BB: Geography of Heterodoxy in the Balkans and transmission routes

This presentation examines the diverse and intricate heterodox landscape of the Balkans. By tracing heterodox influences and their transmission across time—from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages to the early modern period—the wider project adopts a diachronic and comparative approach that crosses regional, conceptual, and chronological boundaries. It investigates themes of continuity and change, diverse influences, and the lasting impact of premodern religious characteristics. This presentation seeks to illuminate questions surrounding the geography of heterodoxy, religious landscapes, and transmission routes. It places particular focus on transfer and contact zones, such as the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan corridor, while also examining migration patterns and border histories tied to religion in the Balkans.

Bojana Radovanović is a senior postdoctoral researcher (religious history, history of religions) with a BA in Classical Philology (University of Belgrade, Serbia), MA in Classical Archaeology, and a PhD in (Medieval) History, earned at the University of Vienna in 2018 with the topic on the ‘language of heresy’ in 9^th-century Greek and Latin texts in comparative perspective. She has worked at the Institute for History of Belgrade and Institute for Medieval Studies in Vienna. She has recently spent two years at the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies of the Radboud University Nijmegen (NL), with the working group “History of Christianity” (within the Department of Textual, Historical and Systematic Studies of Judaism and Christianity), as a postdoctoral guest-researcher funded by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF), where she taught courses on Byzantine theology, Early Christianity and Patristics. During the last two years, she has had two research stays at the Leibniz Institute for History and Culture of Eastern Europe in Leipzig (GWZO). Her research interests include history of Late Antique and medieval religious currents, Late Antiquity and pagan heritage of the medieval philosophical and theological concepts, dualist heresies in the Middle Ages, comparative mythology and dualist legends.