About
The Center for Hellenic Traditions (CHT) promotes Hellenic Studies at Central European University (CEU), in Budapest, the region and beyond. The CHT defines “Hellenic” in inclusive terms encouraging interdisciplinary and transcultural approaches to research and teaching. With a focus on the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus region, Central Asia, India and North Africa from classical to modern times – placing special emphasis on the Hellenistic empires, the “Byzantine Commonwealth,” and their respective successor cultures and states –, it traces elements of Hellenic culture far beyond a Europe-centric approach.
In terms of research, making use of CEU’s strengths in the social and cultural sciences, the CHT encourages the constant rethinking, and provocative transgression, of existing disciplinary and established or perceived spatial/chronological boundaries and classifications; the questioning of transmitted orthodoxies and heterodoxies; the privileging of hitherto marginalized texts and source materials.
In terms of teaching, it strives to provide innovative accesses to the cultures, philosophies and religions of the target periods and cultures, with constant reference to their multifaceted cross-relations as well as present-day geopolitical structures. Hellenic Studies played an important rôle in the shaping of western national identities; studying these traditions helps understand the historical background of our intricately interconnected, globalized world.
Exploiting CEU’s location on the fringes of the formerly Byzantine and Ottoman worlds and Hungary’s proximity to present-day Orthodoxy, the CHT is placed in an ideal location to build bridges connecting the shared pasts of those peoples and cultural spheres to which CEU’s mission is directed – especially in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus region, Central Asia and Northern Africa – with the contemporary world. This mission, reflected in the composition of our student community, allows the CHT to take an almost unique vantage point on the eastern face of Hellenism, meeting the academic traditions of those countries at eye-level and in mutual and open cooperation.
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Current activities of CHT
• Digitization of Syriac manuscripts in Southern India (in collaboration with the Oriental Institute of Eberhard-Karls University Tübingen)
• Hellenic Colloquia Series
• Workshops
• Co-ordinating international interdisciplinary research projects
• Fellowships
• Book publications
• Setting up a specialized collection in CEU
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