Events

2026-2027

The seminars will be hybrid unless otherwise stated. For information, email Ann-Sophie Schoess ([email protected]) or Anna Kelley ([email protected]).

Schedule

Previous events

• 2025-2026

  Monday, 29 September 2025, 5.15pm — Parliament Hall
  Simon Maclean (St Andrews): ‘Worrying about queenship in the Carolingian Life of Empress Helena‘
  (Part of the SAIMS lecture series)

  • • •

  Monday, 6 October 2025, 5.15pm — Parliament Hall
  John Arnold (Cambridge): ‘Firmiter credimus: The Changing Dynamics of Lay Belief‘
  (Part of the SAIMS lecture series)

  • • •

  Wednesday, 8 October 2025, 4pm — Hybrid: Room S4 Swallowgate/ Teams
  Alex Woolf (St Andrews): ‘Adomnán mac Ronáin, Mu’awiya ibn Abi Sufyan and a Tale of Two Synods?‘
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Friday, 10 October 2025, 12.30–2 — CLAS lunch
  The lunch will be an in-person event, hosted in the Undercroft. Please RSVP with any dietary requirements to Sophie ([email protected]) by Thursday 2 October.

  • • •

  Wednesday, 15 October 2025, 4pm — Teams
  Anna Athanasopoulou (Ghent University): ‘Chromatic reverberations: the prismatic ecology of Nonnus’ Dionysiaca‘
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Thursday, 30 October 2025, 5.30pm — Old Class Library, St John’s House 65-71 South Street
  Brigid Ehrmantraut (St Andrews): ‘Battle Spirits and Evil Omens: Writing about Civil War with Lucan in Fourteenth-Century Ireland’
  (ISHR seminar)
  
  The paper is followed by a book launch celebration for Brigid’s new book, Classical Myth in Medieval Ireland (Boydell & Brewer, 2025).

  • • •

  Monday, 3 November 2025, 5.15pm — Parliament Hall
  Robert Bartlett (St Andrews): ‘East’ and ‘West’ in the Middle Ages
  (Part of the SAIMS lecture series)

  • • •

  Friday, 14 November 2025, 4.15pm – Hybrid: Room SO3 Swallowgate/Teams
  Leslie Brubaker (Birmingham): ‘Mary of Egypt: Gender, sanctity and landscape’
  (Annual Lecture for the Centre for Late Antique Studies / School of Classics Seminar) 

  • • •

  Monday, 17 November 2025, 5.15pm — Parliament Hall
  Simon Parsons (Bristol): ‘The Social Function of the Twelfth-Century Crusade Epic‘
  (Part of the SAIMS lecture series)

  • • •

  Friday, 28 November 2025, 4.15pm – Hybrid: Room SO3 Swallowgate/Teams
  Giordana Franceschini (Tübingen): ‘Reforming Justinian’s empire: The praetorian prefect John the Cappadocian’
  (School of Classics Seminar)
  All queries about this seminar should go to Talitha Kearey, [email protected]. 

  • • •

  Thursday, 4 December 2025, 4pm — Hybrid: Room S4 Swallowgate/ Teams
  Susanna Elm (UC Berkeley): TBC.
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  11 March, 3 to 5pm, work-in-progress seminars.
  Hybrid event: room s11 Swallowgate, St Andrews/Teams. To get meeting link, email [email protected] and [email protected].

  • Timothy Greenwood (St Andrews, History)
    Greek versions of Armenian texts in Late Antiquity: when, where and why?
  • Becca Grose (St Andrews, Classics — Land and Loyalty Project)
    Land Distribution and Family Repercussions in the Late Roman World: East and West

  • • •

  25 March 2026, 4pm, CLAS seminar (online)
  Rob Cioffi (Bard College)
  Some Odor of Frankincense: Law, Narrative, and an Unpublished Illustrated Papyrus (BNF Suppl. gr. 1294)

  • • •

  15 April, 3–5pm, work-in-progress seminars (in-person, room TBC)

  • Anna Kelley (St Andrews, Classics)
    Desert Dwellers and Economic Anxieties on the Frontiers of Late Antique Egypt
  • Talitha Kearey (St Andrews, Classics)
    Luxorious beyond the Pleasure Principle

  • • •

  22 April 2026, 4pm, CLAS seminar (online)
  Vincent Tomasso (Trinity College Connecticut)
  The Audiences of Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica

  • • •

  29 April 2026, 4pm, CLAS seminar (online)
  Benjamin Goldlust (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur)
  Myth and Poetry in Dracontius’ De raptu Helenae (Rom. 8)

  • • •

  Poverty Dynamics in the Long Late Antiquity, AD 300-800

  Conference, 22 to 23 July 2026
  In-person: Room S4, Swallowgate, School of Classics, University of St Andrews
  Online: MS Teams

  Poverty was a defining element in late antique and early medieval societies, shaping economic structures, social relations, cultural values, and political hierarchies. This two-day conference will analyse the dynamics of poverty from an interdisciplinary perspective, examining how poverty drivers and resilience strategies marked the social and economic condition and lived experiences of destitute and vulnerable groups across the Mediterranean during a period of unprecedented historical transformations. 

