Dr. Adashinskaya is a post-doctoral research fellow at ANAMED studying recently discovered frescoes at Sumela monastery and connecting them with the monastic patronage of the Megaloi Komnenoi and their royal ideology. She has previously held research positions at the University of Bucharest, New Europe College (Bucharest), the Leibniz Institute for European History (Mainz), and the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), working on various aspects of medieval visual culture and its historiography. Her primarily research interest spans studies on the ideology of power and its material and visual expression in Byzantium and southern Europe in the late-medieval and early modern times. She is interested in such topics as monasticism and monastic patronage in the Balkans and the use of religion for ideology-building in post-Byzantine Christian Orthodox states.