Aleksandra Modelina
PhD Researcher
Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Room 3.016
Niebuhrstraße 5
D-53113 Bonn
amodelin@uni-bonn.de
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christoph Witzenrath
Academic Profile
From Bondage to Mobility: Kabal’noe Kholopstvo in the Novgorod Bondage Books of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Muscovy
My doctoral project examines bonded servitude (kabal’noe kholopstvo) in early modern Muscovy through the Novgorod bondage books of 1591–1596 and 1602–1603. It investigates the geographical origins and mobility of people entering bondage, repeated entry into dependency as a possible survival strategy, and the role of the Orthodox Church in sustaining these relations. Combining close reading with digital annotation and prosopographical analysis using CATMA and nodegoat, I ask how strong asymmetrical dependency was established and reproduced, and what scope for action remained for dependent individuals.
2023–2026
MA in History, with a focus on Medieval History, University of Bonn, Germany
Master’s thesis: “Spatial Sensibility of a Saxon Bishop around the Turn of the Millennium”
2018–2022
Bachelor’s degree in History, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia
Bachelor’s thesis: “The Bavarian Nobility and the Rulers of the Saxon Dynasty in the Chronicle of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg”
since 2026
Research Assistant, Institute of History (IGW), University of Bonn, in Prof. Dr. Lauri Sarti’s project “Mobility in Women’s Letters”
Database development in nodegoat and research on mobility in the fifteenth-century correspondence of women.
2024–2025
Student Assistant, Exploring Slave Trade in Asia (ESTA) project, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies
Historical data collection and curation; research on dependency and slavery and work with Dutch East India Company (VOC) sources.
2021–2025
Contribution to the preparation of the 2025 Russian edition of Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicle, translated by S. A. Anninsky.
Work on the typescript, concordance index, genealogical tables, references to ancient and medieval authors, and scholarly commentary; acknowledged contributor.
1 October 2025
“Dependent Population in Muscovy (XVI–XVII centuries) in Debt Bondage Registers from Novgorod.”
Seminar “Dependency, Bondage and Slavery in Northern Eurasia”, series Micro-Global Histories of Slavery: Sources and Approaches, Radboud University Nijmegen / International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.
9 May 2025
Workshop presentation on TIDES: data initiatives and computational challenges in historical research.
ESTA workshop “From slave trade to contract labor and shipping in Asia: Digital methods and collaboration”.
12 February 2025
“Between Immanence and Transcendence: On the Background Compositions of the Bamberg Apocalypse.”
Conference “The Historian’s Laboratory: Sources and Methods of Research on Antiquity and the Middle Ages”, Institute of General History, Russian Academy of Sciences.