2015, 2017 — the Graduate Thesis Research Awards (the University of Western Ontario) that funded travel expenses of my trips “Back to Byzantium”, during which I visited five countries — Italy, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Turkey — examined the medieval manuscripts in the libraries and studied architecture.

Focus on: manuscripts of the 9th-12th centuries; the correlation between the decorations in architecture, binding, calligraphy; styles of handwriting; stylistic influences between countries. 

Activities included:  

• Wrote a research project and plan of my trip to the libraries in these countries

• Conducted a critical review of the literature on items to be studied

• Searched online databases to identify the physical items to study

• Contacted libraries and museums to arrange appointments and to discuss my project with the librarians

• Developed a strategy of accumulating the information on places, for future studies and research

• Planned the entire trip: visas, insurances, other documents, dormitories, transportation, connections between many cities, work hours of libraries/museums to visit, necessary equipment, etc.

• Wrote about 200 pages of notes on the medieval manuscripts when studied in the libraries

• Studied relevant materials in the libraries/museums in Milan, Cremona, Ravenna, Venice, Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul, while sleeping in camping sites and traveling by cheap public transportation or by foot to fit in my budget 

• Walked through the monasteries in the Serbian mountains to understand how the experience of medieval travelers might look like, to view the original manuscripts and monuments of architecture. Enabled knowledge from first-hand experience and not just from written sources

• Studied frescos in the monasteries, and in particular the inscriptions on them, the ligatures that were also used in manuscripts.   

As such, my passion for Byzantine manuscripts and architecture has grown to a life-long project and is always in progress.  

Related publication:

A short report on my findings 

Bychkova, D. “Greek-Cyrillic influences in calligraphy”, in Kalligrafia. Vzaemovplivi shriftiv [Calligraphy. Influences of fonts], ed. by V. Mitchenko, Laurus: Kyiv, 2017, pp. 82-87 (in the Ukrainian language) 

Related conference:

2017, the International and Interdisciplinary Conference "Letters", Varna, Bulgaria. Presented a paper on visual aspects of letters and the arrangement of space around letters in medieval word-image phrases and in ligatures.