Dr. Andrei Orlov

Department of Theology

Dr. Andrei Orlov, professor of theology, has intensely studied Jewish apocalyptic texts, with a focus on materials preserved in Slavonic, for the past 25 years. Scholars believe that these writings are vital to reexamine, as they are recognized as having formative significance for early Christian theology.

The Way Klingler Fellowship Award will allow Orlov to translate an important text that has remained unreachable for international scholarship for more than a century. Orlov plans to complete the three-volume edition of the Slavonic historical compendium, the Palaea Interpretata. It represents the most extensive and important collection of Jewish pseudepigraphic texts and fragments that have survived the Slavonic environment. The collection remains untranslated into any European language and is virtually unknown to contemporary biblical scholarship.

Orlov believes that the publication of the Palaea Interpretata is vital to Marquette’s mission, as it will contribute to a better understanding of the conceptual world of the New Testament writings that constitute the core of Catholic theology.

“As a Catholic university, we are committed to the unfettered pursuit of truth,” Orlov says. “Since our pursuit of truth is guided by the illuminating powers of not only human intelligence but also Christian faith, it is important for us to have a thorough knowledge of our Christian theological legacy.”

 

Dr. Stefan Schnitzer

Mellon Distinguished Professor of Ecology

The focus of Dr. Stefan Schnitzer’s lab has been understanding the forces that structure plant communities, maintain species diversity, control species distributions, and allow species to co-exist. One aspect has been the community ecology of lianas (woody vines) and the role they play in forest dynamics.

Many deforested areas are now being replaced with regenerating secondary forest, leading to more forest cover in some areas than there was 100 years ago. The goal of Schnitzer’s research, for which he will use the Way Klingler Fellowship Award, is to learn the effects of the aggressive proliferation of lianas on secondary forests.

“We propose to test the hypothesis that liana infestation early in succession redirects tropical forests toward a recalcitrant low-canopy, low-diversity and low-carbon stable state,” says Schnitzer, the Mellon Distinguished Professor of Ecology. “If regenerating tropical forests fail to uptake carbon at the rate that was previously taken up by old-growth forests, then tropical forests could switch from net carbon sinks to net carbon sources, which would rapidly accelerate global climate change. Because tropical forests store more than 40 percent of the earth’s terrestrial carbon, the effects of lianas on the global carbon cycle could be substantial.”

The research theorizes that lianas may redirect forest succession toward a low-canopy forest dominated by lianas and tree species with low wood density, which store far less carbon and can persist for decades with potentially serious consequences for global carbon dynamics.
The conceptual framework and models which underlie this project are based on Schnitzer’s early work, which won a commendation from the John L. Harper Young Investigator’s Award from the Journal of Ecology. This paper was published before there was any indication that vines were increasing in tropical forests. Now that vines are increasing in abundance and forest regeneration is at an unprecedented level, testing these ideas is more important than ever.