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.