The Faculty of History, Oxford University is seeking to appoint two postdoctoral researchers, in Greek and Syriac, from 1 April 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter to work on the project ‘The Cult of Saints: a christendom-wide study of its origins, spread and development’, directed by Dr Bryan Ward-Perkins and funded by a €2.3 million ERC Advanced Grant (2014-18). The project, based in Oxford, Reading and Warsaw, will investigate the origins and development of the cult of Christian saints, gathering all the evidence that is available on the cult, from its origins until around AD 700, across all the languages of early Christianity that have left evidence from this period (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Greek and Latin). The project will employ six postdoctoral researchers in producing a series of monographs and a freely-available searchable database of the evidence for the cult of saints, with English translations of texts and full reference to relevant scholarly work. During the project, two workshops will be held with expert scholars from across Europe, in particular to test the effectiveness of the nascent database, and a major international conference will take place.
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