Meelis Friedenthal defended his doctoral thesis on medieval Aristotelianism and moral theology at the University of Tartu in 2008. From 2014-2015, Friedenthal was a Lichtenberg-Kolleg Fellow at the University of Göttingen, studying religious tolerance in the early modern period. From 2015-2020, Friedenthal was a Pro Futura Scientia Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala, researching metaphysics in university disputations. In 2017-2018, Friedenthal was a visiting fellow at the Max Weber College in Erfurt. He is currently Associate Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Tartu Library and the University of Tartu, where his main research topic is the intellectual history of the Baltic Sea region in the 17th century. 

In connection with and in addition to his academic work, Friedenthal has published four novels, a collection of short stories and written plays. His novels blend speculative fiction and magical historicism, exploring the intellectual history of different eras. His novel The Willow King won the EU Prize for Literature in 2013 and has been since translated into 15 languages. 

The abstract of Meelis Friedenthal’s keynote talk “Nebulous narration“:

“The presentation focuses on the themes of speculative fiction and religion. The objective is not solely to demonstrate how speculative fiction and religion employ very similar narrative methods, but also to explore how speculative fiction is increasingly assuming the social and existential functions of religion. What does this situation, where they pursue the same ends, mean for speculative fiction and what does it mean for religion? Can speculative fiction be considered as mythic creation, and how does the perception of contemporary speculative fiction readers differ from how the Greeks perceived their myths, or how miracles of the saints were perceived during the medieval period?”