Dr Maria Cioata

Biography

Personal

I have been in Manchester since 2004 when I started my MA in Biblical Studies, with a special focus on the literature of the Second Temple Period. My dissertation explored how the 'non-canonical' wisdom compositions Ben Sira and 4QInstruction expand the genre of wisdom literature as it is commonly understood. The idea of my doctoral research came out of an MA course on Jewish literature of the Greaco-Roman Period; I decided to work on the Testament of Job, particularly the Slavonic manuscripts and its reception as similar to a saint's life in the Easter Orthodox tradition, but also applying narratology to gain more insight into how the story works as a story. This research was funded by the AHRC. After the PhD (2010) I taught Hebrew Bible (especially narratives from the book of Genesis) and Introduction to Judaism at the University of Chester. In 2011-2012 I received my first funded postdoctoral research position for my project on Moses Gaster's scholarship and collection at the University of Manchester. The next academic year I continued this research at New Europe College, Bucharest, and from September 2013 it is funded by the British Academy at Manchester. In 2014 I designed and taught a level 2 course on the development of Folklore as a field of study in the late 19th-early 20th Century. It combined close readings of tales with history of scholarship.