People

(c) fotomeile.eu

Dr.

Lena Sadovski

BA BA MA

is APART-GSK-Fellow in the research unit Balkan Studies.

Brief biography

Lena Sadovski studied history and romance philology at the University of Vienna, where she received her PhD (summa cum laude) in April 2023 with a thesis on the social structures of the Dalmatian town Split between Venetian dominion and Ottoman menace (1479-1525). Her research was supported by a DOC-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and a Wrap-up-scholaship of the University of Vienna. Between September 2019 and February 2023, Sadovski was University assitant (pre-doc) at the Institute for Eastern European History of the University of Vienna; from May until November 2023, she joined the Institute for Area Studies of Leiden University/Netherlands as a visiting researcher. Between 2016 and 2024, she was first a student assistant and then a visiting researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She was Post-Doc-Track-Fellow (February to September 2024) and since February 2025 is APART-GSK-Fellow at the Academy’s Balkan Studies Research Unit with a habilitation project on Catholicism in Ottoman Bulgaria in the 17th and 18th century. Sadovski has been awarded the Appreciation Award (Würdigungspreis) of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research for her MA thesis in 2018 and the Anniversary Prize (Jubiläumspreis) of the Böhlau Verlag Vienna 2023 for her monograph “Split. Sozialgeschichte einer Stadt im venezianischen Dalmatien, 1480-1530”.

Research interests

Period: Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Area: South-Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean space, Venice and the Venetian Maritime Empire, Habsburg Monarchy
Topics: Social, micro and global history; history of religion, confessions, multilingualism and administration; Jewish history; historical anthropology and processes of identity and community building; history of diplomacy and international relations

Publications

  • Venice and the Dalmatian Hinterland: Spalato, Poglizza, Almissa and Clissa (Later Medieval Europe 25, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025).
  • Split. Sozialgeschichte einer Stadt im venezianischen Dalmatien (1480–1530) (Südosteuropäische Arbeiten, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025/forthcoming).
  • ‘Multilingualism in Venetian Dalmatia: Studying Languages and Orality in Written Administrative Documents from Split (Fifteenth/Sixteenth Centuries)’. In: Mediterranean Historical Review 36/2 (2021), 217–236: https://doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2021.1964062
  • ‘Zur Richterwahl in Omiš (Almissa) 1490–1492 und dem Einfluss Venedigs auf die gesellschaftlichen Strukturen einer dalmatinischen Kleinstadt im 15. Jahrhundert’. In: Südost-Forschungen 80 (2021), 51–89: https://doi.org/10.1515/sofo-2021-800106
  • ‘Protecting a Dalmatian Town: Security Measures in Venetian Split (1480–1550)’. In: Reti Medievali 24/2 (2023),1–34: https://doi.org/10.6093/1593-2214/10025
  • ‘Apulian New Christians in Venetian Dalmatia: Circum-Adriatic Dimensions of the Migration of Converted Jews and their Descendants to Split (Spalato) in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’. In: Medieval Encounters 30/4 (2024), 505–535: doi.org/10.1163/15700674-12340195
  • ‘Le donne di Spalato e i loro spazi di autonomia nella vita quotidiana a cavallo tra il Quattro- e il Cinquecento’. In: Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi (ed.), Uomini e donne dello Stato da Mar e altri contributi. Atti dell’11o convegno internazionale Venezia e il suo Stato da Mar / Venice and its Stato da Mar, Venezia/Venice, 23–25 febbraio 2023 (Roma: Società Dalmata di Storia Patria, 2024), 111–138.
  • ‘La città e l’entroterra: i rapporti istituzionali tra Spalato e Poglizza, Almissa e Clissa’. In: Ermanno Orlando/Gherardo Ortalli (eds.), Dimensioni istituzionali del Commonwealth veneziano (Venezia: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere de Arti, 2024/in press), 213–229.
  • ‘Merchants, Citizens, Blasphemers: The Changing Stages of Converted Jews from Apulia in Spalato (Apulian New Christians in Venetian Dalmatia Part II)’. In: Benjamin SCHELLER/Nicolò VILLANTI (eds.), People of the Adriatic: Mobility and Exchange in a Venetian Space (XIV–XVI century) (Venetiana, Roma: Viella, forthcoming 2025).
  • ‘Clerics and Ecclesiastical Institutions in the Daily Lives of Laymen in Split: Contacts, Cooperation, and Conflicts (Late Fifteenth – Early Sixteenth Century)’. In: Irena Benyovsky-Latin/Zrinka Pešorda Vardić (eds.), Towns and Cities of the Croatian Middle Ages: The City and the Church (Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2024), 315–334.
  • ‘Frontier Lives: Navigating Jurisdiction, Taxation, and Military Threats in the Venetian-Ottoman Borderlands’. In: Marija Mogorović Crljenko (ed.), Villae, rustici, agricolae…: o selu i seljaštvu u povijesti na jadranskom prostoru. Zbornik radova međunarodnog znanstvenog skupa 11. Istarskog povijesnog biennala (Poreč, 25.-27. svibnja 2023.) / Atti del convegno scientifico internazionale XI Biennale storica istriana: Villae, rustici, agricolae…: villaggi e contadini nella storia dell’area adriatica (Parenzo, 25-27 maggio 2023) (forthcoming).

Research

Early modern Bulgaria and ‘Ottoman Catholicism’