New Faces at CSMC

2 November 2022

Photo: CSMC

At the beginning of November, we welcome new project leaders, research associates, and visiting researchers at CSMC.

Thomas Asselborn has joined the Cluster as a new Research Associate. Based at Universität Lübeck, he is now involved in ‘Data Linking’ (Research Field F), and more specifically in the project ‘Data Linking Infrastructure – Foundations and Architecture’.

*

Xiaomeng He, a member of our Graduate School where she completed her PhD dissertation with the title ‘A Study on the Nature and Function of Qin Ordinances in the Manuscript Collection of the Yuelu Academy’, will take up the role of Principal Investigator of the project ‘Local Archives and Administrative Practices of Eastern Han China: Discarded Documents in Ancient Wells and Storage Pits’ (RFE15).

*

Dirbwork Bitsu Kassa is a new Research Associate at CSMC. Supervised by Alessandro Bausi, she will pursue a PhD project with the title ‘Archival Practice and Conservation Methods in Ethiopian Manuscript Tradition: Focusing on Walatta ṗeṭǝros Monastery in Gojjam’. Previously, she completed her MA in Manuscript Studies at our Graduate School.

*

Anastasia Poliakova joins the Cluster as a Research Associate on the project ‘Paleogenomic Studies of Written Artefacts of Different Origin’ (RFA04), led by Markus Fischer. Before coming to Hamburg, she completed her PhD project with the title ‘Vegetation, climate, fire dynamics and human impacts in Java and southern Kalimantan inferred from pollen, spore and charcoal deposits in the Java Sea during the late Holocene’ at Universität Göttingen and pursued independent research in archaeobotany and palaeoecology.

*

Sowmeya Sathiyamani joins the Cluster as a Research Associate on the project ‘The Scribe’s Choice: Writing Supports in Arabic Documents of the Early Islamic Centuries’ (RFK01), led by Claudia Colini. Before coming to Hamburg, she completed a BA and an MA in Chemistry at the University of Delhi, where she specialised in Physical Chemistry.

*

Philippa Sissis is back at CSMC, where she is now the Principal Investigator of the project ‘Echoes and Inscriptions – Art and Script in the Works of Artists in the Black Atlantic’ (RFC09). In 2020, she completed her PhD at our Graduate School with her dissertation ‘Seeing Script? The Visual Aesthetics of Early Humanist Manuscripts’. Since then, she has been a postdoctoral research fellow at Technische Universität Berlin and held research scholarships at Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris and Thyssen Foundation.

*

Anna Steffen is a new Research Associate at CSMC. Supervised by Konrad Hirschler, she will pursue a PhD project with the title ‘Traces of Polycentric Archival Practices in the Ḥaram al-Sharīf Corpus’. Previously, she completed an MA in Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin where she wrote her dissertation on ‘Spuren archivalischer Praxis im Ḥaram al-Sharīf Korpus’.

*

Maanasa Visweswaran will join the Cluster as a doctoral student: she will be a Research Associate on the project ‘The Use of Grantha Script in Classical Tamil Manuscripts’ (RFH03), led by Eva Wilden. She has completed her MA in Indology and Tibetology at Universität Hamburg, where she wrote her dissertation on ‘Annotated translation of the Tirumurukārruppaṭai, and a study of the streams of influence from Sanskrit texts’

*.

Tomás Fernández joins CSMC as a visiting researcher from 1 to 30 November. He is a Professor of Classics at the University of Buenos Aires. While in Hamburg, he will participate in the workshop ‘Identifying Models and Copies on the Basis of Material Evidence’ (10-11 November) and work together with Christian Brockmann and José Maksimczuk.