Professor of Slavic and Balkan linguistics Christina E. Kramer was awarded an honorary doctorate from Saints Cyril and Methodius University (UKIM) in Skopje, Macedonia, the country’s largest and oldest university.
Kramer, University College’s acting vice-principal was recognized for her work on the development of the Macedonian language, culture, and literature at the global level.
A translator and author of numerous articles as well as the first textbook on Macedonian for English speakers, she has carried out field research in the Balkans for four decades, studying South Slavic and Balkan languages with special emphasis on Macedonian.
“I have been blessed with the enormous generosity of individuals and institutions that have shared their language, their archives, their stories, their hearths, and their research,” Kramer says. “Having been given so much, I have hoped that by sharing my work with the wider world, I would in some small way be repaying the kindness of my Balkan hosts and interlocutors, and I feel that the award of an honorary degree by the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius acknowledges the reciprocal and collegial nature of my work.”
During her visit, she gave a public lecture at the university on linguistic features of the “Bombs” – transcripts of the previous government’s illegal wiretaps – and a talk on the famous Macedonian poet and linguist, Blaze Koneski, as part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, of which she is an external member.