Dr. András Handl

András is SNSF Swiss Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Historical Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bern and Honorary Research Fellow at the History of Church and Theology Research Unit, Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies, KU Leuven, Belgium.
He currently works on religious aspects of migration and mobility to the city of Rome in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Previously, he explored religious violence towards ‘materilialized sacred’ for which he was awarded a Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). He is also initator and PI of an international and interdisciplinary research consortium (re)examining the Hippolytus-statue, the earliest known Christian(ised) free-standing three-dimensional sculpture. The project is funded by the FWO and carried out in cooperation with the Vatican Apostolic Library.
In his previous project, he worked on the Late Antique reception of the famous biblical story ‘Jesus and the Woman Taken in Adultery’ in literature and art, for which he was awarded a prestigeous and highly competative FWO [PEGASUS]² Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellowship. For the development of methodology to study of social stratification in the catacombs of Rome, he succesfully aquired funding from the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, Anérstiftelsen and Hagendals Minnesfond. Prior to that, he held scholarships of the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst for his PhD (2008-2012) and graduate studies (2003-2007), and received support from the Lutheran World Federation (2000-2002). His thesis on Bishop Damasus and the refurbishment of the tombs of martyrs in the Catacombs of Saint Callixtus in Rome was the winner of the annual Kurt-Nowak-Preis of the Universität Leipzig (2007).
Over the years, András has conducted research at several renowned institutions in Europe. During his fellowships at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (2022 and 2023), and at the Medieval Department of the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest (2021), he worked on migration processes to the city of Rome in Late Antiquity. As a researcher in residence at the Accademia d’Ungheria – Palazzo Falconieri in Rome (2017) and at the Svenska Institutet i Rom (2014), he reconstructed the development and dissemination of bishop Callixtus’ cult in Rome and across Europe until the high Middle Ages. Previously, he was visiting doctoral researcher at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome (2011) and at the Institute of Classical Studies, SAS, University of London (2009), where he worked on various aspects of his doctoral project.
András read protestant theology, Christian archaeology and journalism at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Budapest (Hungary), at the University of Erlangen and Leipzig (Germany) as well as at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology and Facultà Valdese in Rome (Italy). He earned his PhD at the University of Basel (Switzerland) in 2015 with a dissertation on Bishop Calixtus I. of Rome (217?-222?) and his controversy with the Author of the Refutatio omnium haeresium. He is a member of several learned societies and national correspondet of International Association of Patristic Studies.
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