Hellenic Studies Professorship in Aegean and Mediterranean Societies and Cultures

Higgins will confront contemporary scholarship on the Virgin Mary, which largely gives precedence to the textual evidence for Marian veneration (i.e. liturgy, hymns) as the determinant for establishing the early cult of the Virgin. Supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Development Grant, this project will see her adopt a novel methodology which prioritizes the material culture related to the early cult of the Virgin over the surviving literary attestations of cult, adopting the eighth century CE as the chronological limit of these discussions.

Higgins is collaborating with Nicholas Hedley, associate professor in the Department of Geography and founder of SFU's Special Interface Research Lab, and Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Ottawa, to digitally map all of the graffiti on the Temple of Isis on the island of Philae in Egypt. The objective of the study is to better understand the spatial use of the temple, including its roofs, by way of distinct groups of people. The project is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant.