Oleg Voskoboynikov
- Professor: Faculty of Humanities / School of History
- Tenured Professor (2013)
- Oleg Voskoboynikov has been at HSE University since 2007.
Academic Biography
Professor Oleg Voskoboynikov has been part of the Centre academic staff since 2007 and became full professor in 2013. Oleg was trained as medieval historian at the Faculty of History, Moscow State Lomonosov University. He earned a first "candidate" degree from his original alma mater (2002) and a PhD from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris) with a dissertation on Arts, sciences and ideas of nature at the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen, written under supervision of Jean-Claude Schmitt.
Oleg has extensive international academic experience holding positions and doing research projects at EHESS, Ecole pratique des hautes études, Warburg Institute (London), Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the former Max Planck Institute für Geschichte (Göttingen). He was sometimes invited for special lectures at the universities of Warsaw, Louvain-la-Neuve, Cologne, Frankfurt, Lausanne, Florence etc.
Research Interests
While his research ranges across the cultural history of the Middle Ages, Oleg's largest, and lasting, interest has been the different ways of appropriating classical philosophical traditions in medieval Christian thought, particularly within the tradition of the 'school of Chartres' and at the court of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen. He translated some of its important texts into Russian, including to Philosophia of William of Conches and the Cosmographia of Bernard Silvestris. They were published, together with other Chartres texts, in a single volume, that presented this School to Russian readers for the first time.
He is now particularly concerned with problems of curiosity as particular intellectual attitude and formally a vice in medieval moral system, as well as with ideas and images of the human body and the face. The Face, in particular, has been subject of a recent international Micrologus conference he coorganized together with Agostino Paravicini Bagliani in Saint-Petersburg (July 2019), with its acts to be published at the Micrologus series.
Oleg has published, extensively and in several languages, on topics as varied as the medieval cosmology, physiognomy, astrology, hygiene and medicine, scientific and philosophical manuscripts in XIIIth century, modes of sacralisation of the royal power, the political and cultural history of France under Saint Louis, master architects of Gothic cathedrals, medieval miniature and sculpture, poetry and poetics. This variety of topics gave life to dozens of articles in four languages and to a general book on medieval Christian civilisation, written in French and published in France by Editions du Vendémiaire, 2017. The intellectual milieu of Frederick II, its art, manuscripts and ideas, has been for years his favorite field, and he recently published with Edizioni del Galluzzo the first critical edition of two treatises by Michael Scot, translator, encyclopedist and astrologer of the first third of the XIIIth century: the Liber particularis and the Liber physonomiae.
Education and Degrees
School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences
Thesis Title: Arts, sciences and ideas of nature at the court of Frederick II Hohenstaufen. 1200-1250
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Thesis Title: Visions of Nature at the Court of Frederick II
École des hautes études en sciences sociales
MSU French University College, History
Lomonosov Moscow State University, History
According to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) 2011, Candidate of Sciences belongs to ISCED level 8 - "doctoral or equivalent", together with PhD, DPhil, D.Lit, D.Sc, LL.D, Doctorate or similar. Candidate of Sciences allows its holders to reach the level of the Associate Professor.
A post-doctoral degree called Doctor of Sciences is given to reflect second advanced research qualifications or higher doctorates in ISCED 2011.
Fellow of the Warburg Institute, 2003.
Visiting fellow at the Maison des sciences de l'Homme, Paris. 2004.
Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 2011, 2013.
Awards and Accomplishments
Best Teacher — 2023, 2016–2019, 2011–2014
Young Faculty Support Programme (Group of Young Academic Professionals)
Category "Future Professoriate" (2011–2012)