Graduate Conference-Shifting Fortunes in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Programme:­

Day One (22/04/25)

Registration (8:45)

Welcome (9:15)

Panel 1 (9:30-11:30) (Shifting fortunes of Roman authors) Chair: Professor Niels Gaul

Ethan Chilcott, (University of Oxford), Forced conversio?: Re-thinking Cassiodorus’ Career Change

Daiki Sano (University of Edinburgh), Tyche, Dike, and Telchines: Shifting Fortunes in George Pachymeres’ History

Rupert Rainer (University of Graz), The Megaira’s Grace. Panegyrical Re-Reading of Misfortunes in the Ekphrasis of Hagia Sophia by Paulus Silentiarius

Daniil Pleshak (University of Tübingen, delivered online), Others Envy Your Crowns: Alliances at the Universal Council of 869-870

Coffee Break (11:30-12:00)

Panel 2 (12:00-13:00) (Churches and community patronage) Chair: Professor Charles West

Paul Aste (Brown University), Infidels and Pagans: Changing rhetorical fortunes in the high Pyrenees?

Nicolette Vollero Levy (The Cyprus Institute), Communal Salvation? A Case Study of Community Patronage in Latin Cyprus

Lunch (13:00-14:00)

Panel 3 (14:00-15:30) (Politics and the Byzantine court) Chair: Dr Anais Lamesa

Ruisen Zheng (King’s College London), Political Fortune, Providence, and Imperial Destiny in Macedonian Official Historiographical Project Biography

Lucas Butler (University of Edinburgh), Symbols of imperial fortune: recontextualising the Strategoi at the 10th century Constantinopolitan court

Marcus Wells (University of Oxford), Shifting Fortunes at the Court of Michael VII: the Testimony of Kekaumenos’ Consilia et Narrationes

Coffee Break (15:30-16:00)

Panel 4 (15:45-16:45) (Literature in the Islamicate world) Chair: Professor Andrew Newman

Mathew Madain (Princeton University), De Anima in Arabic: Qusṭā b. Lūqā and the beginnings of the Aristotelian Philosophical Tradition in Arabic

Liam Walk (Harvard University), Nāṣir’s Doggerel: Reappraising the Fortunes of the Early Mamluk Jewry through Popular Verse

Break (16:45-17:15)

Keynote Lecture (17:30-18:15)

Dr Krystina Kubina (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Political Turmoil and Creative Freedom: Managing Personal Experiences in Late Medieval Greek Poetry

Reception, McMillan room (18:30-19.15)

Dinner (19:30) at , 5 min walk from the University.

Day Two (23/04/25)

Panel 1 (9:00-10:30) (Climate and the Economy) Chair: Dr Nik Matheou

Ian Ferreira Bonze (University of St Andrews), Roman plebs and indebtedness: the “crisis of entitlement” of 384

Rocío Suárez Vallejo (University of Málaga, delivered online), Looking for fortune in post-Roman Iberian countryside (s. VII)

Andrew McNey (University of Oxford, delivered online), Shifting Fortunes in the Desert: The Resilient Farmers of the Late Antique Levant

Coffee Break (10:30-11:15)

Panel 2 (11:15-12:15) (Reactions to conquest) Chair: Dr Marie Legendre

Sofia Thatharopoulou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, delivered online), Shifting fortunes- shifting priorities. Non-elite Christians in the early Islamic caliphates

Camila Palaio Martorelli (Federal University of São Paulo), Faith and Power: the role of Pisan spolia in the republic's maritime ascension

Lunch (12:30-13:30)

Panel 3 (13:30-14:30) (Fortunes of elites in Late Antiquity) Chair: Professor Lucy Grig

Silvia Lucchesi (University of Padua), Zenobia of Palmyra: power and downfall in the Historia Augusta

Arttu Alaranta (University of Helsinki), Humble Aristocrats and Elite Nonconformists: Contrasting Models of Upper-Class Asceticism in Late Antiquity

Coffee Break (14:30-15:15)

Panel 4 (15:15-16:45) (Byzantine literary discourse) Chair: Dr Yannis Stouraitis

Antonio Pio Di Cosmo (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Fortune and Fate of Andronikos I Komnenos in Light of the Visual Program of the Liber ad honorem Augusti

Dido Papikinou (University of Oxford), Politics of Survival: The Representation of Roman-Mongol Interactions in the Historia of George Pachymeres

Ada Kök (Central European University), Competing Christian Eschatological Discourses in the Fourth-Century Mediterranean

Closing statements (16.45-17.00)

Optional Seminar (17:15)

Dr Krisztina Ilko (University of Cambridge), Beyond the Lewis Chessmen: Chess and Race in the Global Middle Ages (Scottish History Seminar and Edinburgh Centre for Global History)

Optional Pub and Food

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Host or Publisher Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies, University of Edinburgh