Research: Beyond Negative Architecture: the Relationship Between Rock-cut and Masonry Churches in Middle Byzantine Cappadocia (9th-12th centuries)
Giorgia Abbate was born in Rome in 1998 and graduated with honours in History and Art Studies in 2021 from La Sapienza University of Rome, with a dissertation in Byzantine Art History entitled ‘The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus: From Text to Image (10th-12th Century)’ (supervisor prof. Antonio Iacobini). In 2024 she earned with honours a Master's degree in Art History at the same university, discussing a thesis entitled ‘The Great Pigeon House in Çavuşin (963-965): the Imperial Portrait of Nikephorus II Phokas in the Milieu of 10th-Century Cappadocia’ (supervisor prof. Alessandro Taddei, co-advisor prof. Antonio Iacobini).
After graduation, she completed an extracurricular internship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History (January–July 2024), where she actively participated in the institute’s activities and deepened her studies on Middle Byzantine Cappadocia. At the same time, she worked on her doctoral project ‘Beyond Negative Architecture: the Relationship Between Rock-cut and Masonry Churches in Middle Byzantine Cappadocia (9th-12th centuries)’ which granted her admission to the 40th cycle of the PhD program in Art History. Her research aims to reconstruct the Cappadocian architectural heritage in relation to its rupestrian manifestations within broader panorama of the eastern Mediterranean area.
Since November 2024, she has been an Adjunct Lecturer in Byzantine Art History.