The proposed interdisciplinary research project aims to investigate the social and economic relations that influenced the structure of the communal life of Jews and Samaritans in the Byzantine empire. It will recover a neglected area of history, and contribute to the study of minorities within larger political structures. I aim to establish the place Jews and Samaritans occupied in the stratigraphy of Byzantine society and how the social and political changes in this society influenced their communal life. The scope of the project is defined temporally and spatially. It is proposed to begin in the fourth century and end in the eighth century. This will allow the inclusion of the widest possible selection of epigraphical, literary and archaeological sources. Geographically, the project will include the areas of the Balkans, the Aegean and Asia Minor. The proposed end-date of my project takes into account the limitation of evidence for Jews and Samaritans in the areas already mentioned for the period of the ninth century until the eleventh century. The geographical scope has been defined by the evidence from the areas concerned, which is less studied and requires a new investigation and analysis.
The project seeks to understand and explain the ways in which return migration of health professionals affects the transformations of medical practice at an individual and at a systemic level. The particular focus is on returning medical specialists in the field of prenatal, natal, and neonatal care. The research will use a mixed-methods approach integrating qualitative in-depth interviews with health professionals and various actors in their networks, and policy analysis of the institutional framework. Drawing on the concept of medical habitus, the project formulates the hypothesis that return migration creates the potential for transformations in the medical practices by exposing mobile professionals to alternative medical systems and modes of practice. It thus aims to examine the role of returning health professionals as drivers of change, for the advancement of knowledge transfer and improvement of health systems at home. Given this research agenda, the project will examine three interrelated questions: How do returning health professionals experience and asses differences in medical practices and health systems? How do health professionals re-integrate in their home health systems and what kind of networks do they build? What transformative steps do returning health professionals take to advance medical knowledge and practice in their home countries?
This is a project that will help for the development of a new course at the MA program of "Interpretative Anthropology" at the Faculty of Slavic Studies at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. The aim of the course is to initiate reflection in the MA students on Bulgarian culture of the 19th c. from the perspective of history of emotions. It will be an obligatory course, held in Bulgarian every fall semester of the academic year, starting from 2017/2018. Its design and goals are in accordance with the conceptual framework of the whole MA program to provide multidisciplinary methodological keys for interpretation of anthropological phenomena.
This project engages the cold war order of the 1970s through the experiences of a small state, Bulgaria, on the global cultural scene. Using cultural exchange as a lens, I detail Bulgarian policies at home and abroad to explore the importance of cultural diplomacy during a period of profound worldwide reorganization. By studying the unlikely encounters that emerged through culture, I show that the complex transformation of the cold war order in 1970s was not only the result of superpower dynamics. As contacts between East and West increased and the developing countries gained prominence, new opportunities arose for small states to interact globally and influence world affairs. Culture provided one successful strategy for shaping the global order through active engagement with a range of actors in the First, Second, and Third Worlds. In an unexpected twist, cold war cultural exchange became an aspect of contemporary cultural globalization.
The project proposes to develop an educational board game for teaching higher order thinking skills (critical, metacognitive and creative thinking) and social skills (effective communication, confidence, leadership, teamwork) through the close reading of literary texts. The game will not be limited to one particular literary work, genre or approach – it will provide an expandable toolkit of analytical instruments, applicable to any literary text. Moreover, the game will not be limited to one particular level of instruction – the target audience of the project are university students, but it will also be possible to use with secondary school students and people outside the educational system.
The project is based on two major premises. First, traditional passive, content-based, teacher-dominated, individualistic forms of learning need to be counterbalanced by active, inquiry-based, student-centred, collaborative forms of learning. Second, the sense of freedom and enjoyment associated with play and games holds an enormous potential for enhancing learning and student engagement, which remains unused in higher levels of education.
Within the framework of the project the game will be created, tested in the classroom, its pedagogical effects will be measured and discussed in a research publication, and a model for assessing student participation will be proposed.