář, vitrážista, řezník, restaurátor a sociální pracovnice, earned her the Muriel Award for Best Student Comic in 2020 and 2021. Aside from illustration, she is involved in puppet shadow theater and experimental overhead projections.Together with Laura Hédervári, they perform as the artistic duo Meograf. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Barbora is involved in the OP JAK project, where she is responsible for the layout and visual design of a magazine.

247656@mail.muni.cz

Barbora Satranská

illustrator, graphic designer

Mgr.art. Kristýna Smrčková

Graphic Designer at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Kristýna studied at the Department of Printmaking and Other Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, where she obtained her MA in 2019. She specializes in traditional printmaking techniques and is particularly interested in intaglio printing, as well as the use of alternative, accessible materials for printmaking. Kristýna also works in the field of graphic design and illustration and has completed a studio residency under Maija Kurševa at the Art Academy of Latvia in Riga. Since autumn 2019, Kristýna has started working with the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, focusing on book design. She participated in the production of short animated films as part of a project supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic, titled Potential of Emigration. Contribution of (not only) Russian Émigrés to the Interwar Europe. Nowadays, she is mainly involved in designing and typesetting books, as well as the redesign and typesetting of the magazine Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Praha 2014–).

kristynasmrcek@gmail.com

Kristýna Smrčková

graphic designer

Ing. Klára Švejdíková

Assistant and Activity Coordinator of Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Klára originally comes from Opava, but has been living and working in Brno for a number of years. At VŠB-Technical University Ostrava, she studied in an economy-related field, but her professional and personal lives have always been tied together by her interest in culture and art. In her previous job, for the C.E.M.A. agency, Klára took part in organizing various music festivals, and also supervised the organization and running of the project “Brno, the City of Music”. As an activity coordinator and assistant at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Klára takes care of its administrative and financial agenda, and the flawless functioning of the whole team. Although deeply settled into a culture-oriented environment at the moment, her original technical specialization brings a welcomed and well-functioning contrast to the overall setup of the Center.

svejdikova@phil.muni.cz

Klára Švejdíková

assistant, coordinator

Mgr. Katarína Kravčíková

Audiovisual specialist and editor at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Katarína has been working at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno and the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication (RE:CENT) since 2015. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree in 2017, focusing on the visual rhetoric of the aniconic decoration of the Church of Hagia Eirene in Constantinople. For her Master’s degree, completed in 2019, she examined the Cathedral in Le Puy-en-Velay. Her doctoral research focused on Late Antique and Early Christian architecture in the Mediterranean and South Caucasus regions. She is currently working on a multimedia presentation of RE:CENT’s scientific outputs for the general public and on a formal edition of the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of the Premodern World, as well as other RE:CENT publications. She is also the audiovisual editor of the magazine re:vize.

kravcikova.katarina@gmail.com

Katarína Kravčíková

audiovisual specialist and editor

Mgr. Filip Šimek

Administrator of OP JAK projects at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Filip graduated from Masaryk University, where he studied MA in Visual Cultures and Art History. His research has focused on medieval architecture and the phenomenon of pilgrimage in what is now Scotland and Scandinavia. While writing his thesis on St. Magnus Cathedral in Orkney, he undertook a short-term internship at the University of The Highlands and Islands in Kirkwall and a long-term internship at the Centre for Nordic and Old English Studies in Katowice, where he became more familiar with the subject of Nordic sagas and poetry. After a brief detour, his steps led him back to RE:CENT, where he is now working as an administrator. Outside of academia, he has had the opportunity to gain valuable work experience in the world of culture and design.

filipsimek@phil.muni.cz

Filip Šimek

administrator

Bc. Petr Koželuh

PR manager at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Petr is a student in the MA program Visual Cultures and Art History at Masaryk University. As part of his bachelor’s studies, he spent one semester at the University of La Sapienza in Rome, where, under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Foletti, he wrote his thesis on the early Christian construction phases of the Lateran Baptistery and its liturgical function. He has been helping at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication since December 2024, mainly with website administration and data analysis. From April 2025 he has been working as PR manager of RE:CENT.

petr.kozeluh@phil.muni.cz

Petr Koželuh

PR manager

MgA. Kamila Severová

Graphic Designer at Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Kamila graduated from the graphic design at Tomas Bata University in Zlín. During her studies, she completed internships at ASP Katowice and Fachhochschule Voralberg. Kamila specializes in book design and has previously worked on covers and design projects for the Host publishing house. Currently, at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she is responsible for design and typesetting for Convivium magazine and other publications.

254689@mail.muni.cz

Kamila Severová

graphic designer

Hans Belting fellows

Thomas Kaffenberger, MA, PhD

Thomas Kaffenberger studied art history, Christian archaeology and Byzantine art history, and comparative literature at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz, Germany. In 2016 he completed his PhD dissertation (King’s College London and JGU Mainz), entitled Tradition and Identity: The Architecture of Greek Churches in Cyprus (14th to 16th Centuries), which was published in 2020. Between 2011 and 2013 he held teaching appointments at the universities of Mainz and Heidelberg, and between 2015 and 2021 he was the assistant to the chair for medieval art history at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Since 2022 he is Senior Researcher in the SNF-funded project Cultural Interactions in the Medieval Subcaucasian Region: Historiographical and Art-Historical Perspectives. Thomas Kaffenberger approaches medieval religious architecture in western Europe and the Caucasus with a special interest in the interactions between spaces, images, and beholders, as well as the dynamics of artistic exchange in areas of cultural contact (Eastern Mediterranean, Caucasus, Southern Italy). Apart from his book on the Greek Churches of late medieval Cyprus, he has published numerous further articles on the architecture of Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the 16th century. His research on the Caucasus resulted (as of 2022) in two co-edited volumes on medieval Georgian art (with Michele Bacci and Manuela Studer (eds.): Cultural Interactions in Medieval Georgia, Wiesbaden 2018; with Manuela Studer-Karlen and Natalia Chitishvili (eds.): Georgia as a Bridge between Cultures: Dynamics of Artistic Exchange in the Medieval Period (Convivium Supplementum), Turnhout 2021). Before, he co-edited a volume on the interactions of images and space with Dominic E. Delarue and Christian Nille: Bildräume | Raumbilder. Studien aus dem Grenzbereich von Raum und Bild (Regensburger Studien zur Kunstgeschichte 26), Regensburg 2017. Furthermore, he has devoted attention to architecture, design, and urban concepts between tradition and innovation in the period of 1900 to 1930 (with Dominic E. Delarue: Lebensräume gestalten. Heinrich Metzendorf und die Reformarchitektur an der Bergstraße, Worms 2013).

