New Generation Thinkers: Contesting an Alphabet
Over 250 million people use the Cyrillic alphabet, but its history and the journeys of Saints Cyril and Methodios are a source of division not unity amongst Slavonic peoples.
Images of Cyril and Methodios adorn libraries, universities, cathedrals and passport pages in Slavonic speaking countries from Bulgaria to Russia, North Macedonia to Ukraine. But the journeys undertaken as religious envoys by these inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet have led to competing claims and political disagreements. Mirela Ivanova's essay considers the complications of basing ideas about nationhood upon medieval history.
Mirela Ivanova teaches at the University of Sheffield and was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by 成人快手 Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which turns research into radio. You can hear her discussing Sofia's main museum in this episode of Free Thinking /programmes/m000wc3p
Producer: Luke Mulhall
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