Prof. Dr. Istvan Perczel
Associated Researcher JewsEast, KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2012Associated Researcher JewsEast, KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2012, Professor of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Studies, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
István Perczel joined the faculty of the Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University as an Assistant Professor in 1994 and became an Associate Professor in 1998. In 2007, he was promoted to Full Professor of Byzantine and Eastern Christian Studies. During his time at Central European University he received several fellowships in Germany, Greece, Italy, in the US and in Israel. Furthermore, he taught as a Visiting Professor in Paris at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1995 and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2004 and 2010. In 2004 he and his colleagues founded the Center for the Hellenic Traditions at Central European University, which was renamed Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies in 2010. Between 2005 and 2009, while on research leave from his university, he served as Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of Tübingen University, directing a five-year field work in Kerala for surveying, digitizing and cataloguing the manuscript libraries of the Saint Thomas Christians. In India, together with others, in 2007 he also founded a local NGO, the Association for the Preservation of the Saint Thomas Christian Heritage, which is carrying on the work and has become a major agency for archival preservation.
István Perczel has specialised in Late Antique and Byzantine Intellectual History and Eastern Christian Studies, especially in the History of Indian Christianity. During his stay in Bochum he would focus on Syriac and Malayalam sources found in India about the period of the early Portuguese missions during the 16th and 17th century. Furthermore, he would proceed with the cataloguing of over 1000 Syriac and Garshuni Malayalam manuscripts digitized during the field work and the publication and translation of some important new texts.
Education
Ph.D., Religious Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 1995
KHK Fellowship
Duration: April 2012 - March 2013
Project: Syriac and Malayalam sources found in India about the period of the early Portuguese missions during the 16th and 17th century.
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