The President and Fellows of the Institute are pleased to announce the election of new Mellon Fellows for the academic year 2009–2010, as well as Licence candidates, and research fellows. Those new to the Institute and to Toronto, may wish to consult "Orientations: A Guide for Visiting Fellows" elsewhere on this site.

Helen Birkett
(Mellon Fellow; LMS Candidate) earned her doctorate from the University of York in 2009 with a dissertation on "The Hagiographical Writings of Jocelin of Furness: Text and Context." She is an active participant in the International Medieval Congress and will present "Monks, laybrothers, and laymen: status and sanctity in the Vita S. Waldevi" at the July 2009 session. As a Mellon Fellow, Dr. Birkett will research "visionary narratives and their dissemination in the late twelfth- and early thirteenth- century British Isles."

Stephan Dusil
(Research Fellow, until December 2009) earned his doctorate in 2005 from the University of Frankfurt am Main, with a dissertation on late medieval town law. His thesis were published by Böhlau in 2007 under the title Die Soester Stadtrechtsfamilie. Mittelalterliche Quellen und neuzeitliche Historiographie. He has also published several articles and encyclopedic entries on medieval law as well as on German civil law. A Mellon Fellow and LMS candidate in 2008/2009, he will continuing working on his Habilitations-project on pre-Gratian canon law at PIMS this year.

Robert Getz
(Mellon Fellow; LMS Candidate) received his doctorate from the University of Toronto in 2008 with a dissertation on "Four Blickling Homilies." He has taught Latin for four years at the Centre for Medieval Studies and is currently a research assistant on the Becket Project at the University of Toronto. Further work on the Blickling Homilies constitutes the core of his research as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute.

Stephanie Hayes-Healy
(Mellon Fellow; LMS Candidate) earned her doctorate in 2006 from Trinity College, Dublin, with a dissertation on "The Concept and Practice of Pilgrimage in Early Medieval Ireland." From 2006 to 2008 she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Mount Holyoke College, and is currently history tutor and occasional lecturer in history at Oxford University. Dr Hayes-Healy will explore the topic "Jerome, the Vulgate and Peregrinatio" as a Mellon Fellow at the Institute.

Svitlana Kobets
(Research Fellow), a graduate of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, completed her License in Medieval Studies (summa cum laude) in 2006. She has published articles and reviews in a number of North American and European journals. Her recent research articles on the role and place of the phenomenology and textualizations of ascetic feigning of folly, or foolishness for Christ’s sake, in medieval Russian literature and culture are forthcoming in the collections Rewriting Christianity from Ashgate and Foolishness in Christ: Contemporary Perspectives from Slavica Publishers. She is currently working on a monograph entitled “Paradigms of Folly: The Holy Fool in Russian Culture.”

Aden Kumler
(Mellon Fellow; LMS Candidate) is currently an assitant professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD from Harvard University in 2007 for a dissertation entitled "Visual Translation, Visible Theology: Illuminated Compendia of Spiritual Instruction in Late Medieval France and England." A paper, "Translating the Reader-Viewer: Visual appropriation and the promises of devotional literature in Paris, BnF, MS n. a. fr. 4338" read at the Translating the Middle Ages Conference held in October 2008 at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is forthcoming in the conference proceedings. As a Mellon Fellow Dr Kumler will research "the multiplication of the species: medieval Eucharistic morphologies."

Carin Ruff
is a Visiting Fellow of the Institute for the calendar year 2010. She earned her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2001 with a dissertation entitled "The Hidden Curriculum: Syntax in Anglo-Saxon Latin Teaching." Dr Ruff is Assistant Professor of English and Medieval Studies at Cornell University. While a Visiting Fellow, Dr Ruff will be preparing an edition of Alcuin's De grammatica (al. Dialogus Franconis et Saxonis de octo partibus orationis).

Jonathan Seiling
(LMS Candidate) was awarded the PhD in Theology by the University of St Michael's College in 2008 for his dissertation "From Antinomy to Sophiology: Modern Russian Religious Consciousness and Sergei Bulgakov's Critical Appropriation of German Idealism." He is currently a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto. His most recent publication appeared in the Catholic Historical Review in 2008. As a Research Fellow of the Institute Dr Seiling will study early Scotist doctrines in the early writings of Johann Fabri von Leutkirch (1478–1541).

Fabrizio Titone
(Research Fellow), who holds degrees from the University of Palermo and Cagliari, from which he received his PhD in 2002, is a historian of the late medieval Mediterranean. In 1998 he also held a Fellowship at the London School of Economics, studying with Stephan Epstein in History. For the past two years he has been teaching at Palermo. His project this year is "The City under the Crown of Aragon Between the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Centuries – Identity, Memory, Civil Cultures: A Comparative View." He is the author of two monographs: I magistrati cittadini: Gli ufficiali scrutinati in Sicilia da Martino I ad Alfonso V (Rome, 2008), and Governments of the "universitates": Urban Communities of Sicily in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2009).

Kevin Vaughan
(Research Fellow) successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on 9 January 2009. The degree will be formally awarded by the University of St Michael's College at its 2009 convocation. The title is "St. Thomas Aquinas' Mystical Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel in the Lectura super Ioannem." He is a sessional lecturer in theology at the Toronto School of Theology. As a Research Fellow he proposes to explore themes generated by his dissertation including the notion of spiritual exercises in Aquinas' writings.

Massimiliano Vitiello
(Research Fellow) completed his doctorate at the Università degli Studi di Messina in 2001, and was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Munster from 2004 to 2006. He is the author of Momenti di Roma ostrogota: aduentus, feste, politica and Il principe, il filosofo, il guerriero: Lineamenti di pensiero politico nell’Italia ostrogota, published by Franz Steiner in 2005 and 2006 respectively, and recent articles of his have been published in Antiquité Tardive and Klio. His current project is an investigation of Justinian and Italy.

PAST FELLOWS
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2008/2009
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2007/2008
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2006/2007
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2005/2006
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2004/2005
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2003/2004
Visiting Fellows, Associates, and Guests, 2002/2003