3rd ERC Grant at Institute of Mediterranean Studies!

Dr Yuliana Boycheva has earned a European Research Council Consolidator Grant (H2020-ERC-COG-2018) with the project RICONTRANS: Visual Culture, Piety and Propaganda: Transfer and Reception of Russian Religious Art in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean (16th-early 20th).

The Russian religious artefacts (icons and ecclesiastical furnishings), held in museums, church or monastery collections in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean, constitute a body of valuable monuments hitherto largely neglected by historians and historians of art. These objects acquire various interrelated religious/ideological, political and aesthetic meanings, value and uses. Their transfer and receptionconstitutes a significant component of the wider process of transformation of the artistic language and visual culture in the region, and its transition from medieval to modern idioms. It is at the same time a process reflecting the changing cultural and political relations between Russia and the Orthodox communities in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in the Balkans over a long period of time (16th- early 20th century). In this dynamic transfer, piety, propaganda and visual culture appear intertwined in historically unexplored and theoretically provoking ways.

Applying the cultural transfer approach in combination with the recent challenging openings of art history to visual studies and social anthropology, RICONTRANS aims: to map the phenomenon in its long history by identifying preserved objects in the region; to follow the paths and identify the mediums of this transfer; to analyze the moving factors of this process; to study and classify these objects according to their iconographic and artistic particularities; to inquire into the aesthetic, ideological, political and social factors which shaped the context of the reception of Russian religious art objects in various social and cultural environments; to investigate the influence of these transferred artefacts on the visual culture of the host societies.

The research team includes researchers, post-doctoral fellows, PhD and M.A. students from Research institutions and Universities in Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, France and Germany.

Short biographical note

Dr Yuliana Boycheva was born in Sofia (Bulgaria) in 1969. She studied History of Art at Lomonosov Moscow State University (1987-1992). In 2003 she obtained her PhD thesis at the Institute of Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences ("Aeres and Epitaphioi from Bulgarian Churches and Museums (XIV-XVII centuries). Function, Iconography, Style"), where she worked as a researcher at the Department of Medieval Bulgarian Art at from 1997 until 2010.

She has been collaborating with the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of FORTH since 2012.

In 2012-2015, she carried out the research project "Russian icons in Greece, 15th-20th c." as Postdoctoral researcher in the framework of the Action "Support of Postdoctoral Researcher" of the Greek General Secretariat for Research and Technology (NSRF 2007-2013).

In 2016-2017 she continued her cooperation with FORTH-IMS as Collaborating Researcher, curating (with Dr A. Drandaki) the exhibition "Religious art from Russia to Greece: 16th - 19th c." and coordinating the international symposium "Russian religious art in the Orthodox East: politics, art and technology" (December 15-16, 2017, Benaki Museum), both realized through cooperation between FORTH-IMS- and the Benaki Museum of Athens.

She is a member of the Christian Archaeological Society (XAE), Greece. She has published more than twenty articles and chapters in journals and collective volumes, and has edited exhibition catalogues and a collective volume.

https://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/erc_2018_cog_results_sh.pdf

Dr Yuliana Boycheva
Collaborating Researcher
Institute for Mediterranean Studies
Foundation of Research and Technology - Hellas
Melissinou & Nikiforou Foka 130,
P.O. Box. 119
Rethymno 74100, Crete, Greece
Tel.: (+30) 28310 25146, 56627, Fax: (+30) 28310 25810
email: julyb1205@gmail.com