From 10 to 15 January 2026, Marko Dorosh, a PhD student at Paris-Lodron University of Salzburg, was a guest at the Deparment of Old Testament Studies at the University of Bonn as part of an Erasmus+ exchange. In the following, he kindly provides an insight into the reasons behind his visit and the individual activities during his time in Bonn:
The new year 2026 has started very productively for me, as I had a chance to visit the University of Bonn as an Erasmus fellow between 10 and 15 January. My main aim was to meet the team of Dr. Kirsten Schäfers and join her doctoral seminar (Oberseminar). I was recommended to contact Dr. Schäfers by her colleague Prof. Katharina Pyschny from the University of Graz, with whom I used to work at the EABS Committee. I also had a chance to meet her during my stay at the PTH Sankt Georgen in Frankfurt.
Before my arrival to Bonn, the local team has prepared a plan of the lectures and other events I would be able to attend. The lectures on the OT reception in anthropology and the messianism in the OT were not only interesting but also academically helpful. While messianism is a topic known to me, anthropological dimensions of the OT and its comparison with various modern theories present a completely new topic. I must admit, I need a bit more background to fully comprehend it. The key lecture I have attended in Bonn was the doctoral seminar (Oberseminar), which this time was dedicated to ambiguities in the book of Genesis. Through this lecture, I did not only learn new aspects of the patriarchal history but also hope to be able to apply the concepts of ambiguity/ambiguation presented by the speaker in my own research on the book of Nehemiah. It was a special pleasure for me to have been able to present my research to Kirsten Schäfers personally during a private meeting. Not only did we have a nice talk and a productive academic exchange, but I also got familiarised with a few works which might facilitate the methodology of my research. Finally, I was able to use an office at the university to work on my dissertation but even more on the organisational matters of the EABS Graduate Symposium, which I am co-organising.
A few words need to be said about the city of Bonn. As a keen tourist and city wanderer, I arrived a day earlier with an aim to explore the city. I had a nice quite walk around the city centre, where I visited the basilica, the birth house of Ludwig van Beethoven and some other churches. It was a question of honour for me to visit the Greek Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (Agia Trias) on the other side of the Rhine, a place with short but eventful history and the centre of the Greek Metropolis of Germany. With the local team, we also visited the House of History, a place where the post-WW2 history of Germany is told in personal stories and artifacts. I can say that I now know more about the modern German history than before. As one of my hobbies is liturgy and learning about different rites, it was a pleasure for me to attend an Old Catholic mass and a Catholic requiem. Finally, as I am also a foody person, I was extremely happy to join the faculty members at a local restaurant tasting very unhealthy but amazingly tasty potato cakes from the region.
In conclusion, I would like to stress that my Erasmus fellowship at the University of Bonn between 10 and 15 January 2026 was of much help on both academic and personal levels. I thank profoundly Dr. Kirsten Schäfers for supporting my idea to come to Bonn and meeting me there with an open heart and great hospitality, both academic and especially personal. I would also like to confer my gratitude to the members of her team, Dominik Schlauß for his constant support and for showing me around the House of History as well as Katharina Orth for her assistance during the lectures. I shall remember my days in Bonn as a short but meaningful stay.