Ildikó is a historian of Religion, specialising in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the early Middle Ages of the Mediterranean. She studied Classics and Medieval Studies, in Budapest, in Italy, England and Seville and obtained her PhD from the Central European University (CEU) and her European Doctorate title from the Università Ca’ Foscari, Venice. For the past fifteen years she has been working on the Christian transformation of Pagan rituals and has published and taught courses on miracles and on various aspects of ritual healing. Her research fields include: miracles, illness interpretations, illness narratives, non-medical healing, cult of saints, hagiography, dreams and the formation of healing cults as well as medieval Western canonisation records. Before joining her present ERC project at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, she was a European Science Foundation researcher at CEU and a fellow at Harvard University (Dumbarton Oaks), where she prepared her book, Temple Sleep in Byzantium, for publication by CUP. With her Italian husband and children she lives between Budapest and Trieste. Non-academically she loves mountain trekking, Baroque music and arranging dinner parties.