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Written Traces of Contact in Medieval Greenland and Sápmi (1000-1550)

Medieval Greenland and the north of Fennoscandia (Sápmi) share a very interesting feature, namely the existence of people who, at least partly, did not become Christians until after the reformation. This is the case even though Christians lived in rather close proximity. Therefore, my research focuses on two main questions: How did the coexistence of Christian and non-Christian groups, namely Saami and Proto-Inuit, look like in the Middle Ages? How where non-Christians perceived, and what influence did these views have on the interaction between them and Christians?

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

“A poet in Russia is more than a poet”. The New Generation of the Thaw as Stylistic Group: A Case Study

The process of de-Stalinization made it finally possible for Soviet culture to start to free itself from a heavily censored and ideologically contained creative production, even if only partially. Inside this complex literary surrounding, a new group of poets emerged: Evgeny Evtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina and Robert Rozhdestvensky were extremely young and at the very beginning of their careers, and therefore extremely receptive to all the changes and new possibilities of this decade.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

Pandemic Role Models, Negative Pioneers and World Champions. The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Journalistic Spatial Narratives for the Cases of Sweden and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

This project focused on the corona pandemic as a turning point for public narratives about the Baltic Sea Region. Based on a corpus of German newspaper articles covering the pandemic, it investigated how the public perception of Sweden and the federal state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has changed under the influence of the current crisis.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

Health as a Happy Ending? Potentials of a Narratological Interpretation of the Concept of Disease Using the Example of the Conceptions of Disease and Health before and after the Accession of the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany

The project contributes to the philosophical research on the concepts of health and disease systematically as well as historically. The application of the narratological concept of peripety to the interpretation of ‘disease’ aims at extending and clarifying the complex medico-philosophical debate. Viewing definitions of disease as instances of peripeties enables me to craft a heuristic that is adequate to analyse these definitions with regard to their underlying narrativity. That way recently developed narratological approaches that are gaining popularity within the field of medical humanities are put in relation with the broader philosophical debate.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

The Flow of Time. The Alta-Controversy as a Historical Turning Point

In 1970 the Norwegian government publicly announced plans for a monumental dam and hydropower-station located in the far north of the country. The Sámi minority played an important role in the numerous oppositional movements formed against these plans. The Alta-saken was a definite turning point in the history of the indigenous Sámi-population in northern Europe. Drawing on Jurij Lotman’s work, I analyse the narrative construction of this crucial event to explain the cultural negations surrounding the Alta-river.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

Adaptation – Konstruktion – Narration. Untersuchungen zur finnischen Musikfachsprache aus historischer, struktureller und diskurslinguistischer Perspektive

In the Finnish special language of music, specifically ‘Finnish’ linguistic characteristics and elements are mixed and/or interfere with ‘translated’ features and terminology (prominently of German origin). The resulting special language with its subdivisions (minilects) is not merely a technical language or LSP, but it reflects the cultural narratives related to the meaning of (classical) music as a core element of the Finnish national self-image.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

Forging Identities for City and Nation: Analyzing Selected Museal Depictions of the Kresy Expulsions in Present-day Wrocław

The project examines the museal representations of the 1944-1955 expulsions of Poles from the former eastern Polish borderlands in the city of Wrocław (formerly Breslau). The objective of the thesis is not to discuss the forced removal and resettlement itself, but rather to investigate how collective memories of the event are being expressed in the present, cultivating ideas of identity representative operating at both regional and national levels.

- Olga Syrova, 18.11.2025