SPBS Autumn Lecture

10th November 2021, 17:15 (GMT)

University of Birmingham, Teaching & Learning Building 202 (limited spaces) and online

Dr Rosemary Morris
Into The Labyrinth: a Journey into Stoudite ”Cancel Culture’

This year’s autumn lecture will be a hybrid event. We have some limited availability for attendance in person, but we ask that you reserve your ticket in advance. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, we will be unable to accommodate additional visitors in the lecture theatre on the day. The lecture will also be streamed live via Zoom and questions from both the live and virtual audience will be taken by the chair.

To register your attendance (virtual or in person), please visit Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/into-the-labyrinth-a-journey-into-stoudite-cancel-culture-tickets-185873311077

Spring Symposium videos

Owing to the ongoing pandemic, this year’s Spring Symposium was held exclusively online. Although this is far from our preference for future Symposia, a happy consequence is that the proceedigs were recorded for the first time. We are endeavouring to bring these recordings to a wider audience, once they have been appropriately edited and we have obtained permission from the speakers. Videos will be uploaded to our new YouTube channel.

Present highlights include Dr Dimitra Kotoula’s keynote (linked to this virtual exhibition, hosted by the British School at Athens) and the tributes of friends, students, and colleagues to the dearly-missed Dr Ruth Macrides, to whose memory the Symposium was dedicated.

A new page on this website also collects all of our recorded events together in one place: https://www.byzantium.ac.uk/recordings-of-events/.

First OEBG-SPBS Joint Lecture

25 May 2021, at 17:00 (UK)/18:00 (Austria) via Zoom

The SPBS is delighted to announce a new online joint Annual Lecture series in cooperation with the Austrian Association for Byzantine Studies.
The first lecture will be taking place on 25 May 2021 at 5pm UK time (6pm Austrian time) by Zoom.

Dr Nikolaos Zagklas (University of Vienna) will be speaking to the title:
The Power of Rhetoric in the Byzantine Classroom and Beyond: Fluid Relations and Intersections between Prose and Poetry

The Respondent will be Dr Foteini Spingou (University of Edinburgh)

All Welcome – please sign up at https://www.byzneo.univie.ac.at/veranstaltungen/first-oebg-spbs-lecture/

For full details, see the poster below:

OEBG-SPBS Lecture 2021

Exhibition: ‘A Piece of Nature’ Arts & Crafts Perceptions of Nature and the Byzantine Monument

https://nature.bsa.ac.uk/

The relationship between nature and architecture was particularly emphasized by the Arts & Crafts members as an expression of man’s inner-relationship with his natural surroundings. Historical architecture, in particular, had a central role in this interaction between man and the physical world. Medieval architecture, primarily the Gothic cathedral, was admired for its natural forms and the close almost mystical connections that it managed to establish with nature.

Pioneer architects of the British Arts & Crafts movement, such as Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley of the British School at Athens BRF Archive, following the example of John Ruskin, William Morris and their Arts & Crafts masters, were among the first to record, document and study surviving Byzantine monuments in the Eastern Mediterranean. Their attitude towards the remains of Byzantine heritage in the region, eloquently reflected in their recordings and, later, publications, demonstrates a pronounced concern, at the footsteps of their masters, for the multiple interconnections between a historic building and its natural surroundings. Byzantine architecture was considered an essential part of the landscape and, vice versa, nature, the physical world, its forms and qualities were reflected in the historic building both in the way it developed as well as in impressive or even minute details in its architecture and decoration.

This exhibition was created for Nature and the Environment: the 53rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, which was planned by the late Dr Ruth Macrides, and it is dedicated to her memory.

New Journal: Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies (JLAIBS)

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new journal, Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies (JLAIBS), https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/jlaibs, published by Edinburgh University Press. The JLAIBS as a hotspot for interdisciplinary dialogue aims to disseminate new approaches and methodologies that intend to transform our understanding of broader Late Antique and Medieval phenomena, such as knowledge transfer and cultural exchanges, by looking beyond single linguistic traditions or political boundaries. It provides a forum for high-quality articles on the interactions and cross-cultural exchange between different traditions and of the so-called Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. Thematically, the journal also welcomes submissions dealing individually with Late Antique, Byzantine and Islamic literature, history, archaeology, and material culture from the fourth to the fifteenth century.

Articles should be written in English and can be up to 15,000 words in total length (i.e. including all footnotes, bibliography and any appendices). Submissions to Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies should be formatted in accordance with the full JLAIBS style guidelines (https://www.euppublishing.com/pb-assets/Notes_for_Contibutors/JLAIBS_Style_guide-1614190487.pdf), and sent as Word and PDF files to: jlaibs@ed.ac.uk

Editors:

Dr Petros Bouras-Vallianatos (University of Edinburgh)
Dr Marie Legendre (University of Edinburgh)
Dr Yannis Stouraitis (University of Edinburgh)

Editorial board:

Prof. Peter Adamson (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Prof. Gianfranco Agosti (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Assoc. Prof. Corisande Fenwick (University College London)
Prof. Robert Hoyland (New York University)
Prof. Marc Lauxtermann (University of Oxford)
Prof. Maria Mavroudi (University of California, Berkeley)
Prof. Annliese Nef (Université Paris 1 Panthéon)
Prof. Dr Johannes Pahlitzsch (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)
Assoc. Prof. Arietta Papaconstantinou (University of Reading)
Assoc. Prof. Maria Parani (University of Cyprus)
Prof. Samuel Rubenson (Lund University)
Assoc. Prof. Kostis Smyrlis (National Hellenic Research Foundation/Athens)
Assoc. Prof. Jack Tannous (Princeton University)
Assoc. Prof. Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania)

SPBS Virtual Visit to Dumbarton Oaks

5pm (UK time) 29 April 2021

SPBS would like to invite all its members and supporters to come and visit the Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Collection in Washington DC in the company of one of its curators, Dr Elizabeth Williams. Elizabeth will be introducing highlights from the collection under the title ‘Worldly Adornments: A Virtual Object Session with Textiles and Jewelry at Dumbarton Oaks’. There will be opportunities to ask questions during and after the talk. The event will be run through Zoom. If you would like to attend, please contact the SBPS Secretary, Dr Tim Greenwood, by email [twg3@st-andrews.ac.uk] and he will supply further instructions for joining the first ever SPBS Virtual Visit.

DO visit poster

Professor Cyril Mango

The Executive of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (the British National Committee) is grateful for the many kind letters of condolence that we have received since the sad death of Professor Cyril Mango. The loss is truly an international one, and there are few words that could do justice to such an intellectual giant. We will post a short obituary in the forthcoming Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies, and a full obituary in the next one.

Professor Dame Averil Cameron, President

Professor Leslie Brubaker, Chair

Professor Cyril Mango

It is with great sadness that the Society for the Promotion Byzantine Studies (UK) announces the death of our distinguished colleague Professor Cyril A. Mango. (14 April 1928 – 8 February 2021).

SPBS Spring Symposium: Nature and the Environment

The 53rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

27-29 March 2021

Due to the ongoing disruption caused by the COVID-19 shutdown and related travel restrictions in the UK, we have decided to move Nature and the Environment: the 53rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies online.

The Symposium programme will go ahead as planned and will be hosted via the University of Birmingham’s webinar facilities. If you have already paid for your registration via the University of Birmingham website, we will be in touch shortly to arrange a full refund.

Registration for the online Symposium is now open.

In view of the shift to an online format, we have reduced the registration fees and have implemented a small cost to cover administrative expenses. Full details, including the updated programme, are available here.