Project description

The project aims to prepare a basic catalogue description of the Cyrillic manuscripts (written in Orthodox Slavonic and other modern languages) that are part of the so-called “Berlin collection”. An interdisciplinary team has been formed to carry out the project tasks. The team consists of researchers affiliated with three universities (one of them foreign) and four faculty units, and representing five disciplines in the humanities. Researchers will review the collection, assess the state of preservation of its separate units and prepare the codicological information needed to create a catalogue description using the tools developed within the framework of DiHeLib proceedings. These tasks will allow the identification of the predominant source material found in the manuscripts (thanks to the preliminary identification of the texts), the identification of the main research postulates in the context of further work on the collection, and the preparation of an application for an externally funded grant. The research results will be published in at least one article in a peer-reviewed journal.

A research stay at a foreign institution is planned as part of the project. The research will conduct the necessary supplementary queries and consultations with local specialists dealing with research on Cyrillic manuscripts. As part of the same trip, the team will present the results of its work on Cyrillic manuscripts from the Berlin collection internationally (via a scientific conference and working meetings).

Research team

Dr habil. Jan Stradomski, Prof. UJ, principal investigator

Ph.D. Diana Atanassova-Pencheva, St Clement of Ohrid University of Sofia

Dr habil. Agnieszka Gronek, prof. UJ

Dr habil. Marzanna Kuczyńska, prof. UAM

Dr habil. Alicja Z. Nowak, prof. UJ

M.Sc. Mikołaj Dunikowski, PhD student UJ

Jan Stradomski (jan.stradomski@uj.edu.pl) – Slavist, Bulgarian studies expert, literary scholar, Dr habil., Associate Professor at the Institute of Slavonic Philology of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, affiliated with this university since the beginning of his academic career (1998 - MA, 2002 - PhD, 2016 - habilitation, 2019 - Associate Professor). His academic interests include medieval studies and cultural anthropology, palaeo-slavology, the medieval literature of the southern and eastern Slavs, (Old)Orthodox Slavic manuscripts, codicology, textology and palaeography, Byzantine and Orthodox Slavic literature, church history, religious polemics, old prints from the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was the co-author of a pioneering catalogue of Orthodox Slavonic manuscripts in Poland (Kraków 2002, 2004) and a commented bibliography of translations of Orthodox Slavonic texts into Polish (Lódź 2021). He is the author of 2 books, 9 edited scientific volumes and more than 60 articles published in national and foreign journals and collective volumes. He has been a participant and contractor in 13 international and Polish research grants and is a member of international networks and scientific societies (“Pax Byzantino-Slava”; Centre for Orthodox Studies - Центар за црквене студије, Niš; Waldemar Ceran Research Centre for the History and Culture of the Mediterranean Area and South-East Europe Ceraneum, Łódź). He is the academic editor of the series Krakow-Vilnius Slavonic Studies. Series on Slavic Antiquities (published by Institute of Slavonic Philology, JU), a member of several scientific councils, and collaborates with a number of scientific journals. 

For more information and a scientific bibliography:

http://www.ifs.filg.uj.edu.pl/jan-stradomski

https://jagiellonian.academia.edu/JanStradomski

Project description

The project aims to identify, digitise, describe, and popularise the English-language manuscript collections of the former Prussian State Library in Berlin held at the Jagiellonian Library. In addition to the work arising from the general objectives of the DiHeLib project, i.e. the detailed catalogue description and digitisation of the autographs, the project includes the identification of the historical and political context of each autograph and the biographical context of its authors. The identified and described autographs will thus become publicly available source materials for the study of the history and cultural history of the English language sphere of their time. The project involves the creation of two research groups: the first dealing with autographs related to Britain, the second - to the United States. To this purpose, researchers from St. Mary's University in Belfast and Salem State University in Salem, USA, have been invited to collaborate.

The results of the research will be published in two articles in peer-reviewed journals. The popularisation objectives of the project will be pursued through the organisation of exhibitions of selected manuscripts. The first of the exhibitions, presenting manuscripts relating to Ireland, took place in August 2023 at the Library of St. Mary's University College, Queens University, Belfast, and its digital version will soon be available on the partner universities' websites.

