About

The Byzantine Worlds Seminar provides a venue for exploring the material and intellectual entanglements between the medieval worlds of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Byzantinists have long appreciated the need to look beyond the political boundaries of the empire. However, recent international conferences and projects devoted to 'Global Byzantium' and mobility within and beyond Byzantium have reaffirmed the need for scholars and students to incorporate into their work newly-developing research agendas on material evidence from around the globe, as well as on texts preserved in a wide array of medieval languages. Specialists from different disciplines, departments and institutions need venues to facilitate this kind of collaboration and research cross-fertilisation. Yet the concentration of specialists required to do this has been long hindered by the liminal place of Byzantium and its neighbours within traditional university departments. Cambridge, however, has a critical mass of researchers in these fields and is well placed to become an important hub for the study of the worlds of Byzantium and its neighbours. 

The seminar builds on the existing work of the Cambridge Byzantine Seminar and the Cambridge Late Antique Network Seminar, and invites the involvements of historians, archaeologists, classicists, theologians and specialists in the languages and cultures of Afro-Eurasia. This expanded research community seeks to contribute to wider discussions across the University about global connections and cultural diversity before the era of European colonialism.

The seminar, which meets for two hours fortnightly during each Full Term, presents the research of speakers from within and outside of Cambridge. Invitations seek to ensure a balance of junior and more established scholars with an emphasis placed on broadening the diversity of backgrounds represented in the field.

We also run primary source reading groups in parallel with the seminar. These are now offered in Greek, Arabic and Armenian.

Seminars and Reading groups:

• Byzantine Worlds Seminars: 5-7pm on alternate Wednesdays (week 1) in the Alison Richard Building, SG2
• Byzantine Greek Reading Group: 12-2pm on alternate Wednesdays in the Alison Richard Building, SG2 (7 and 21 October, 4 and 18 November, and 2 December 2020). For more information please contact Stephanie Forrest
• Medieval Arabic Reading group 12-2pm on alternate Wednesdays (week 2) in the Alison Richard Building, SG2 (14 and 28 October and 11 and 25 November 2020). For more information please contact Edward Zychowicz-Coghill
• Classical Armenian Reading group: 12-2pm on alternate Tuesdays (week 2) (13 and 27 October and 10 and 24 November 2020). For more information please contact Stephanie Forrest

For further information see the programme, please.

 

Administrative assistance: Networks@crassh.cam.ac.uk

Supported by CRASSH and Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS)