56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies – Byzantium from below: rural and non-elite life in the Byzantine world
56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies: Symposium Information
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 less 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.
Symposiarch
Dr Daniel Reynolds
Cost
Full three days:
- Members of SPBS – £95
- Non-members – £110
- Students/ unwaged: – £50
One day:
- Members of SPBS – £55
- Non-members – £65
- Students/ unwaged – £30
Symposium Feast
Sunday 13 April 1930 (Kolkata Lounge Restaurant) – £40 per head
Online:
- Members: £20
- Non-members: £35
- Students/unwaged: £10
Venue
The University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom
The Symposium will be hosted in the Arts Building on the University of Birmingham’s main campus (map reference R16): https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/university/edgbaston-campus-map.pdf
An interactive map can be accessed here: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/contact/directions
Getting to campus
Train
The University of Birmingham has its own train station known as ‘University’. Trains leave every 10-15 mins from Birmingham New Street Station, usually departing from platform 11B.
Further details on train travel: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/travelling-to-campus/travelling-by-train.aspx
Information on National Rail Services: https://www.nationalrail.co.uk/
It may be possible to get cheaper tickets, especially for longer-distance rail travel within the UK, here: https://www.thetrainline.com/
By bus
Local routes 61, 63, 41, 48, 76, X21, X22, 19, 20, 20A directly serve the University of Birmingham campus, linking the university to the city centre, local train stations and neighbourhoods. The circular 11A and 11C routes also run nearby.
Further details on bus travel: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/travelling-to-campus/travelling-by-bus.aspx
Car Parking
Northeast multi-storey car park (Pritchatts Road, B15 2SA).
You can park here for up to ten hours. Parking charges apply Monday to Sunday, between 8am and 6pm. This includes Bank holidays and university closed days.
Charges start from £3.40 and are capped at £10 (as of October 2024) Monday to Friday. If parking at the weekend or on a Bank holiday, there is a flat day rate of £2.50.
Taxi
TOA Taxis are a Birmingham-based company which is recommended by the university.
TOA Taxis: Birmingham black cab taxi service | Home | TOA Taxis
Accommodation
The university has its own onsite hotel accommodation, now known as the Edgbaston Park Hotel: https://www.edgbastonparkhotel.com/
The city centre has a greater range of accommodation options and is located around 10-15mins away by train.
Further information on city centre options can be found here: https://visitbirmingham.com/where-to-stay/
Medical assistance
First Aid: Dr Daniel Reynolds (symposiarch) is a qualified first aider.
Emergency service numbers: 999 or 112
Medical Practice:
The university has its own dedicated GP practitioner for non-emergency care: https://www.theump.co.uk/
UBHeard is a confidential listening and support service for all registered students (undergraduate and postgraduate) at the University of Birmingham. It offers immediate emotional and mental health support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Call the service on 0800 368 5819 (Freephone UK*) or 00353 1 518 0277 (International), or visit the UBHeard portal (create an account with your UoB email address). You can also text ‘Hi’ to +44 74 1836 0780 for SMS & WhatsApp support (standard rates apply) or contact UBHeard via Live Chat.
Security
If there is an immediate risk to life, safety or security – yours, another person’s, or property – call the emergency services on 999. Then call Security on 0121 414 4444. If you are a member of the University of Birmingham, you can also alert them through the SafeZone app.
If you’re calling to report an alleged crime (especially assault/sexual assault, indecency, fraud, theft, or burglary), you should always contact both the police and Security. Security will be able to support you while you wait for the emergency services to arrive.
To report a non-emergency crime (e.g., theft), call Security on 0121 414 3000 or report an incident through the SafeZone app. You should also report the incident to the police online or by calling 101.
Food and drink
Lunch and refreshments will be provided for all symposium delegates. However, the campus also has a wide range of options you may prefer to explore: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/community/university-campus/retail/food-fellows/opening-times
The Main Library
The University Main Library is open 0800-2000 during university holidays and is open to visitors for consultation. Further information can be found here: https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/student/libraries/index.aspx
Symposium Feast (Sunday 13 April 1930)
The symposium feast will be held at Kolkata Lounge 1488 Pershore Rd, Bournville, Birmingham B30 2NT.
