Tag: Spring Symposium

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Call for communications: 56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies at the University of Birmingham

Byzantium from below: rural and non-elite life in the Byzantine world
12th-14th April 2025
Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies
University of Birmingham
Call for communications
 
Abstracts are invited for communications at the 56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies to be held at the University of Birmingham, UK. Communications are 10-mins long. Communications related to the themes of non-elites, peasants and rural life in the Byzantine world are particularly encouraged. Abstracts should be 250 words in length and are due by Monday 6 January 2025.
Please send abstracts to d.k.reynolds@bham.ac.uk.
Successful applicants will be notified by mid-January 2025.
Symposium abstract
The Byzantine Empire was built on the backs of the rural and urban labour force. From agricultural production and the extraction of raw materials to the physical construction of urban centres and buildings, the strength of the empire’s economy and its imperial administration rested upon complex networks of labourers, artisans and ‘local notables’, across its natural landscapes, in villages, and cities. While huge advances have been made in studying labour processes in recent years, the experiences of such populations within the Byzantine world have received comparatively little attention when compared to other fields of late Roman and western medieval studies. How the Byzantine Empire was experienced and understood by those far removed from its centres of governance and central networks of power, are crucial questions for understanding the lived experience of the mostly silent majority whose lives played out both within, and around, the empire’s fluctuating ‘borders’. Beyond exploring the contribution of rural communities and non-elites to modes of production, this symposium will also explore what can be said of the intricacies of their lives, societies, and what it meant to ‘be Byzantine’, viewed from below.
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Justice in Byzantium – 13th to 15th April 2024

In 2024, the Symposium will take place in Canterbury at the University of Kent, for the first time.  The chosen theme is ‘Justice in Byzantium’. This theme will facilitate inter-disciplinary discussion of research and ideas embracing Byzantine history, society, culture, and law. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Social Justice’; ‘Unwritten Rules’; ‘Criminal Justice’; ‘Revenge’; ‘Civil Law & Justice’; and ‘Divine Justice’.
The main sessions of the conference will be held in the Templeman Lecture Theatre, with a reception and dinner in the Darwin Conference Suite, Darwin College.
Confirmed speakers include Daphne Penna, Dennis Stathakopoulos, Carlos Machado, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Rosemary Morris, Anna Kelley, Lorena Atzeri, Mike Humphreys, Catherine Holmes, Robert Wisniewski, Peter Sarris, Matthijs Wibier, Simon Corcoran, Caroline Humfress, Maroula Perisanidi, Dan Reynolds and Shaun Tougher.
Please keep checking the website periodically: further information will be added in due course, and continuously updated. The complete programme can be found here: Conference Programme.
To register please click here.
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The 55th SPBS Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies – University of Kent (Canterbury, UK), 13th-15th April 2024.

The 55th Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held at the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK), from 13th-15th April 2024.

The 55th Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held at the University of Kent (Canterbury, UK), from 13th-15thApril 2024. The topic is ‘Justice in Byzantium’, a topic especially pertinent in our turbulent modern societies. Justice is one of the pillars on which every civilisation should be based even though it is not always granted for all, and Byzantium was no exception. Its inhabitants had to deal with justice-related issues in everyday life, but theoretical, religious, and philosophical implications were also involved in its very conception. These ideas are not merely reflected in written laws but in historical and literary works, as well as in unwritten rules, customs, and traditions. What forms of justice were meted out in Byzantium and what types of injustices occurred? How were these debated, enacted, and enforced? Sessions will be arranged around the themes of social, civil, divine, and criminal justice, as well as concepts of revenge and unwritten/ written rules.

Confirmed Speakers include Daphne Penna, Dionysios Stathakopoulos, Carlos Machado, Arietta Papaconstantinou, Rosemary Morris, Anna Kelley, Lorena Atzeri, Mike Humphreys, Catherine Holmes, Robert Wiśniewski, Caroline Humfress, Peter Sarris, Matthijs Wibier, Simon Corcoran, Dan Reynolds, Shaun Tougher, and Maroula Perisanidi.

The Symposium will be hybrid.

Fees and Registration:

– In person, for three days: Full: £110; Members of the SPBS: £95; Students/Unwaged: £60.

– In person, for one day: Full: £65; Members of the SPBS: £55; Students/Unwaged: £30.

