Maria Lissek

Maria Lissek serves as project assistant at Bern. She has been postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Historical Theology in Bern since 2020. She studied Christian theology, both Protestant and Catholic, in Germany (Bamberg, Marburg and Tübingen) and Israel (Jerusalem). 2013/14 she was academic assistant in Jerusalem and 2016/17 research fellow in Oxford (UK). She is currently researching a theology of minority in Late Antiquity. Lissek completed her PhD (supervised by Katharina Heyden, Anna Abulafia and Martin Sallmann) on Christian self-understanding within the controversial dialogues of Gilbert Crispin (~1055–1117) and Peter Alfonsi (11th/12th century). Both reflect in their literary dialogues their own encounters – be it in reality or fictious – as Christians with Non-Christians (Jews, so called philosophers and Saracens). By doing so their works shaped their own Christian self-understanding in light of others and functioned as a pedagogical tool for the recipients.