Byzantium from Below: 56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies – UPDATED PROGRAMME
Byzantium from Below
12th-14th April 2025
Saturday 12th April
0930-0945: Welcome from symposiarch
0945-1030: Keynote: Sharon Gerstel (UCLA), “Seeing villages over time: case studies from rural Greece”
1030-1100: Tea and coffee
Session 1: Documented Lives
1100-1125: Matthew Kinloch (Oslo), “Non-elite characters in late Byzantine history writing”
1125-1150: Dora Konstantellou (Dumbarton Oaks), “When is a rural painter identified by name? Reading representations of painters in late Byzantine/medieval rural societies”
1150-1200 Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala), “Collective subjectivity in the Athonite archives”
1200-1210 Nikolas Hächler (Zurich), “The Dialogus de scientia politica: an anonymous comment on and critique of the early Byzantine state under Justinian I” (Communication)
1210-1230: Questions
1230-1400: Lunch
Session 2: Law, Land and Property
1400-1425: Arietta Papaconstantinou (Aix-Marseilles) “Byzantine “tormented voices” from the edge of empire”
1425-1450: Jenny Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan), “Patrons and property in rural Egypt in the early 8th century”
1450-1500 Franka Horvat (UCLA), “Islanders’ perspective: the case of the Elaphiti Archipelago” (Communication)
1500-1510 Thomas Laver (Cambridge), “Using tax registers to study labour relationships in the villages of Byzantine Egypt”
1510-1530: Questions
1530-1600: Tea and coffee
Session 3: Landscape and Settlement
1600-1625: Jim Crow (Edinburgh), “Rural settlement in the Cyclades: excavations at Kato Chora”
1625-1650: Archie Dunn (Birmingham) “From communal corvées to fiscal and communal enterprises in medieval Byzantium”
1650-1715: Sophia Germanidou (Hellenic Ministry of Culture), “Unseen, unheard and disregarded: tracing female labour in the Byzantine countryside through an interdisciplinary approach”
1715-1735: Georgios Makris (British Columbia), “Modest luxury? Rural cemeteries and grave goods in the Valley of Kalamas, Epiros”
1735-1800: Questions
1800-1900: Wine reception
Sunday 13th April
Session 4: Material Approaches and Labour
1000-1025: Flavia Vanni (Newcastle), “The contribution of rural artisans to Byzantine sacred spaces (11th-13th centuries)”
1025-1050: Sean Leatherbury (Dublin) “Craft labour and rural communities in the late antique east”
1050-1115: Anna Kelley (St Andrews), “Career opportunities: apprentice contracts and social networking in late antique workshops”
1115-1125: Zeynep Olgun (Cambridge), “Ships in villages: maritime labour in Byzantine society” (Communication)
1125-1135: Questions
1135-1200: Tea and coffee
Session 5: Social Life
1200-1225: Sophie Moore (Newcastle) “Title TBC”
1225-1250: Vicky Manopoulou (Durham), “Processing villages: litanic experiences of rural communities in Byzantium”
1250-1300: Rachael Helen Banes (Vienna), “Artisans or amateurs: who wrote the graffiti at late antique Aphrodisias?” (Communication)
1250-1310: Jacopo Dolci (Nottingham) “A Monument in Transition: The Artemision and the Evolving Urban Landscape of Late Antique Gerasa (c. 350–750)”
1310-1320: Questions
1330-1430 Lunch (SPBS Exec)
1430-1530: Communications
1) Irakli Tezelashvili (Courtauld), “Painted and adorned for the salvation of all of this valley: great and lesser’: Svan Churches of T’evdore, ‘the King’s Painter,’ Revisited”
2) Giuseppe Belsito (independent scholar), “The rural context in the Sicilian Theme (6th-8th centuries AD): an impoverished or a dynamic economic area within the overall Byzantine polity? Contradictory data emerging from recent archaeological excavations in Sicily”
3) Husamettin Simsir (Notre Dame), “Anthroponymic appellations, names, sobriquets, nicknames and titles of mid-15th-century post-Byzantine landholders in the Ottoman Balkans”
4) Nicolas Varaine (Paris), “Ordinary devotion in the late Byzantine world: looking for the modest donors of
Venetian Crete”
5) Bjarke Bach Christensen (Cambridge) New Ostraka Evidence for an Integrated Estate in Sixth-Century Byzantine North Africa
1530-1600: Tea and coffee
Session 6: Comparative perspectives
1600- 1630: Chris Wickham (Oxford) “The West’”
1630-1700: Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), “Slavery as a vehicle for social mobility in the early Islamic world”
1700-1730: Questions
1730-1830: Wine reception
1830-1930: Travel to feast
1930: Feast (Kolata Lounge, 1488 Pershore Rd, Bournville, Birmingham B30 2NT)
Monday 14th April
Session 7: Rural Life on Islands and Peripheries
0930-0955: Luca Zavagno (Bilkent), “‘From the gentle coast and where the stream descends from the grove of the river and all the high peaks there’. The countryside of large Byzantine islands in the early Middle Ages”
0955-1020: Basema Harmaneh (Vienna), “On peripheries: exploring the non-elite universe in the late antique Levant”
1020-1045: Angelo Castrorao Barba (Granada), “Living in the Sicilian countryside during the Byzantine-Islamic transition: archaeological perspectives”
1045-1100: Questions
1100-1130: Tea and coffee
1130-1200: AGM
1200-1230: Closing remarks by Stuart Pracy (Exeter) and Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham)
