King's College London

Averil taught in the Classics Department, and later also in the Department of History, from 1965 to 1994, rising from Assistant Lecturer to Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. She served as Head of the Classics Department and founded the Centre for Hellenic Studies, becoming its first Director, before leaving King's to become Warden of Keble College in Oxford. She maintained strong links with King's, chairing for example the steering committee of the King's Prosopography of the Byzantine World project from 2000 to 2005.

Averil was one of the most prominent historians of her generation. She was a leading voice in the seismic "invention" of the late antique and "rehabilitation" of the Byzantine worlds in the later twentieth century, and author of a plethora of publications in Classics, History, and Theology that ranged widely across chronological, geographical and thematic boundaries, and remain as influential now as when they were published. She was also a pioneering leader, both intellectually and practically, shepherding multiple fields and institutions into the twenty-first century. But she will be remembered most at King's for her three decades of wonderful investment in the Department and the Faculty, and for her huge collegiality and generosity, particularly to the generations of junior scholars in whom she invested so much time and faith.

A Tribute to Averil Cameron

Writing about Averil Cameron, who died on 7 April, challenges those who worked with her to single out specific aspects of her manifold achievements and distinguish the most lasting triumphs of her astonishingly rich life. Many obituaries have listed the honours bestowed upon her from around the world: in China, Japan, America, Australia, the Near East, Scandinavia and Europe her death is being noted with sadness and deep recognition. Here I would like to emphasize the many ways in which she fought and succeeded in elevating the field of Byzantine Studies onto a serious plane, alongside and equal to Late Antiquity, Classics and Medieval History (something I benefitted from personally).

She led this campaign from King’s College London, where in 1989 she insisted that the new position to which she was promoted should be named Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. I recall how colleagues in Paris found the combination incomprehensible, because they clung to the separation between anything classical (properly Greco-Roman) and medieval (a completely different domain). Previously, she had held the established chair in Ancient History since 1978, had been elected to the British Academy in 1981, and had published her study of Procopius in 1985 – all activities that fell squarely within Classics and the relatively novel field of Late Antiquity. With her mastery of Roman imperial traditions, she had the authority to facilitate the integration of Byzantine civilisation into the early medieval world, helping to end its academic isolation while expanding the entire framework of Late Antiquity.

The Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies was of course part of this campaign, and she participated with great energy in its foundation in 1983, withSir Steven Runciman as President and Professor Anthony Bryer as Secretary. She told me with deep regret how she had tried to persuade the British Academy to establish a separate field of Byzantine Studies and to bring Anthony Bryer into its fold - to no avail. In other areas, however, her grasp and handling of administrative structures and her skilful use of the power she manifested made her a force for improvement on many committees and official commissions.

Her personal move from the world of Roman Studies (she edited its Journal and was president of its Society) to the greatly enlarged Late Antique and Byzantium sphere was also marked by her foundation of the Centre for Hellenic Studies at King’s, with the formidable contribution of Nicholas and Matti Egon. Nicholas supported the establishment of the Runciman Lecture, which remains an annual event. And her commitment to this wider field became clear in her publications, The Byzantines (2006) and Byzantine Matters (2014), which appeared while she was running Keble College, Oxford.

Part of the driver of this determined expansion derived from her close reading of early Christian texts, which had inspired Greek Orthodox theology throughout the Byzantine period and beyond. Her study of Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (1991), based on the Sather lectures at Berkeley, revealed her acute understanding of how early Christian theologians and particularly the Cappadocian Church Fathers employed ancient Greek formulations and created inspired expressions of their complex theology and faith. It also revealed a second driver, the absorption of theoretical issues into Classics: the literary turn, feminism and the influence of Foucault. Averil was fearless in the way she embraced and mastered them all.

We met and first worked together in the late 1970s at the collective reading of the Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai, which Alan Cameron had noticed during his research on Circus Factions. Not only was the date and transmission of these ‘short historical notes’ problematic, but they also contained references to mythic stories about Constantinople, its statues, and individuals like the Emperor Philippikos. At King’s, Averil gathered a group of people interested in the text to read, translate and explain it, and allowed me to assist in its final editing for publication (1984). It was an exhilarating experience that I deeply appreciated.

Having managed to raise her two children while continuing to work extremely productively, I think she was always attentive to female colleagues who were coping with the family/research conundrum. But her commitment to feminism also brought a more general support for women, and an awareness of their positive contributions to Classics, a field so long dominated by men. This was not so essential to Byzantine Studies where women were often more prominent, but Averil’s stern judgements as well as encouragement made a considerable improvement. She could be very severe, with good reason, and her approval was therefore more anxiously sought.

When I was appointed to her chair after she left King’s to take on the leadership of Keble College, Oxford, I felt the aura of her creation and how it had brought together a very wide range of support for Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. From the Chapel and the Principal to Theology and Religious Studies, Philosophy and History, forms of collaboration flourished, such as sharing the supervision of PhD students. And Averil’s closest colleagues in Classics and the Department of Modern Greek couldn’t have been more helpful as I tried to expand her work. She had made King’s one of the liveliest centres of explorations of Byzantium.

Thanks to her memoir, Transitions (2025), we now know more about Averil’s background and childhood. Among other things it engendered a loyalty to the Labour Party that was sorely tested in more recent times. She remained committed to the principles of fairness, equity and merit and was a critical friend of traditional institutions from the church to the Royal Family. Her brilliance as a pianist and love of music runs through all her varied academic experiences while her appreciation of what the chef at Keble could provide during the COVID lockdown revealed another of her particular pleasures. What an adventurous life, so elegantly led! How seriously she is missed by so many of us.

Judith Herrin

10 May 2026