thomas.kaffenberger@unifr.ch

Thomas Kaffenberger

spring 2022

doc. Stefano D'Ovidio, M.A., Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Medieval Art History
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy
Stefano D’Ovidio completed his PhD in Art History at the University of Naples Federico II (2004), where he is Assistant Professor of Medieval Art History since 2017. He has been a a Post-Doc Fellow of the Warburg Institute in London (2005–2007) and of the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome (2015–2017) , and he taught courses on medieval art and architecture for various academic institutions (Università Vanvitelli and Orientale in Naples, Birckbeck College London, Yale School of Architecture). His research focuses on the production and perception of medieval art in the Italian South, with special regard to the relationship between visual arts and local identity. His publications include: a monograph on medieval wooden statuary in the Campania region of Italy (2013), articles on funerary sculpture in fourteenth-century Naples, studies on the materiality, use, and perception of medieval artifacts in Southern Italy, commentaries on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art literature. He now works on the reconstruction of medieval churches in Naples destroyed or transformed during the early Modern Age, based on textual and visual sources.

stefano.dovidio@unina.it

Stefano D'Ovidio

autumn 2019

Dr. Elisabetta Scirocco

Researcher and Wissenschaftliche Assistentin
Researcher and Wissenschaftliche Assistentin
Elisabetta Scirocco studied Italian Philology and Art History at the University of Naples Federico II, where she received a PhD in Art History with a dissertation devoted to the relationship between liturgy, architecture, and art in the major medieval buildings of Campania. She holds a Master’s Qualification in Translation from the Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici, Vicenza and is experienced as a professional translator. She has been a visiting doctoral researcher at Humbolt University Berlin (2009), a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-Project HistAntArtSI (2013–2014), and a research collaborator at the Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung in Berlin (2015). From 2010 to 2015, she worked at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut, where she initiated and, with Gerhard Wolf and Carmen Belmonte, co-directed the project Storia dell’arte e catastrofi: l’Italia sismica (sta-sis). She participated in the concept and organization of the exhibition Florenz! (Bonn, Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 21. 11. 2013 – 9. 4. 2014) and was one of the curators of the exhibition Fotografia e Catastrofe (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, November 2018). Elisabetta is a co-founder and member of the Editorial Committee of the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean (Seminarium Kondakovianum, Series Nova), and member of the Editorial Board of the journal Confronto. Studi e ricerche di storia dell’arte europea. She has been an invited lecturer in Medieval Art History at Masaryk University in Brno several times (WS 2012–2013, 2014–2015, 2016–2017) and serves as a volunteer assistant to the chair of Medieval Art History at the University of Naples Federico II. In 2019, she was the Hans Belting Visiting Fellow at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, Brno. Elisabetta’s research interests and publications generally deal with the concepts, aesthetics, and functions of sacred space in western Christianity, from the Middle Ages to the post-Vatican II era, with a geographical focus on Central and Southern Italy. She further focuses on the historiography, collections, and restorations of Medieval Art, as well as on cultural heritage and natural disasters, from both historical and contemporary perspectives.

scirocco@biblhertz.it

Elisabetta Scirocco

spring 2019

PhDr. Jan Klípa, Ph.D.


Since 2017, Jan Klípa has been a research fellow at the Czech Academy of Sciences, focusing on the history of Central European art in the 14th and 15th centuries, the topic of sacred art, and the historiography of the discipline. In 2004-2017, he worked as a curator and secretary for sciences at the National Gallery in Prague, Czech Republic, where he collaborated on such exhibition and publication projects as Silesia: A Pearl in the Czech Crown, Open the Garden of Paradise: Benedictines in Central Europe, 800-1300, and Without Borders: The Art of the Ore Mountains between Gothic and Rennaisance. Jan has authored and edited a number of specialized publications and articles, such as the monograph ymago de Praga: Board Painting in Central Europe, 1400-1430.

jan.klipa@gmail.com

Jan Klípa

spring 2018

prof. dr. Sible de Blaauw

Professor Emeritus of Early Christian Art and Architecture
Professor Emeritus of Early Christian Art and Architecture
Sible de Blaauw studied Medieval History at Groningen University and obtained his PhD from the University of Leiden in 1987 with a study on architecture and liturgy in the Early Christian basilicas of Rome. From 1994 until 2001, he was the Vice Director of the Netherlands Institute in Rome and, from 2002 till 2016, he taught at Radboud University Nijmegen. His research focuses on the interaction between architecture and liturgy, the city of Rome as a Christian palimpsest, and the survival, memory, and history of reception of Early Christian monuments. Sible de Blaauw is a co-editor of the Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum and a member of the Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Mainz. He was (together with Eric Moormann) a curator of the exhibition: Rome, The Dream of the Emperor Constantine (with loans from Roman and Vatican museums), De Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, October 2015 – February 2016.

s.deblaauw@let.ru.nl

Sible de Blaauw

autumn 2017

PhD students

Ruben Campini, MA

PhD Student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Ruben Campini is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History at Masaryk University and the Department of Art History and Archaeology at the University of Fribourg (CH). His research, supervised by Prof. Ivan Foletti and Prof. Michele Bacci, explores a largely overlooked category of Late Antique artifacts: ivory pyxides carved with Christian iconography. By re-evaluating previous historiography and adopting a diachronic and cross-cultural approach, he aims to offer new insights into the original functions and contexts of these precious containers. In addition to the study of early Christian materiality, Ruben’s expertise encompasses artistic historiography, particularly relating to the Late Antique monuments of Ravenna and the medieval heritage of Armenia and the Southern Caucasus. Besides being the author of scholarly publications across his fields of study, Ruben has been awarded the Lemmermann Foundation 2023 Fellowship and the Aktion Österreich–Tschechien Scholarship (2025) supporting research stays in Rome and Vienna. Starting from 2021, Ruben has been part of the executive editorial team of Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014–). He has been affiliated with RE:CENT since 2019, when he started working as an intern (Erasmus+ for Traineeship program) while he was completing his master’s degree at Ca’Foscari University in Venice. Since then, Ruben has been involved in the diverse activities and projects of the center, including the international project Cultural Interaction in the Medieval Subcaucasian Region: Historiographical and Art-Historical Perspective.

