Mercator Fellows | University of Tübingen

Prof. Paul Magdalino, FBA (April-May 2022, May-June 2024)

Paul Magdalino (BA, DPhil Oxon) was professor of Byzantine History at the University of St Andrews, from which he retired in 2009. He was a Humboldt-Stipendiat in Frankfurt in 1980-1981, Visiting Professor of History at Harvard in 1995-1996, and Professor of History at Koç University, Istanbul, from 2006 to 2014. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2002, and served on the Senior Fellows Committee at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies from 2001 to 2007. His research has spanned a variety of subjects, notably the urban development of Constantinople (Constantinople médiévale. Études sur l'évolution des structures urbaines, Paris 1996), the court culture of the ‘Macedonian Renaissance’, astrology, prophecy, and the relationship between secular literature and religious ideology (L’orthodoxie des astrologues. La science entre le dogme et la divination à Byzance, VIIe-XIVe siècle, Paris 2006). His page at St Andrews.

Prof. Alexey Muravyev (January-June 2024)

He studied Classical Philology at the University of Moscow, completed his doctorate in 1995 on the Christian-Oriental sources on Julian the Apostate, and his habilitation in 2021 on West Syrian missions in the 6th century. Prof. Muravyev was a fellow and postdoctoral researcher at prestigious institutions such as the École Française de Rome and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He re-founded the journal “Christian Orient” (Christianskij Vostok) and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. As a lecturer at the State University of Moscow, he taught oriental texts and philosophy. He directed the medieval program at the Higher School of Economics and was a visiting professor at international universities. His research interests include the Syriac world, Christian-Arabic culture, and the history of the translation movement in the Middle East. In 2023, he received a research fellowship at the DFG College for Migration and Mobility in Late Antiquity.

Prof. Filippo Ronconi (2024)

Awarded a PhD in Greek and Latin Palaeography from La Sapienza University, Rome in 2005, awarded 2007 Diploma of the Scuola di Conservazione of the University of Cassino, since 2008 Maître de Conférences for "Écriture et société à Byzance" at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He is a member of the Centre d'études en sciences sociales du religieux (CéSor) and a fellow of the Institut Convergences-Migration (ICM). He is the author of two books and dozens of publications on Byzantine manuscript culture. His webpage on the EHESS website.

Prof. Maria Mavroudi (Spring/Summer 2025)

M. A. Harvard, Ph. D. Harvard 1998, is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of numerous books and essays, and is one of the world's leading specialists in Byzantine literature and cultural history, as well as Byzantino-Arabia. and cultural relations between Byzantium and the Islamic world. Her page on the website of UC Berkeley.

Dr. Milka Levy-Rubin (October 2022)

Milka Levy Rubin’s work focuses on the transition between late antiquity and early Islam in the Near East, at a time when, following the Muslim conquest of the East, the thousand year-old Greco-Roman political and cultural hegemony came to an abrupt end, and a new society was gradually coming into shape. Her works follow various processes of continuity and change during the first centuries of Islamic rule. They comprise issues such as the initial surrender agreements and the formation of the legal status of non-Muslims under the early Islamic caliphate, processes of social and cultural change amongst the local population including Arabization and Islamization, and changes in the settlement pattern and in the social and geographical structure of these communities. Other works relate to the Muslim encounter with the non-Muslim communities, and to its effects on the formation of the Muslim identity, and especially on the development of new religious traditions and the establishment of local Muslim holy places. Dr. Levy Rubin has published two books (The Continuatio of the Samaritan chronicle of Abū al-Fatḥ al-Sāmirī, Princeton 2002; Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire: from Surrender to Coexistence, Cambridge 2011) as well as various articles. She is Curator Emerita of the Humanities collection of the National Library of Israel, she taught for many years at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and presently teaches at the Schechter Institute for Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.

Prof. Jack Tannous (Summer 2022, 2023 and 2024)

M. Phil. Oxford, Ph. D. Princeton, is Associate Professor of History and John Witherspoon bicentennial Preceptor in the Department of History at Princeton University. He is, among other things, the author of The Making of the Medieval Middle East, Princeton and Oxford 2018, an innovative study of the religious, social, and cultural history of the late antique Near East in the period c. 500-1000. His page on the website of the Department of History at Princeton.

Current Mercator Fellows