Fantastic beasts & where to find them: Byzantine hybrids

The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies (SPBS), in partnership with the Austrian Association for Byzantine Studies (ÖBG), is pleased to announce our 2026 joint hybrid lecture.

This year, we are honoured to host Margaret Mullett (OBE), Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, who will explore the world of Byzantine hybrids, examining the “fantastic beasts” that occupied a unique space in the culture and art of the period. A response from Markéta Kulhánková, Associate Professor at Masaryk University will follow the lecture.

The paper looks at hybrid animals in Byzantium, both from an animal studies viewpoint and from a more general Byzantine literary and cultural angle. It looks at issues of credibility and plausibility, notes which ancient hybrids were or were not popular in Byzantium, and identifies where they may be found on the margins and in liminal places, but also on the body and seals strong identity markers in Byzantium. It asks what the point of hybrids is in Byzantium and explores the answers of Patricia Cox Miller, Henry & Eunice Maguire, and Lara Frentrop. It then offers a further possibility through a treatment of the centrality of hybridity in twelfth-century Byzantine literature and Byzantine society in general.

For more, please see here.