ruben.campini@gmail.com

Ruben Campini

Mgr. Klára Doležalová

PhD Student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
(in cotutelle with the University of Helsinki, Finland)
Klára is a PhD student in the Department of the History of Art at Masaryk University in Brno. In 2019, she finished her Master’s degree under the supervision of Ivan Foletti, with a thesis dedicated to the functions of the lateral naves in Early Christian basilicas. In her present research, she focuses more generally on the ritual and social hierarchy of sacred spaces in the West between the 4th and 6th centuries, and the role of rites of passage. She is also currently involved in a scientific project at CEMS entitled “Radical Conversion? Visual Arts, Rituals, Performance, and Conversion in Early Christian Initiation”. In addition to her studies, since November 2017, she has been actively involved in the executive editing of the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014–) and other publications of the Center.

dolezalova.klara@gmail.com

Klára Doležalová

Giada Lattanzio, M.A.

PhD Student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
After completing her Bachelor’s degree at the University of Milan on Cultural Heritage, Giada obtained her Master’s degree at Ca’ Foscari University with a thesis on the Silivrikapi Mausoleum in Istanbul under the supervision of Prof. Foletti. The research focused on the function and possible dedication of the structure to a Constantinopolitan saint. The research also analysed the historical and archaeological context in which the burial chamber was built. In 2018, during her Master’s degree, she was an intern at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication. Currently, she is a PhD student at Masaryk University and her research focuses on Early Medieval and Byzantine art in Sardinia. The aim of the project is to investigate the artistic production of the island as the result of the cultural interactions which took place at the time, reconsidering the Byzantinocentric point of view of previous studies.

g.lattanzio109@gmail.com

Giada Lattanzio

Annalisa Moraschi, MA

PhD Student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Annalisa Moraschi is currently pursuing her doctorate in the Department of Art History at Masaryk University and at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris, France), under the joint supervision of Prof. Ivan Foletti and Prof. Ioanna Rapti. Her doctoral research focuses on architectural patronage in 13th-century Armenia, with a particular emphasis on its relationship with the surrounding landscape. Specifically, she examines the patronage of the Vach’utian family. Annalisa’s expertise extends to the field of art historiography, having specialized in the art historiography of Ravenna, as well as the South Caucasus. The latter was the result of her involvement in the international project Cultural Interaction in the Medieval Subcaucasian Region: Historiographical and Art-Historical Perspective (2021–2023). Her current position is that of research and development assistant on the Dreaming Byzantium in Nineteenth Century France: Neo-Byzantine Architecture, Orientalism, and the Racial and National Myths of Art History (1848–1900) project led by Dr. Adrien Palladino, wherein she is working on the historiographical study of neo-Byzantine architecture. Annalisa has been awarded the Barrande Fellowship Programme in 2023 to support her stay in Paris, as well as the Minister of Education’s Award for Outstanding Students and Graduate Students in the Study Programme and for Extraordinary Acts in 2024. Annalisa’s initial involvement with RE:CENT dates back to 2019, when she pursued an internship (through the Erasmus+ for Traineeship program) concurrently with her Master’s studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy. She has contributed to the executive editorial team of Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the Mediterranean since.

annalisa.moraschi@proton.me

Annalisa Moraschi

Nicolas Samaretz, M.A.

PhD student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
After completing his master’s and bachelor studies at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (2020), Nicolas started his current PhD project at Masaryk University (Brno) in 2022, in cotutelle with the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) from the following year. Supervised by Prof. Ivan Foletti (Masaryk University) and Prof. Michele Bacci (University of Fribourg), the thesis is focused on the Christian altar space in late antique Rome (4th–6th centuries). The project takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine how material culture expressed the core mysteries of Christianity. Altars and their monumental frameworks are studied alongside liturgical implements essential for the function and ritual activation of sacred space. The case studies combine material and textual evidence from Rome with liturgical treasures from the European and Mediterranean regions. Since 2023, he has been an assistant researcher on the project Fragmented Images: Exploring the Origins of Stained Glass Art, led by Dr Alberto Virdis and funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), under the auspices of RE:CENT. This research investigates the origins of medieval stained glass art and its connections with other cultural productions of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Nicolas’ specific contribution focuses on cloisonné jewellery as one of the artistic techniques relatable to early stained glass. He also collaborates with RE:CENT’s editorial activity, especially with the journal Convivium. Nicolas’ academic interests span the history of art and culture, with a focus on the ancient and medieval periods across Europe, the Mediterranean region, and Western Asia. He is especially interested in interdisciplinary methodologies, exploring the intersections of art history with anthropology and archaeology.

nicolas.samaretz@outlook.it

Nicolas Samaretz

Mgr. Pavla Tichá

PhD Student at the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Pavla graduated in Art History from Masaryk University. Her bachelor’s thesis delved into the late antique Hypogeum on Via Livenza in Rome. She earned her master’s degree by the study ‘Churches and the City,’ which explored the visual aspects of the sacred in a Burgundian cityscape around the year 1100. She also participated in the project Migrating Art Historians investigating European pilgrimage in the 11th and 12th centuries and Conques in the Global World focused on the Abbey of St Fides from historiographical and transregional perspectives. During her studies, she completed study and research stays at universities in Rome, Poitiers, and New York. In her dissertation, she focuses on the question of orientalism in late antique Rome and related historiography. Drawing from Roman cult sites and rituals considered foreign, she examines both modern and ancient approaches to these cults—of Christ, Great Mother, Isis, and Mithras—in the period of transformation when some Romans embraced Christianity as part of their Roman identity. At CEMS, she has held various positions since 2014, encompassing graphic design, organizing public lectures and conferences, as well as editing academic publications.

tich.pav@gmail.com

Pavla Tichá
guest researchers

Valeria Carta, M.A.