1230: Closing of the symposium and announcement of the next symposium
56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies – Programme
Saturday 12th April
0930-0945: Welcome from symposiarch
0945-1030: Keynote: Sharon Gerstel (UCLA), “Seeing villages over time: case studies from rural Greece”
1030-1100: Tea and coffee
Session 1: Documented Lives
1100-1125: Matthew Kinloch (Oslo), “Non-elite characters in late Byzantine history writing”
1125-1150: Dora Konstantellou (Dumbarton Oaks), “When is a rural painter identified by name? Reading representations of painters in late Byzantine/medieval rural societies”
1150-1200 Milan Vukašinović (Uppsala), “Collective subjectivity in the Athonite archives”
1200-1210 Nikolas Hächler (Zurich), “The Dialogus de scientia politica: an anonymous comment on and critique of the early Byzantine state under Justinian I” (Communication)
1210-1230: Questions
1230-1400: Lunch
Session 2: Law, Land and Property
1400-1425: Arietta Papaconstantinou (Aix-Marseilles) “Title TBC”
1425-1450: Jenny Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan), “Patrons and property in rural Egypt in the early 8th century”
1450-1500 Franka Horvat (UCLA), “Islanders’ perspective: the case of the Elaphiti Archipelago” (Communication)
1500-1510 Thomas Laver (Cambridge), “Using tax registers to study labour relationships in the villages of Byzantine Egypt”
1510-1530: Questions
1530-1600: Tea and coffee
Session 3: Landscape and Settlement
1600-1625: Jim Crow (Edinburgh), “Rural settlement in the Cyclades: excavations at Kato Chora”
1625-1650: Archie Dunn (Birmingham) “Title TBC”
1650-1715: Sophia Germanidou (Newcastle), “Unseen, unheard and disregarded: tracing female labour in the Byzantine countryside through an interdisciplinary approach”
1715-1735: Georgios Makris (British Columbia), “Modest luxury? Rural cemeteries and grave goods in the Valley of Kalamas, Epiros”
1735-1800: Questions
1800-1900: Wine reception
Sunday 13th April
Session 4: Material Approaches and Labour
1000-1025: Flavia Vanni (Newcastle), “The contribution of rural artisans to Byzantine sacred spaces (11th-13th centuries)”
1025-1050: Sean Leatherbury (Dublin) “Craft labour and rural communities in the late antique east”
1050-1115: Anna Kelley (St Andrews), “Career opportunities: apprentice contracts and social networking in late antique workshops”
1115-1125: Zeynep Olgun (Cambridge), “Ships in villages: maritime labour in Byzantine society” (Communication)
1125-1135: Questions
1135-1200: Tea and coffee
Session 5: Social Life
1200-1225: Sophie Moore (Newcastle) “Title TBC”
1225-1250: Vicky Manopoulou (Durham), “Processing villages: litanic experiences of rural communities in Byzantium”
1250-1300: Rachael Helen Banes (Vienna), “Artisans or amateurs: who wrote the graffiti at late antique Aphrodisias?” (Communication)
1300-1315: Questions
1330-1430 Lunch (SPBS Exec)
1430-1530: Communications
1) Irakli Tezelashvili (Courtauld), “Painted and adorned for the salvation of all of this valley: great and lesser’: Svan Churches of T’evdore, ‘the King’s Painter,’ Revisited”
2) Giuseppe Belsito (independent scholar), “The rural context in the Sicilian Theme (6th-8th centuries AD): an impoverished or a dynamic economic area within the overall Byzantine polity? Contradictory data emerging from recent archaeological excavations in Sicily”
3) Husamettin Simsir (Notre Dame), “Anthroponymic appellations, names, sobriquets, nicknames and titles of mid-15th-century post-Byzantine landholders in the Ottoman Balkans”
4) Nicolas Varaine (Paris), “Ordinary devotion in the late Byzantine world: looking for the modest donors of
Venetian Crete”
1530-1600: Tea and coffee
Session 6: Comparative perspectives
1600- 1630: Chris Wickham (Oxford) “The West’”
1630-1700: Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), “Slavery as a vehicle for social mobility in the early Islamic world”
1700-1730: Questions
1730-1830: Wine reception
1830-1930: Travel to feast
1930: Feast (Kolata Lounge, 1488 Pershore Rd, Bournville, Birmingham B30 2NT)
Monday 14th April
Session 7: Rural Life on Islands and Peripheries
0930-0955: Luca Zavagno (Bilkent), “‘From the gentle coast and where the stream descends from the grove of the river and all the high peaks there’. The countryside of large Byzantine islands in the early Middle Ages”
0955-1020: Basema Harmaneh (Vienna), “On peripheries: exploring the non-elite universe in the late antique
Levant”
1020-1045: Angelo Castrorao Barba (Granada), “Living in the Sicilian countryside during the Byzantine-Islamic transition: archaeological perspectives”
1045-1100: Questions
1100-1130: Tea and coffee
1130-1200: AGM
1200-1230: Closing remarks by Stuart Pracy (Exeter) and Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham)
1230: Closing of the symposium and announcement of the next symposium
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.
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.
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).
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
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!
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