Biography
I read Classics at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, before doing an MPhil and DPhil in Byzantine Studies, writing my thesis on the Emperor Anastasius I (491-518). I have been teaching in the Classics Department at King’s since 2000, and since 2007, I have been Secretary of the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies.
Research interests and PhD supervision
- The history and literary culture of the 5th and 6th centuries
- The governance of late antique cities
- Transition and transformation in the late antique world
- Developments in Classical and Byzantine Greek
I am interested in the history of the 5th and 6th centuries as a period of transition from the classical to the medieval & Byzantine world: how cities declined, adapted or transformed; how pagan festivals managed to survive in various guises; and how readily classicising Greek on pagan themes was composed alongside new forms (hymns) and more vernacular writing (chronicles). I am also interested in what traditional imperial biographies can tell us about the general politics and workings of government (secular and ecclesiastic). I am currently writing a book on Justinian, and I am collaborating on a Byzantine Greek Reader which will include texts from the 4th century to the 15th.
Teaching
MA: Beginners’ Greek Language
Expertise and public engagement
Secretary, Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
Editor, Bulletin of British Byzantine Studies
Director, London Summer School in Classics & Ancient Languages KCL Summer School
Fellow, Society of Antiquaries
Selected Publications
- ‘Anonymous Textual Survivals in Late Antiquity’, in Reading in the Byzantine Empire and Beyond, eds., T. Shawcross and I. Toth, Cambridge University Press 2018.
- ‘Developments in the Governance of Late Antique Cities’, in Governare e riformare l’impero al momento della sua divisione, eds., U. Roberto and L. Mecella, Rome 2016, 125-162.
- ‘Politics and Paganism. Episodes of Imperial Intervention in the Late Antique Near East’, in Mediterraneo Antico XVII.2 (2014) 433-454.
- Ed., AD 410. The History and Archaeology of Late and Post-Roman Britain, SPRS Monograph, London 2014.
- Anastasius I: Politics and Empire in the Late Roman World, Cambridge 2006
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