PhD Student at the Department of Letters, Languages and Cultural Heritage
University of Cagliari, Italy
Valeria is a PhD student at the Department of Letters, Languages and Cultural Heritage of the University of Cagliari. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Heritage, and her Master’s degree in Archaeology and Art History at the Faculty of Humanities of University of Cagliari. In her diploma thesis supervised by prof. Andrea Pala she dealt with the Cistercian architecture of Sardinia. Since 2015 she has been collaborating with the Chair of History of Medieval Art as a tutor. She is also a subject expert at the Faculty of Humanities of University of Cagliari (exams commissioner of history of medieval art). In addition, she is a member of the editorial board of ABside, Rivista di Storia dell’Arte, an international art history peer-reviewed journal of the University of Cagliari (Italy). Within her research activities, she actively participated at scholarly conferences in Italy and United Kingdom. The printed and digital publications she published reflect her main research interests: iconography, medieval sculpture and architecture, with focus on the Cistercian order. Valeria has published articles in peer-reviewed journals, reviews, as well as contributions in co-authored books. She is the author of a monograph named Santa Maria di Corte a Sindia. L’architettura Cistercense in Sardegna (Ghilarza 2019). During the autumn of 2021, she was at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies in Brno for a period of study and research abroad. In her present PhD research, she focuses more on women commission in medieval Sardinian age and female artistic patronage.

cartavaleria90@libero.it

Valeria Carta

autumn 2021

Anna Magnago Lampugnani, M.A.

PhD Student at the Department of Art and Visual History
Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
PhD Fellow at Bibliotheca Hertziana
Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Rome, Italy
Anna Magnago Lampugnani je doktorskou studentkou na Institutu dějin umění a obrazu při Humboldtově univerzitě v Berlíně. Poté, co v roce 2012 absolvovala své bakalářské studium v oboru dějiny umění, mediální studia a literatura na univerzitě v Kostnici se závěrečnou prací o díle Ambrogio Lorenzettise Maestà v Massa Marittima, pokračovala Anna v magisterském studiu dějin umění na Humboldtově univerzitě v Berlíně. Zde získala v roce 2015 svůj magisterský titul se závěrečnou prací Caravaggio’s Saint Matthew in San Luigi dei Francesi. The subject of inspiration between iconography and theological dogma. Od května 2015 působí Anna jako doktorský výzkumný pracovník v Římě v Bibliotheca Hertziana, kde zpracovává svůj dizertační projekt s názvem Textual and visual conceptions of artistic inspiration in the Italian Art of Early Modern Times. Tento projekt zkoumá proměnu chápání pojmu “inspirace” v rámci teorii umění i umění samotném v průběhu 16. a 17. století.

magnago@biblhertz.it

Anna Magnago Lampugnani

autumn 2017

associate members

Panagiotis Manafis, M. A., Ph.D.

Panagiotis secured his PhD at the University of Ghent, Belgium, after obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Greek Philology and Literature and a master’s degree in Byzantine Philology and Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. From 2018 to 2021 was a research fellow at the department of Theology and Religion of the University of Birmingham. He has taught at Ghent University (Belgium), University of Birmingham (UK), and University of Patras (Greece). His research interest lies in the middle Byzantine literature, with particular focus on the manuscript transmission of texts.

248061@mail.muni.cz

Panagiotis Manafis

Ilaria Molteni, M.A., PhD

Ilaria is an art historian specialized in late medieval secular art. She obtained her PhD at the University of Lausanne; her thesis I romanzi arturiani in Italia: tradizioni narrative, strategie delle immagini, geografia artistica was published in 2020 in Rome. Within the framework of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Post-doc mobility programme, she carried out research stays in Florence (Fondazione Ezio Franceschini), Rome (Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte), and Milan (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore). Her research focuses on courtly art in Northern Italy, the illustrations of Arthurian and ancient literature, and the interplay between texts and images.

248301@mail.muni.cz

Ilaria Molteni

doc. Paolo Divizia, Dottore di Ricerca

Research Fellow at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Paolo is Associate Professor of Textual Criticism (Filologia italiana), History of Italian Literature, and History of Italian Language. He studied at the University of Turin (MA 2001) and the University of Parma (PhD 2005). He is a specialist in medieval Italian vernacular manuscripts, in particular multi-text manuscripts, on which he has published his most pivotal works, providing both individual case studies and complex theoretical insights. In recent years, his research focus has expanded to include also early prints and texts written in other Romance languages such as French, Catalan, and Castilian. He has published in some of the most prestigious journals in the field and is currently involved in the GAČR project of dr. Ilaria Molteni on 14th-century Venice.

paolodivizia@phil.muni.cz

Paolo Divizia

Valeria Russo, PhD

Research Fellow at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Valeria is a researcher specialized in Romance languages and literatures. In 2020, she obtained a PhD title in Romance Philology (Università degli Studi di Padova and Sorbonne Université). In her PhD thesis, she focused on the stylistic and material constitution of medieval French and Occitan lyric traditions and courtly narratives and their ideological development. She has lectured at universities in Versailles Saint-Quentin, Lorraine, and Lille and she currently teaches at the Université Paris Cité and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at FF MU. Her major research interests include the reception of antiquity and the dynamics of emergence and evolution of vernacular literatures.

250433@mail.muni.cz

Valeria Russo

Mgr. Kristýna Berta Skalíková

DTP Specialist at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Kristýna lives and works in Brno. At the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, she is in charge of the desktop publishing of the journal Convivium. Exchanges and Interactions in the Arts of Medieval Europe, Byzantium, and Mediterranean (Brno, Lausanne, Prague 2014–). She has also worked as a DTP specialist on a number of the Centre’s other publications.

bertakm@email.cz

Kristýna Skalíková

Dr. Armin Bergmeier


(MA in Art History, Humboldt University, Berlin; PhD in Late Antique and Byzantine Art History, Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich) is an art historian of Late Antique, Byzantine, and Western medieval art with a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy. His work explores changes and transformations across cultures, questions of presence within artworks and architecture, and Byzantine artistic heritage in Venice. During his doctoral research, he spent a year at Columbia University in New York as a visiting scholar. Since 2016, he has been an assistant professor of art history at the University of Leipzig, where he teaches courses on late antique, byzantine, and early medieval art and architecture. He has held research residencies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, and the Centro Tedesco in Venice. His scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Protestant Academic Scholarship Fund, the Minerva Foundation, and the Fulbright Foundation. In 2019, he was the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation postdoctorate fellow for Byzantine Studies at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul. Armin has chaired a conference panel on natural disasters at the College Art Association in New York and one on issues of presence at the ICMS in Kalamazoo. In addition, he has organized two international conferences, one in Munich (Erzeugung und Zerstörung von Sakralität zwischen Antike und Mittelalter 2015) and one in Leipzig (Picturing the Present: Gegenwart im Bild und Bild in der Gegenwart 2018). His first book, entitled Visionserwartungen: Visualisierung und Präsenzerfahrung des Göttlichen in der Spätantike, was published by Reichert press and received the Hans-Janssen award from the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Göttingen. Other recent publications have appeared in the journals Millennium, the Journal of Late Antiquity, and Gesta.x

armin.bergmeier@uni-leipzig.de

Armin Bergmeier

Chiara Bordino, M.A., Ph.D.


