On the 24th-25th May 2024, our team member Lev Shadrin took part in the 2nd International Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Graduate Conference, co-organized by the University of Vienna and Central European University.
Researchers focused on a variety of topics, from decolonizing Byzantine history to exploring non-Constantinopolitan narratives and the role of Byzantium in contemporary art and popular media. The keynote lectures by Dr. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller and Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Agapitos set the frame for the overarching discussion, providing insights into ambitious research projects seeking to challenge the canonical perception of Byzantine literature, or offer new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of medieval calamities such as famines or plagues.
In his talk, “The Use of Greek in Karl Benedikt Hase’s ‘Secret Diary’” Lev had the opportunity to introduce his on-going work in the LAGOOS project, highlighting the extensive use of code-switching, transliteration, and inventive neologisms throughout the daily entries. Lev also discussed the benefits and drawbacks of digital tools utilised for text recognition and the creation of relational databases to manage the extensive named entities in the diaries. This detailed linguistic analysis not only provided new perspectives on Hase’s work but also emphasized the importance of digital approaches in studying multilingual sources in under-represented languages.
LAGOOS [λαγωoς] 