Pilgrimage in the Christian Balkan World

• Christian devotion & forms of religious expression
• Eastern & Orthodox Christianity & Churches (from c. 312)
• Customs, traditions & identities
• Balkans & Near East

"The book - as ever with Brepols - is magnificently presented and contains many excellent illustrations. (...) this is essentially an academic textbook for the specialist or those seeking specialist detail, who would find much of the content of great interest." (Peter Desmond, in Friends of Mount Athos, Annual Report, 2023, p. 72-73)

Dorina Dragnea holds a PhD in ethnology and cultural anthropology and works in the Department of Intangible Heritage and Traditional Culture of the National Institute of Heritage, Romania. She is involved in the projects initiated by the Balkan History Association (Romania), where she serves as Vice-president. She has conducted research and held fellowships in Slovakia, Germany, Denmark, etc. Her research interests are focused on intangible cultural heritage, folk religion, material culture, and migration. She is the author of one monograph, co-editor of two miscellanies, author of chapters in collective volumes and over twenty-five studies in peer-reviewed journals.

Emmanouil Ger. Varvounis is Professor of Folklore in the Department of History and Ethnology, Director of the "Laboratory of Folklore and Social Anthropology" of the Democritus University of Thrace, Head of the Department of History and Ethnology (2016–2020) and Dean of the School of Classics and Humanities (2021–present). He is also Director of the "Centre for Ecclesiastical, Historical and Cultural Studies" of the Holy Metropolis of Samos and Ikaria. He holds the title of Doctor Honoris Causa from four universities (USA, Romania, Greece) and is a full, corresponding or honorary member of eight Academies (USA, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany), as well as an Honorary Member of the Department of Classical Philology and Modern Greek of the University of Bucharest.

Evelyn Reuter studied Ethnology, Protestant Theology and South-eastern European Studies at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg and at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany. She did her doctorate at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena on the topic "The Ambiguity of Shared Religious Places. An Ethnographic Case Study on the Monastery Sveti Naum in Ohrid (Macedonia)"; the monograph was published in 2021 in German. She is Collaborative Research Fellow at the Sophia University Tokyo, Japan. Her research interests include: qualitative empirical research of religious phenomena in post-socialist transformation processes, shared religious places, pilgrimage and saint veneration and religious minorities.

Petko Hristov holds a PhD in Ethnology and is Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research with the Ethnographic Museum at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Over the past few years, his main scholarly interests have involved studying labour migrations throughout the Balkans; the construction of social networks among trans-border migrants; family and kinship; and political anthropology and folk religiosity. He is author of the book Community and Celebrations. The Sluzba, Slava, Sabor and Kourban in South Slavic Villages in the First Half of 20^th Century (2004), awarded for best academic achievement in Humanities from the Union of Bulgarian Scientists in 2007. He has published over 150 articles in a number of international journals and collections in renowned scholarly series.

Susan Sorek studied for her first degree in Ancient History and Archaeology in Lancaster and then went on to complete an MA at Swansea University and obtained a PhD in Ancient History with the University of Wales. Recently she has worked for Oxford University teaching Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic. She is the author of many books on ancient history including: The Emperor’s Needles Obelisks in Rome (2010); Ancient Historians: A Student Handbook (2012); Remembered for Good: Jewish Benefaction System in Ancient Palestine (2010); Jews against Rome (2008); and The Man who Killed Richard III (2015). She is currently working on a book on the emperor Augustus. She has been involved in various research programs and conferences.