Chiara received her PhD from Tuscia University in Viterbo (2010). She was then awarded post-doctoral fellowships at Tuscia University and Koç University in Istanbul (senior fellow at the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations; Tübitak research fellow). Since 2007, she has been a member of a Tuscia University research project in Cappadocia. Her main research interests are the issue of images in the Early Christian age and the Iconoclast era, and Medieval painting in Rome and Cappadocia. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, she carried out a project devoted to the reception and the cult of images in the Early Medieval West from the Early Christian to the Carolingian era, investigating textual sources in connection with visual evidence.

chiara.bordino@gmail.com

Chiara Bordino

Luca Capriotti, M.A., Ph.D.


Luca graduated in 2021 from the Department of Art History, Masaryk University and at the University of Bologna. Luca obtained his BA (2014) with a thesis dedicated to an iconological study of the twelfth-century facade of the cathedral of San Rufino in Assisi. This research topic was focused on the analysis of the works of Gioacchino da Fiore, whose theories influenced the iconographic choices for the sculptural decoration of this Umbrian monument. For his MA (2017), he dedicated his attention to highlighting artistic visual topoi along a section of the so-called Via Francigena in Tuscany (Valdelsa). In 2017, he started work on his dissertation topic. His doctoral research expanded on the results obtained in his Master’s thesis, with a multidisciplinary approach, following three main directions of study: first, a historiographical reassessment of the construction of the Francigena myth; second, a comparison between Christian and Buddhist ritual practices; and third, the revelation of visual constants in the making of artwork related to pilgrimage phenomena.

luca.capriotti3@unibo.it

Luca Capriotti

Chiara Croci, M.A., Ph.D.


Chiara studied art history and history at the University of Lausanne (2005-2010), where she then worked as an assistant and lecturer (2013-2018). She obtained her PhD in 2016 (University of Lausanne, University of Münster) with a thesis on early Christian art and patronage in Campania (Una “questione campana”. La prima arte monumentale cristiana tra Napoli, Nola e Capua (secc. IV-VI), Rome, Viella, 2017). During her doctoral research, she received fellowships at the University of Münster (2010-2011) and the Swiss Institute in Rome (2012-2013). Her research focuses on late antique and early medieval art, with special attention to the reconstruction of the original material and historical context of the artworks studied. Between 2018 and 2019, she worked at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies as a post-doc researcher on a project dedicated to the artistic production of Carolingian and Ottonian Rome.

Chiara.Croci@unil.ch

Chiara Croci

Bc. Martin Drlíček


Martin currently studies in the Master’s program at the Department of the History of Art at Masaryk University in Brno. His undergraduate thesis, under the supervision of Ivan Foletti, focused on Christian tattoo art in medieval Europe. His work was also accompanied by practical experiments with historical techniques and materials. He is interested in studying the issue of human bodies as (surfaces for) images or “artistic media” in the Middle Ages. In addition to his art historical training, Martin has a degree in fine woodworking and, for the last four years, he has worked in a furniture restoration and antiquities atelier. Artisanal handicrafts are his hobby, and practical knowledge of the processes and technologies affecting the final artistic result are reflected in his own research. He therefore looks at objects both from the perspective of an art historian and a craftsman.

475056@mail.muni.cz

Martin Drlíček

Mgr. Michele Foletti

Illustrator and Graphic Designer at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Michele works at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies as a science communicator. He is currently working as an illustrator for a short animated movies for the project, called “The Potential of Emigration. The Contribution of (not only) Russian Émigrés to the Interwar Europe”, supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic. As a comic book artist, he also participates in other projects at the Centre. Michele studied comic book art at the École Supérieure des Arts Saint-Luc and the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels, where he graduated in 2012. In collaboration with Nicolas Wouters, he illustrated a comic entitled Les Égarés de Déjima, which was published by the French publishing house Sarbacane in 2018. His cooperation with Sarbacane is ongoing.

243290@mail.muni.cz

Michele Foletti

Bc. Veronika Hermanová


Veronika studies in the Master’s program in the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. In her second year of studies, she spent a semester studying in Armenia, at the Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts. Following this experience, she devoted her Bachelor’s thesis to the seventh-century Armenian cathedral in the city of T’alin. In her thesis, she provided a completely new interpretation not only of the frescoes in the apse of the cathedral, but also of the building itself. Veronika plans to continue to address issues in Armenian medieval art in the future and gradually improve her knowledge of the Armenian and Russian languages. Since 2020, Veronika has helped with various tasks at the Centre. She has recently been involved in the organization and filming of StrědověC JinaX, as well as other popular educational videos for the wider public.

470697@mail.muni.cz

Veronika Hermanová

Ester Horáková


Ester received her Bachelor’s degree in the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. Her Bachelor’s thesis dealt with the Verdun Altar, with particular focus on its iconography. In 2017, Ester spent several months in Venice at Ca ’Foscari University and explored various methodologies used in art history. After participating in the Centre’s activities as a student, Ester worked at the Centre as a student assistant. She has joined other members of the Centre and students of the department on research trips to Rome, Milan, and Armenia. At the Centre of Early Medieval Studies, she helped with the project “The Potential of Emigration. The Contribution of (not only) Russian Émigrés to the Interwar Europe” supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic. She was also involved in the organization of the series of public lectures (Středovec Jinax).

449627@mail.muni.cz

Ester Horáková

Bc. Anastasiia Ivanova, DiS.


