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King’s People

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 

Click here to visit Dr Fiona Haarer's PURE profile