– On-line: Full: £35; Members of the SPBS: £20; Students/Unwaged: £10

A booking form will soon be available online, on the Symposium website, with further details of registration and payment. ‘Justice in Byzantium’ has been made possible by the generous support of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies and the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies.

Call for Communications

In addition to the customary panel papers and an inaugural lecture, we invite Communications of 15 minutes in duration on current research in fields linked to the theme of the Symposium. Please send your abstract to Laura Franco (laura.franco@libero.it) with a title and abstract by December 15th 2023. For any queries relating to the Symposium, please contact Anne Alwis (a.p.alwis@kent.ac.uk).

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The 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

The 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond

17-19 March 2023, Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford

The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held in Oxford on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. Taking a broad geographical and chronological view of the Byzantine world, the Symposium will range across Afro-Eurasia and from Antiquity to the period after the fall of Constantinople. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Objects in motion’, ‘Religion in 3D’, ‘Religious landscapes’, ‘Things without context’, ‘Things and their context’ and ‘Spatial approaches to religion’.

Confirmed speakers include: Béatrice Caseau, Paroma Chatterjee, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Ivan Foletti, David Frankfurter, Ildar Garipzanov, Troels M. Kristensen, Anne Lester, Birgit Meyer, Brigitte Pitarakis, Regula Schorta, Myrto Veikou, and Anne-Marie Yasin.

The Symposium will be hybrid, taking place at Oxford – Corpus Christi College and All Souls College –, and on Zoom.

Fees and registration:
– In person, for three days: Full: £130; Members of the SPBS: £110; Students/Unwaged: £60.
– In person, for one day: Full: £65; Members of the SPBS: £55; Students/Unwaged: £30.
– On-line: Full: £35; Members of the SPBS: £20; Students/Unwaged: £10

A booking form will soon be available online, on the Symposium website, with further details of registration and payment.

Symposiarchs
Jaś Elsner, Ine Jacobs, Julia Smith

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Spring Symposium Update

Please note the ‘Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond’, the unfortunately postponed 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, will now take place on 17-19 March 2023. We encourage you to mark the date in your diary!

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Update: Spring Symposium

Dear Colleagues, dear Friends,

We are writing with an update on the upcoming 2022 SPBS Spring Symposium on Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond.

After much consultation and deliberation, we have decided to postpone this year’s Spring Symposium to the Spring of 2023. Although we regret not being able to meet this year, continuing COVID19-related uncertainties and restrictions in the UK and beyond put the feasibility of meeting in person in doubt, and it has proved impossible to organise a viable hybrid format at this relatively short notice. We will post an announcement of the revised dates shortly.

Mindful that the 24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies meets in August 2022, the SPBS Executive Committee has agreed that there will be no symposium this year, and we are especially grateful to the organisers of the Spring Symposium scheduled for the year after Oxford (Kent, with Anne Alwis as Symposiarch) who have generously agreed to defer their meeting to 2024.

We are looking forward to welcoming you all in Oxford in the Spring of 2023.

Symposiarchs
Jaś Elsner, Ine Jacobs, Julia Smith

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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/.

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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.

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The 53rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies

University of Birmingham, 28-30 March 2020

Nature and the environment underpinned Byzantine life but have been little studied. How the Byzantines responded to, interacted with and understood the landscape, however, enables crucial new insights into East Roman perceptions of the world. Modern interest in the environment and eco-history makes this theme pertinent and timely. Current research on climate change and how it affected the East Mediterranean creates new paradigms for our understanding of Byzantine interactions with the environment. The 53rd Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies draws together Byzantine literary and visual responses to nature and the environment as well as showcasing the most recent scientific research on historical climate change and environmental management in Byzantium.

This symposium was planned by Dr Ruth Macrides (University of Birmingham) and will be dedicated to her memory. The first two sessions of the symposium will consist of tributes to Ruth’s life and career by her former students and colleagues.

The Symposium will be followed, on Monday afternoon (30 March), by the second in what is planned as a regular series of professional development workshops targeted at Byzantine postgraduate students and sponsored by the SPBS. The workshop, Climate, environment and history, is intended to help early career academics in the humanities familiarize themselves with some of the key aspects of studying the way past human societies have interacted with their physical and climatic environments. Presenters will explain key methodological and interpretational issues and discuss how to avoid misunderstanding or misusing palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic research results.

Information about registration, accommodation and communications will be released in November 2019.

https://www.byzantium.ac.uk/the-53rd-spring-symposium-of-byzantine-studies/