Anastasiia is a student in the Bachelor’s program of Chemistry of Conservation and Restoration of the Faculty of Science at Masaryk University in Brno. During her studies, Anastasia has also developed an interest in art history – she has attended many lectures and field trips with the Department of Art History. Currently, she is finishing her Master’s degree. She worked with the Centre for Early Medieval Studies between 2019 and 2020. Her main calling was helping with the grant project called “The Heritage of Nikodim P. Kondakov in the Experiences of André Grabar and the Seminarium Kondakovianum”.

439007@mail.muni.cz

Anastasiia Ivanova

prof. Herbert Leon Kessler, PhD

Professor Emeritus at Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences
John Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA
Since 1976, Herbert Leon Kessler has been a professor at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, John Hopkins University, Baltimore (USA), and also a member of the Medieval Academy of America (1991) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), as well as many other significant medievalist and byzantologist organizations (Dumbarton Oaks Alumni Association, Byzantine Studies Conference, International Centre for Medieval Art, College Art Association of America). Herbert graduated from the University of Chicago in 1961, after which he went on to study at Princeton University under the guidance of Erwin Panowski and Kurt Weitzmann. In his doctoral thesis, which he submitted in 1965, he dealt with illuminated scripts from the ninth century. In 1969-1970, he studied at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton, and in 1972-1973, he continued with his postdoctoral studies as a Guggenheim Fellow. Then, in 1973, Herbert Kessler became the head of the department of art history at the University of Chicago, and in 1976, he moved to John Hopkins University, Baltimore, where he has gradually assumed the position of a professor and the head of the department of art history. In 1977, Herbert took part in the organization of the exhibition “The Age of Spirituality” by Kurt Weitzmann, which took place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. With Weitzmann, he then collaborated on two major publications: The Cotton Genesis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) and The Frescoes of the Dura Synagogue and Christian Art (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1990). In 1984, Herbert Kessler became a Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, John Hopkins University, and he kept this position until 1998. In 1980-86, he was a senior fellow in Dumbarton Oaks. As a professor, he visited Biblioteca Hertziana in Rome (1996-97), Harvard University (2000-2001), and Williams College, Massachusetts (2006-2007). In 2007, an international conference in his honor took place at Centre d’études médiévales in Auxerre, which dealt with Herbert Kessler’s huge contribution to the study of medieval art and beyond. The most important publications by Herbert Kessler include The Illustrated Bible from Tours (Princeton 1977); Studies in Pictorial Narrative (London 1994); (with Johanna Zacharias) Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim (Yale 2000); Spiritual Seeing: Picturing God’s Invisibility in Medieval Art (University of Pennsylvania 2000); Old St.Peter’s and Church Decoration in Medieval Italy (Spoleto 2002); Seeing Medieval Art (Peterborough 2004); Neither God nor Man. Texts, Pictures, and the Anxiety of Medieval Art (Freiburg im Breisgau 2007).

herbkessler@earthlink.net

Herbert Leon Kessler

Mgr. Martin Lešák, Ph.D.

Research Fellow at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Martin studied Art History at the Masaryk University of Brno where he obtained his MA in 2016, with a thesis on the tower at Torba and its mural paintings from about 800 AD. Afterwards, he spent several months as a predoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome and as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice. He also participated in the experimental project Migrating Art Historians, during which he studied the dialogue between medieval pilgrims, landscape, and architecture. In January 2022, Martin obtained his PhD at the University of Poitiers and the Masaryk University of Brno, with a dissertation on the relationship between monumental mosaic decorations conceived in early medieval Rome and the stational liturgy of the city (Rome 795–844: Ritual Spaces, Presbytery Mosaics, and Stational Liturgy). He is now a research fellow and executive editor at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies in Brno where he is involved in a couple of projects. Thanks to the MSCA-RISE project titled Conques in the Global World, in which he focuses on the early medieval landscape of Conques and its ritualization, he spent, since 2021, several months as a scientific guest at the Graduate Center (CUNY) in New York City and the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte in Rome. He is also involved in the GAČR project titled At the Crossroads of Memories: Art and Representation in 14th-century Venice.

lesakmartin1@gmail.com

Martin Lešák

Mgr. Veronika Pichaničová, Ph.D.


Veronika graduated in 2021 from the Department of Art History, Masaryk University with a thesis focused on precious stones and their representation and use in the artwork of the eighth and ninth centuries in the Latin West. The project of her thesis ties together the iconography of Heavenly Jerusalem with the use of mosaics and stained glass in the decoration of church spaces, as well as the use of precious stones in Carolingian reliquaries and crosses. She spent part of her studies carrying out a foreign research and study stay in Rome at Sapienza University. Her thesis is supervised by Professor Ivan Foletti, MA, Docteur es Lettres at Masaryk University and associate professor Franesca Dell’Acqua, MA, PhD from the University of Salerno.

veronika.pichanicova@gmail.com

Veronika Pichaničová

Mgr. Sabina Rosenbergová

PhD student in the Department of Art History
Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
(co-tutored with Sapienza Università in Rome)
Sabina is a PhD student in the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University and Sapienza University of Rome. At Masaryk University, she graduated in art history and history. She has been fortunate to spend a couple of semesters studying at the Roman university La Sapienza and at the Université de Poitiers in France, as well as at the Bibliotheca Hertziana (Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte) in Rome as an intern. In her Master’s studies, she became a Migrating Art Historian, thanks to the project of the same name, which changed more than just her understanding of science. Her research focuses are historiographical questions and reflections on objects from a longue durée perspective. In her dissertation, she attempts to reassess the artistic production in 10th-century Rome. Furthermore, she is a co-researcher for the project “The Potential of Emigration. The Contribution of (not only) Russian Émigrés to the Interwar Europe” supported by the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic.

sabina.rosenberg@gmail.com

Sabina Rosenbergová

Katarína Šimová


Katarína is a Bachelor’s student in the Department of the History of Art at Masaryk University in Brno. She has attended field trips to Georgia, Armenia, and, recently, Rome. Katarína has been part of the Centre for Early Medieval Studies since 2020, where she has helped with the DILPS electronic database and the fourth volume of the upcoming booklet Travelogues, dedicated to the monuments of the Southern Caucasus.

