Alexandra STELLMACHER

Visiting Scholar
Freie Universität Berlin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alexandra Stellmacher is an affiliated researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 980 ‘Episteme in Motion’ at the Freie Universität Berlin. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and Semitic Philology (2011) and is currently working on her Ph.D. thesis in Religious Studies, which deals with ascetic practices in late antique Syriac Christianity. Her research interests include asceticism in Syriac Christianity, the role of the body in asceticism, holy men and their role in late antique society, as well as special forms of ascetic withdrawal such as anchoritism and stylitism. In addition, she has a keen interest in the field of Buddhist studies with a focus on Vipassanā meditation, as taught by S. N. Goenka, and the marketing of its goals. While at the Department in the 2016 winter semester, she co-ordinates a course on ‘Asceticism in Early Syriac Christianity.’