The Representation of Jews and Judaism in Middle Byzantine Hagiography
Niels De Ridder's doctoral project focuses on the presentation of Jews and Judaism in Middle Byzantine hagiography and its implications for the formation of Orthodox Christian identity. The research aims to address three main questions: the portrayal of Jews as the Other, the question of whether Jews can be converted, and the place of converts in Christian society. De Ridder analyses a diverse corpus of hagiographical texts from the eighth to eleventh centuries, also taking into account the political context of the period. The goal of this project is to fill a gap in the understanding of Jewish-Christian relations and the reception of Byzantine imperial policies of conversion.
Professional Biography
Niels De Ridder obtained his MA in Classics at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 2019 with a thesis for which he edited a Judaeo-Greek-Aramaic-Hebrew Glossary from the Vatican Library, which earned him the 2020 IKS/Lectio Award for best Master thesis in Classics. This research was eventually published in the Journal of Jewish Studies. Niels began his doctoral research in 2019 in the framework of a collaboration between KU Leuven and the University of Cologne. For the first two years of his doctorate he worked at KU Leuven and then relocated to the University of Cologne until February of 2023, after which he returned to Leuven. His research in Germany was made possible by a DAAD scholarship, and currently he is being supported by the FWO as a PhD fellow in the period of 2021 to 2025.