488394@mail.muni.cz

Katarína Šimová

Bc. Petr M. Vronský


Petr studied Informatics, History of Art and Aesthetics at Masaryk University. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in History of Art and Aesthetics with a thesis about Joel-Peter Witkin and his usage of dead bodies in 2014. Early on in his studies, he started cooperating with the Centre for Early Medieval Studies as a graphic designer, particularly for the lecture series StředověC JinaX. Between 2017 and 2021, he was a regular staff member of the Centre. His duties included the desktop publishing of books, poster design, photo editing, etc. He is interested in historiography, the theory and history of photography, icon-painting, and the philosophy of art.

petr.vronsky@gmail.com

Petr Vronský

Bc. Daria Kruchenko


Daria comes from Pskov, one of the oldest cities in Russia, and always been interested in the study of medieval art. She defended her bachelor’s thesis on a medieval temple in central Italy of uncertain date, Tempietto del Clitunno and its Function, in 2023. She is currently a master student of the Visual Cultures and Art History at Masaryk University. At the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Daria is working as a student assistant within the project Sny o Byzanci ve Francii 19. století: Novobyzantská architektura, orientalismus a rasové a národní mýty dějin umění (1848–1900), under the supervision of Adrien Palladino. She also helps with post-production of CEMS’ audiovisual projects.

512804@mail.muni.cz

Daria Kruchenko
interns

Isabelle Anna Chisholm


Isabelle holds a first-class BA and MPhil in History of Art and Architecture from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include medieval Central Europe, transcultural exchange and historiography. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she assists with the editing of academic publications.

558969@mail.muni.cz

Isabelle Anna Chisholm

autumn 2024 / spring 2025

Lucía Rodríguez Navarro


Lucía Rodríguez Navarro

spring 2024

Sara Salvadori, M.A.


Sara obtained her Master’s as well as Bachelor’s degree at the Department of Communication and Teaching of Art of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. Throughout her studies, she became interested in the history of medieval art and cultivated this interest also during her second level studies, carrying out both theses on Lombard wall paintings. As a result, she began to collaborate with professor Martina Corgnati, the chair of Medieval Art History at Brera Academy. She won the “Enzio Volli” Prize established by the Brera Academy in collaboration with the Paolo and Ugo Volli, for her Master´s thesis. Thanks to the prize, she received support to carry out her research and as well as internship at CEMS, where she participates in the Convivium editorial activities and other projects of the Centre.

sara.salvadori96@gmail.com

Sara Salvadori

autumn 2021

Beatrice Sacco


Beatrice is currently finishing her Master’s degree in Archaeology and Art History at Catholic University in Milan, where she also received her Bachelor´s degree in Cultural Heritage. In her Bachelor diploma thesis, she dealt with the architectural history of a Milanese church destroyed at the end of the 13th century, based on the original projects and drawings of its architect. Currently she is working on her Master’s thesis, in which she focuses on the 11th-century frescoes in the Austrian Abbey of Lambach. Professor Ivan Foletti, whom she met while in Brno for an Erasmus+ programme during the spring semester 2021, is supervising her work. Simultaneously, her internship at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies consists of helping with the editing of the journal Convivium and with the various activities of the Centre.

beatrice.sacco01@icatt.it

Beatrice Sacco

autumn 2021

Cynthia Bailón Abad


Cynthia is currently finishing her Master’s degree under the supervision of Prof. Francesca Dell’Acqua in Art History and Criticism at the University of Salerno in Italy, where she also received her Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Heritage (Art History curriculum) with a thesis dedicated to wooden processional statues by the eighteenth-century Spanish sculptor Francisco Salzillo. Because of an interest in gender studies, she is currently studying the figure of Eve and her iconography in the Middle Ages. Since Summer 2020, she has also collaborated on The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily Image Database, a shared project between Duke University (North Carolina) and Federico II University in Naples. Her stay in Brno is made possible as part of the program of the project Erasmus+ for traineeship. At the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, she will gather material for her thesis and help with the Centre’s editorial and promotional activities, mainly the databases of visual and textual material.
Cynthia Bailón Abad

spring 2021

Francesca Carota


Francesca is a student in the “History and Art Criticism” Master’s program at the University of Salerno, where she also received her Bachelor’s degree in 2020 with a thesis on the seventeenth-century paintings in the Cathedral of Pozzuoli. In her Master’s thesis, supervised by Professor Francesca Dell’Acqua and Professor Ivan Foletti, she deals with the iconography of an early fourth-century sarcophagus found in Saragozza. She is especially interested in the use of databases for the conservation of cultural heritage. She recently completed an internship in collaboration with Duke University and Federico II University in Naples involving the cataloguing of medieval images for the Database called “The Medieval Kingdom of Sicily”. Her stay in Brno is made possible as part of the program of the project Erasmus+ for traineeship. At the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, she will gather material for her thesis and help with the Centre’s editorial and promotional activities, mainly the databases of visual and textual material.
Francesca Carota

spring 2021

Francesco Cozzolino


Francesco studies in the “History and Art Criticism” Master’s program at the University of Salerno, where he also received his Bachelor’s degree, with a thesis on the birth and evolution of the artist from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance based on Rudolf and Margot Wittkowers’ “Born under Saturn”. He is currently working on his Master’s thesis, where he deals with the political use of cultural heritage, with a focus on the reconversion of Hagia Sophia and its history as a means of demonstrating dominance and power. He is professionally interested in the performative aspect of the Middle Ages and in the human experience of sound in spatial and aural architecture. His stay in Brno is made possible as part of the program of the project Erasmus+ for traineeship. At the Centre for Early Medieval Studies, he will gather material for his thesis and help with the Centre’s editorial and promotional activities.
Francesco Cozzolino

spring 2021

Cassandre Lejosne, M.A.


Cassandre recently obtained a Master’s degree in Art History from the University of Lausanne (Switzerland), where she also received a Bachelor’s Degree in Art History and English Literature in January 2019. Her interests in both Medieval Studies and remote regions of the world have led her to study the South-Caucasus region, especially Armenia. In August 2020, Cassandre finished her Master’s thesis under the supervision of professors Nicolas Bock and Ivan Foletti. It focused on the seventh-century Armenian church and archaeological complex of Aruč, and broached the topic of the formation of Armenian cultural identity. Since 2019, Cassandre has taken part in matters pertaining to the Centre’s daily operations, mainly performing Public Relations duties. Currently an intern at the Centre, her main tasks involve editing works for Convivium and uploading data to Dilps (images database).