Presentation promoting the exhibition in Belfast

Research team

Dr habil. Władysław Witalisz, Prof. UJ, principal investigator

Dr Gerard McCann, Queens University, Belfast, UK

Elaine Mulholland, MA, Queens University, Belfast, UK

Dr Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh, Queens University, Belfast, UK

Dr Anna Paluchowska-Messing, Jagiellonian University

Dr Elizabeth Kenney, Salem State University, Salem, USA

Władysław Witalisz – English philologist, literary scholar, and medievalist. Dr habil. and Associate Professor at the Institute of English Studies of the Jagiellnian University, where he also received his PhD (1996) and habilitation (2011) in English Literature. His research interests include medieval drama and theatre, Shakespearean drama, chivalric romance and its political meanings, images of the Trojan War in the Middle Ages, medieval religious literature, English medieval mysticism, and medievalism in modern literature. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Philology at the Jagiellonian University (2020-2024).

Project description

The project titled 'Berlinka's Far Eastern collections at the Jagiellonian Library. Contents of the Chinese-language collections of the Libri sinici – a compilation and preliminary description in Chinese, Polish and English' aims to provide a comprehensive description of the sources in the collection under study. The identification of Chinese characters will serve as the foundation for the creation of a catalogue. This will initiate an extensive search for complete data on the texts collected in the Libri sinici collection. An analysis of their contents will determine which information is missing from various libraries and digital collections, such as the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin or the National Central Library of Taiwan in Taipei. The project aims to verify the availability of other copies in libraries and/or world museums, their presence in the literature, and their importance for Chinese-speaking cultural circles, in addition to working on the sources themselves. Collaboration with the National Library of Taiwan is planned for access to physical archives and digital resources. The in-depth critical knowledge thus developed, set in a historical and cultural context, will be of great value to sinological research, not only in Poland but also internationally.

Dr Sebastian Wielosz graduated from the Jagiellonian University with degrees in Japanology, Sinology, and General Linguistics. He has been employed at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Faculty of Philology since 2017. During his studies, he founded the Sinologists Research Circle and was its chair for three years. Since 2018, he has served as the scientific supervisor of the Circle. Together, they have organized several valuable events, including the student seminars “Jagiellonian Window on Chinese Language and Writing”, which were funded by the JU Excellence Initiative programme. He earned his PhD in linguistics with a dissertation entitled 'Aspect in Chinese: an analysis of aspectual grammems and semes', which was published as a monograph with the same title. The author's research interests lie in Sinological linguistics, specifically in the temporal system of Chinese, language structures, language acquisition, and selected psycholinguistic issues. In 2023, the author completed a research internship at Tsinghua National University in Taiwan. He has authored texts published in scientific journals and monographs, and delivered presentations at national and international conferences. He has also given several guest lectures at Taiwanese universities.

dr Sebastian Wielosz - absolwent Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego na kierunkach japonistyka, sinologia oraz językoznawstwo ogólne. Od 2017 roku jest zatrudniony w Instytucie Orientalistyki na Wydziale Filologicznym. W trakcie studiów był inicjatorem założenia Koła Naukowego Sinologów UJ, któremu trzy lata przewodniczył. Od 2018 roku jest opiekunem naukowym Koła, z którym zorganizował wiele wartościowych wydarzeń, m.in. seminaria studenckie "Jagiellońskie okno na język i pismo chińskie", dofinansowane z programu Inicjatywa Doskonałości UJ. Stopień doktora w dyscyplinie językoznawstwo uzyskał na podstawie rozprawy pod tytułem "Aspekt w języku chińskim: analiza gramemów i semów aspektowych", która została opublikowana w formie monografii o tym samym tytule. Jego zainteresowania badawcze skupiają się wokół językoznawstwa sinologicznego, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem systemu temporalnego języka chińskiego, struktur językowych i akwizycji języka, a także wybranych zagadnień psycholingwistycznych. W 2023 roku odbył staż badawczy w Narodowym Uniwersytecie Tsinghua na Tajwanie. Jest autorem tekstów publikowanych w czasopismach i monografiach naukowych oraz wystąpień na krajowych i międzynarodowych konferencjach naukowych. Wygłosił również kilka wykładów gościnnych na uczelniach tajwańskich.