A comparative study of medieval Russian pilgrimage travelogues: from the perspective of human relationships and faith

Pilgrimages have occurred for thousands of years, with pilgrims journeying to places that hold special significance to them as believers of a particular religion. Each year, millions of pilgrims embark on these special journeys. For example, pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Nishikado Misaki is a Special Research Fellow based within the Graduate School of Letters at Waseda University in Japan who is interested in what happens during pilgrimages, travellers’ stories and how they behave and interact with one another. In her most recent research project, she is comparing mediaeval Russian travelogues from the perspective of human relationships and faith. Her main sources for this work are travelogues and academic papers and, alongside reading these, she is also immersing herself in seminars and other activities to absorb a range of ways of academic thinking. Misaki’s goal is to acquire an interdisciplinary perspective that spans history, literature, anthropology and other fields. By taking the unique approach of encompassing historical and contemporary perspectives, Misaki is working to deepen and connect the analysis of past and present, generating beneficial knowledge. She is poring over travel records from mediaeval Russia to investigate the relationship between the social background of travellers and the characteristics of their journeys. She is examining these historical sources and comparing them with content gathered from previous research in the fields of history and literature.