Cassandre.Lejosne@unil.ch

Cassandre Lejosne

autumn 2020

Eleonora Macchiarelli


Eleonora is a Bachelor’s student in the Department of Cultural Heritage, Arts, Cinema and Shows of University of Salerno in Italy. She focuses on Greek language and literature and is currently preparing her thesis. Still only discovering the field of art history, she is particularly attracted to the culture of the Byzantine era. At the moment, Eleonora is carrying out six months of an Erasmus traineeship at Masaryk University in Brno, working for the journal Convivium and participating in various activities at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies.
Eleonora Macchiarelli

spring 2019

Marianna Melchiorre


Marianna is a Master’s student in History and Criticism of Art at the University of Salerno, where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Science of Cultural Heritage with a thesis about Andrea Sabatini and Raffaello. Currently, she is focusing on contemporary art and working on her Master’s thesis about art during Hitler’s totalitarianism, with particular attention given to the experience of the German artist Hans Hofmann. In 2017, Marianna had a traineeship at Museo Diocesano San Matteo in Salerno. In Brno, she is doing an Erasmus traineeship at the Centre for Early Medieval Studies (Masaryk University), working for the journal Convivium and participating in various activities at the Centre.
Marianna Melchiorre

spring 2019

assistant students

Mgr. Jana Černocká


Jana is a second-year Master’s student in the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. During her bachelor’s, she spent one semester in Poitiers, France, where she deepened her knowledge of medieval art and improved her French language skills. Her Bachelor’s thesis, supervised by Ivan Foletti, was focused on sculpted decoration in the narthex of the monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Vézelay. Jana is currently writing her Master’s thesis, dedicated to French sculpture in the 12th century and focused on the monastery of St. Peter in Moissac. At the RE:CENT, she helps out primarily with proofreading and editing books and articles, and various other tasks as well.

463121@mail.muni.cz

Jana Černocká

Bc. Paulína Horváthová


Paulina is a master’s student reading in the Visual Cultures and Art History program at Masaryk university where she obtained a bachelor’s degree. In her thesis, she focused on the notion of the Invention of the Norman medieval architecture in the nineteenth century, which was looked upon through the case study of the San Cataldo chapel in Palermo. In RE:CENT, she assists with the project Slavophile Art. The Reception of Medieval Art in Monuments for a New Slavic Identity. Likewise, she is involved in promoting and coordinating the social media outlets of the Center as well as of the emerging journal of the project Ready for the Future: understanding the long-term resilience of human culture.

513179@mail.muni.cz

Paulína Horváthová

Bc. Kateřina Jůzlová


Kateřina is currently a first-year master student at the Seminar of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. As part of her bachelor’s studies, she spent one semester at the University of Padua in Italy, where, under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Foletti, she wrote her bachelor thesis on the monumental bronze doors of S. Zeno’s Basilica in Verona. She assisted in the Center with various tasks during her undergraduate studies. Starting in the spring semester of 2024, she will be working as a student assistant under the supervision of Seraina Reinz, Dr. phil. especially on the project Slavophile Art. The Reception of Medieval Art in Monuments for a New Slavic Identity.

katerina.juzlova@mail.muni.cz

Kateřina Jůzlová

Bc. Michaela Kovářová


Michaela is a third-year Bachelor‘s degree student at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. In her second year, she studied for a semester at Yerevan State University in Armenia, where she deepened her knowledge of Armenian medieval culture, art, history, and the past and present political situation in the Caucasus. Through this opportunity, she was able to be in direct contact with many Armenian sites. In her bachelor’s thesis, she focuses on the basilica in the village of Odzun in northern Armenia and its decorations, which show the intercultural exchange with the surrounding countries of that time. At the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication, she mainly helps with the production of the monthly journal re:vize.

523928@mail.muni.cz

Michaela Kovářová

Bc. Janette Rendeková


Janette is a student at the Department of Art History at Masaryk University in Brno. During her undergraduate studies, under the supervision of Professor Ivan Foletti, she focused on the study of so-called applied art, specifically through a case study of Late Antique objects depicting the story of the prophet Jonah and their unique role in the lives of early Christians. She intends to continue exploring this field in her future research, approaching it from various angles, including historiographical perspectives. Since autumn 2024, Janette has been part of the RE:CENT collective, where she works as a student assistant. In this role, she is engaged in a wide range of activities – from managing the audiovisual aspects of the StředověC JinaX lecture series livestreams and distributing the journal re:vize, to assisting with organization of events, as well as proofreading and editorial works.

janette.rendekova@mail.muni.cz

Janette Rendeková

Bc. Zuzana Urbanová


Zuzana is a first-year student in the MA Visual Cultures and Art History program at Masaryk University. As part of her bachelor’s thesis under the supervision of Ivan Foletti, she studied Langobard art, specifically the so-called Tempietto Longobardo, situated in the northern Italian city of Cividale del Friuli. For this thesis, she undertook a two-month internship at the National Archaeological Museum in Cividale, which allowed her direct contact with the monument under study. She then spent the last year of her undergraduate studies at the Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where she deepened her knowledge of medieval art and worked on her thesis. Within her Master’s studies, she plans to move from Langobard art to Armenian art, and for this purpose, she will go on an internship in Yerevan. Zuzana has been helping at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication since the autumn of 2021, mainly with editing texts and organizing field trips.

zuzana.urbanova@mail.muni.cz

Zuzana Urbanová

Mgr. Michaela Hojdysz


Míša studied art history at Masaryk University, where she is currently finishing her PhD. Her dissertation focuses on Bouzov Castle, Archduke Eugen of Austria-Teschen (1863–1954), and the Idea of a Knightly Castle at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Her research explores 19th-century architecture, collecting, and historic preservation, with a particular interest in knightly motifs, medieval revival, the art market, and the creation of exhibition spaces. At Masaryk University, she led an IGA grant project dedicated to the art collection of Bouzov Castle and was awarded the Bader Scholarship during her PhD. During her studies, she completed research, and study stays at universities in Krakow, Vienna, Poitiers, Oxford, and New York. Between 2019 and 2021, she worked as an editor for the Centre for Early Modern Studies blog and as a research assistant on the CRAACE: Continuity/Rapture – Art and Architecture in Central Europe 1918–1939 project. Since December 2024, she has been working as an editor of Convivium at the Center for Medieval Visual Cultures and Research Communication.

413436@mail.muni.cz

Michaela Hojdysz
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