A graduate of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” (BA in Philosophy) and Central European University (MA and PhD in Medieval Studies), Divna Manolova held pre- and postdoctoral positions at Dumbarton Oaks, the Research Center for Anatolian Civilisations, Brown University, New Europe College, and the University of Bucharest. She was the principal investigator of Polymathy and Intellectual Curiosity in Byzantine Discourses of Science and Philosophy (13th–15th Centuries), a Marie Skłodowska-Curie/POLONEZ project at the University of Silesia in Katowice (2016–2018). Most recently, Divna was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2018–2022) at the Centre for Medieval Literature (University of York and University of Southern Denmark) where she worked on a monograph dedicated to theories of space and dimensionality in Byzantine cosmological and astronomical texts and diagrams. At the MPIWG, Divna is a member of the Visualization and Material Cultures of the Heavens in Eurasia and North Africa (4000 BCE–1700 CE) Working Group in Department III. Her current research focuses on lunar astronomy and diagrammatic representations in Byzantine and medieval Slavonic manuscripts. Divna taught medieval intellectual history at Sofia University and at CEU, and history of medieval science at the University of York where she was awarded with the Making the Difference teaching award (2021). Her latest publication Figures and Mirrors in Demetrios Triklinios’s ‘Selenography’ discusses the role of astronomical diagrams and the theories of vision and mirroring that underline them. Together with Baukje van den Berg and Przemysław Marciniak, Divna co-edited Byzantine Commentaries on Ancient Greek Texts (12th–15th Centuries) (Cambridge University Press, 2022). With colleagues from the Universities of Sofia and Veliko Tarnovo, she organizes the History of Science in the Medieval World Summer School whose pilot edition will take place in July 2022.
