The research visit of a Georgian historian
Irma Talakhadze is a professor of history from Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani University in Tbilisi, Georgia. She is realizing her three-month long research stay at our Faculty of Arts and Letters, Catholic University in Ruzomberok thanks to the generous support of the National Scholarship Program of the Slovak Republic.
She is the author of two books and several other publications focusing mainly on various aspects of religious orders, monasteries and monastic lifestyle. Her interest in religious orders and monasteries has been the main reason for her visit in Ruzomberok. Excellent resources of our university library allowed her to study several religious orders such as the Franciscans, the Premonstratensians and the Carthusians in order to compare them with the Georgian monastic reality.
Katherine Mansfield: Inspirations and Influences
During the first weekend of July, an annual international conference of the Katherine Mansfield society, this time entitled Katherine Mansfield: Inspirations and Influences, was held at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Catholic University in Ružomberok, Slovakia was one of the main organizers of the event that welcomed a large variety of scholars from all over the world, including such remote places as New Zealand, Thailand or China.
Apart from cutting edge scholarship offering new insights into the life and works of the New Zealand modernist short story writer, the conference was also enriched by a cello and piano concert featuring music known to or played by Katherine Mansfield and a pre-premiere of “Vera”, a film adaptation of Mansfield’s short story “A Dill Pickle” using up-and-coming volumetric film technology which enables the viewers to walk inside the film, watching it from any perspective. The conference was a resounding success, once again demonstrating the dedication and brilliance of this very vibrant community of scholars.
Summer school in Gubbio
From 8 to 12 July 2019, we had the opportunity to attend a summer school in Gubbio, Italy, organized by the Federation of European Catholic Universities (FUCE). It was a program for the students of Catholic universities with focus on European values. The theme of the first year of the summer school (hosted by LUMSA) was called European humanism in the making.
The summer school program consisted of private and public lectures prepared by representatives of several universities. They divided the theme of European humanism into several sub-themes: Contribution of History to European Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Translation and European identity, Science, Technology and the Challenges of Humanism in Europe, European Social Humanism, Governance, Democracy and Civic Engagement. The program also included workshops on the topics as well as an afternoon trip to Assisi, where we had the opportunity to visit the Basilica of St. Francis and Basilica of St. Clare.
Research Supported by the Visegrad Fund
During the academic year 2018/2019 two teachers from the Uzhhorod National University in Uzhhorod had opportunity to realize their research visits at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, Catholic University in Ruzomberok.
Over the last ten months, a historian Iurii Danylets and a political scientist Nadiia Kitchera carried out intensive examinations of their research topics which are related to the Visegrad area.