Masterclass: Meet the panelists

12.05.2016

Five PhD candidates from the Nordic countries have been selected to partake in a Masterclass with Holberg Laureate Stephen Greenblatt during the Holberg week 6-9 June.

Five PhD sandidates were chosen from among 20 strong applicants to take part in a Masterclass with 2016 Holberg Laureate Stephen Greenblatt. The topic for discussion in this year's Masterclass is origin stories. 

These are the panelists: 

Mark Hau_justert.jpgMark Friis Hau from Aarhus University. Age: 28.

«My work centers on why (and how) specific humans have constructed particular accounts of their earliest beginnings; I study not the origin of people, but the origin of a people. A Masteclass with Professor Greenblatt will greatly illuminate the universal, human aspects of orgin myths - hopefully inspiring my research in exciting, new directions.»

Mark Hau is a PhD candidate in European Studies at Aarhus University, researching the interplay between national and European identities in the stateless nations of Scotland and Catalonia. A political anthropologist, he has done ethnographic fieldwork in Barcelona among members of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, as well as in Scotland with the Scottish National Party.

 

Tirosh.JPGYoav Tirosh from the University of Iceland. Age: 30

«The way we talk of our beginnings has more to do with our present than we usually realize, and I am excited to explore this notion more in depth.»

Yoav finished a B.A. in History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and afterwards moved to Iceland for M.A. and Ph.D studies in Old Icelandic literature, under the supervision of Prof. Ármann Jakobsson. Yoav's main scholarly interests lie in the study of cultural memory and genre, and his Ph.D project tackles these issues in the context of the extant medieval manuscripts of the Old Icelandic Ljósvetninga saga.

 

Godeline Perk_mellombels.jpgGodeline Gertrude Perk from Umeå University. Age: 30

«Being intrigued by every “In the beginning” and “once upon a time”, I cannot wait to discuss the stories humanity tells of itself.»

Godeline Perk describes herself as a bookworm from the Netherlands and a PhD student in English literature at Umeå University (northern Sweden). Many topics and literary genres fascinate her; her research, however, is about the first English woman author, Julian of Norwich (c. 1342- after 1416), studied within the frameworks of narratology and medieval vernacular literary theory.

 

Carlos_justert.jpgCarlos Hernández Garcés from the University of Oslo. Age: 36

«A magnificent opportunity to come to grips with the thorny question of origin stories under the guidance of Stephen Greenblatt.»

Carlos Hernández Garcés studied Classics at the Autonomous University (Madrid) and Archaeology at the University of Alcalá (Alcalá de Henares) from 2004 till 2011. As archaeologist, he has worked over long periods of time in Ireland, Spain and Greece, where in recent years he has regularly taken part in two of the ongoing projects of the Norwegian Institute at Athens. As philologist, he gathered experience drawing up lemmata for the Greek-Spanish Legal Byzantine Lexicon from 2010 till 2012, and since 2013 he has carried out his work at the University of Oslo, initially as research assistant preparing lemmata within the Medicalia Online project and currently as PhD student in Greek. The focus of his project is on the perception of time and the interrelated mechanisms of memory and history in shaping collective identity as witnessed in Herodotus’ Histories.

 

Panu Heimonen_mellombels.jpgPanu Heimonen from the University of Helsinki. Age: 54

«Origin of the good and evil are to be found in great music and literature.»

Panu Heimonen has been educated at the Sibelius-Academy (MA, Music theory and analysis) and the University of Helsinki (MA, Musicology, Philosophy). At present he pursues doctoral studies at the University of Helsinki. His research centres on music analysis and narrative theory with applications to various musical contexts, including musical performance. He has special interest in bringing together narrative ways of analysing music with traditional music analytical techniques such as Schenkerian analysis and musical Formenlehre. Besides the music of F Liszt he works on music analytical and narratological questions as they relate to first movement concerto form in WA Mozart’s piano concertos. He has published in the journal Res Facta Nova (“Concerto Questions”). His other research interests include intertextuality in music analysis.