Bonds that Last: The Social Life of Byzantium
Mon 10 Mar 2025, 18:00 - 20:00
- Accessibility
- Accessible parking
- Hearing loop
- Live subtitling
- Wheelchair accessible venue
Contact the events team for further information about accessibility at this event.
- Venue
- Esther Simpson Lecture Theatre 1.01, University of Leeds, Lyddon Terrace, Woodhouse, Leeds, LS2
- Price
- Free, booking required
- Event series
- The British Academy Lectures
Delivered by the most outstanding academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s flagship Lecture programme showcases the very best scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.
Emperors and patriarchs, intellectuals and magnates dominate the narratives – whether by contemporary authors or by modern scholars – of the medieval Christian empire that ruled in the eastern Mediterranean for more than a millennium. But relatively little is known about the life of the majority of the population. In a society with strong hierarchies, what opportunities did people have to shape their social environment? This lecture presents little known evidence from texts, manuscripts and material culture in order to explore how the Byzantines created and adapted social relations to their own advantage.
Speaker: Professor Dr Claudia Rapp FBA, University of Vienna
Claudia Rapp grew up in Berlin, studied in Oxford and began her academic career at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna and Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her research deals with the social, religious and cultural life of Byzantium. She is the author of 'Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity' (2005) and 'Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium' (2014). Most recently, she edited 'Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook' (2023) and 'New Light on Old Manuscripts: The Sinai Palimpsests and Other Advances in Palimpsest Studies' (2023). She has held many international visiting appointments and fellowships, and was a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her work has been recognised by membership in several academies and learned societies.
Chair: Dr Axel Müller, University of Leeds
Free, booking required
This event includes a reception for all attendees before the lecture at 18:00-18:30. The lecture will run from 18:30-20:00, including a Q&A.
This event will take place in person in partnership with the University of Leeds. If you have any questions about this event, please email [email protected].
Image: Fresco depicting the emperor and church officials in a procession with an icon of the Virgin and Child, c. 1380, Markov Manastir, North Macedonia byzantologist, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Downloaded from Flickr.
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