Deutsch Intern
  • Extracts from magical texts in antiquity (Greek, Hieratic, Demotic, Akkadian): British Library P 122; British Museum P Chester Beatty 7 and P Leiden/London, British Museum BM 34065
DFG Centre for Advanced Studies MagEIA

Fellows Programme

The Fellows Programme is one of the corner stones of the MagEIA Centre. By working with changing cohorts of international experts, MagEIA will be enabled to include a representative range of texts and traditions, including ancient Anatolia and Syria, Greco-Roman antiquity, ancient Iran, and early Judaism. Fellows coming from a range of disciplines enrich MagEIA's discourse (sometimes in unpredictable ways) by contributing different research designs, theoretical perspectives, and disciplinary cultures. At the same time, the comparative compactness of the group ensures a collaborative and source-oriented research culture. In this way, MagEIA will develop methods of textual analysis and models of cross-cultural comparison that will not only enrich the study of magic in antiquity, but also stimulate research on the dissemination of knowledge and the transmission of texts in West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean from the third millennium BCE to Late Antiquity.

The diversity of the ancient evidence on magic alone requires a research group in the format of an interdisciplinary centre. In MagEIA, three Würzburg core teams in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Egyptology, and Comparative Philology work closely together with changing groups of fellows, who help shape the research agenda from their disciplinary perspective and with their respective expertise. In this way, the MagEIA Fellows Programme creates an interdisciplinary, international research cluster with lasting collaborations.

Usually four Fellows work with us at any time, namely two Senior and two Junior Fellows, who stay for periods between six and twelve months. The Fellows are selected by the PIs in consultation with the MagEIA Advisory Board. After their stay, the Fellows remain in contact with the Würzburg group as Alumni Fellows and participate in the annual MagEIA symposium.

The Fellows contribute their expertise, their own projects, and research questions to the three Research Areas (RA) of MagEIA: "Texts", "Language" and "Annotation". In RA1, the focus is on the edition and interpretation of texts and their contexts. RA2 deals first with emic terminologies in the context of the global theme Language of Magic. In RA3, the Comparative Philology team is developing a model for the linguistic and contextual annotation of magical texts in close cooperation with the other members of the Centre.

An essential bracket of the cooperation is the planned MagEIA Handbook of Magic in the Ancient World. All members of MagEIA will contribute to this handbook. The handbook is not intended to be a conventional collection of essays on ancient magic with individual contributions placed additively next to each other. Rather, it brings together authors who have collaborated intensively and agreed on a common research paradigm.

Colleagues who would like to become Fellows of the MagEIA Centre can find more information on the Fellowship Information page.