  Schedule

  Wednesday, 22^nd July

  9.30-10:00 – Welcome and introduction

  Session 1 – Surviving Poverty

  10:00-10:30 – Carlos Machado (St Andrews), The World of Begging

  10:30-11:00 – Will Bowden (Nottingham), Poverty, Health, and Agency at Late Antique Butrint

  11:00-11:20 – Discussion

  Session 2 – The Impact of Religion

  11:40-12:10 – Bronwen Neil (Melbourne), Running Away to Join the Church: Dynamic Poverty, Slavery, and Clerical Service in Roman Late Antiquity

  12:10-12:40 – James Palmer (St Andrews), Austerity, Mobility, and the Reimagining of Merovingian Gaul

  12:40-13:00 – Discussion

  Session 3 – Imagining the Poor

  14:00-14:30 – Lucy Grig (Edinburgh), Poverty Dynamics in Late Antique Latin Fiction

  14:30-15:00 – Matthijs Zoeter (Ghent), The Representation of the Poor in the Post-Theodosian Novellae

  15:00-15:20 – Discussion

  Session 4 – Labour and Poverty

  15:50-16:20 – Niels Arends (St Andrews), Veiled Acts, Visible Pressure: Resistance and Evasion in the Late Antique Patrimony

  16:20-16:50 – Lluís Jerez i Bertolín (Barcelona), Assessing the Poverty and Wealth of Harvest Intermediaries: A Comparison Between the Harvester of Maktar and the Harthotes Archive

  16:50-17:20 – Rafael Monpean (São Paulo), Working, Sensing, and Modifying Cities in Late Antiquity: Sensory Experiences of Workers and Urban Transformations in Carthage from the 4^th to 6^th Centuries

  17:20-17:50 – Discussion

  Thursday, 23^rd July

  Session 5 – Managing Poverty

  9:00-9:30 – Anna Kelley (St Andrews), Economic Control in the Marital Landscape of Early Christian Egypt: Tales of Divorcées

  9:30-10:00 – Christel Freu (Paris), The Economy of Poor Families in Late Antiquity: Work, Consumption, and Charity

  10:00-10:30 – Ian Bonze (St Andrews), Credit, Debt, and Social Mobility in Late Antiquity

  10:30-11:00 – Discussion

  Session 6 – Charity and the Poor

  11:30-12:00 – Tristan Spillman (Bonn/Zurich/St Andrews), Poverty and Charity in the Letters of Pope Gregory the Great: The Social Dimensions of Papal Administration in the 6^th Century.

  12:00-12:30 – Lorenzo Paveggio (Padua), Poverty as Strategy: Episcopal Wealth, Gift Circulation, and Elite Behaviour in Merovingian Gaul

  12:30-12:50 – Discussion

  Session 7 – Patronage and Power

  14:00-14:30 – Carolyn La Rocco (Oxford), ‘Pauperum gubernatricem et catolicae fidei cultricem’: Female Christianity and Poverty in Late and Post-Roman Iberia

  14:30-15:00 – Cristina La Rocca (Padua), Widows, Orphans, and Pauperes: A Carolingian Perspective on Protection and Control

  15:00-15:20 – Discussion

  Session 8 – Responding to Insecurity

  15:40-16:10 – Sam Leggett (Edinburgh), Biomolecular Archaeology, Poverty, and Food Insecurity

  16:10-16:40 – Marcelo Cândido (São Paulo), Famine Foods, Vulnerability, and Subsistence Strategies in the Mediterranean, 5^th to 8^th Centuries.

  16:40-17:10 – Mauro Rizzetto (Brussels) & Veronica Aniceti (Rome), Tracing Inequality through Animal Remains: Zooarchaeological Evidence from Roman and Medieval Europe.

  17:10-17:40 – Discussion

  17:40-18:00 – Conclusion

  

  This conference was generously funded by the School of Classics, the Past and Present Society, the EDI committee/CUCD, and the Institute of Classical Studies.

  • • •

• 2024-2025

  18 September (Wednesday) – 2.15pm, Room SO3 (ground floor), Swallowgate:
  Jane Lightfoot (Oxford), Textually Transmitted Diseases, or, How to shape a Roman book of maladies
  (Annual lecture for the Centre for Late Antique Studies)

  • • •

  Wed, 12 February, 3pm — S03, School of Classics and on Teams
  Paulo Duarte (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro): Preaching and Crises: Sermons on the Barbarian Threat in the West (5th–6th centuries).
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Fri, 14 February, 4.15pm — S03, School of Classics and on Teams
  Andrew Morrison (Glasgow): Friendship, Philosophy, Forgery: Greek letter collections 400 BC to AD 400 and the AHRC Ancient Letter Collections Project.
  (School of Classics Seminar)

  • • •

  Weds, 19 February, 2.15pm — S03, School of Classics and on Teams
  Becca Grose (St Andrews): Unauthenticated letters in late Roman North African disputes: forgeries or negotiation strategies?
  (School of Classics Seminar)

  • • •

  Mon, 24 February, 5.15pm — Parliament Hall, St Andrews
  Robin Whelan (Liverpool): How to be Both: Models of Christian Political Service in Late Antiquity.
  (SAIMS Seminar)

  • • •

  Wed, 12 March, 4pm — on Teams
  Charlotte Spence (Oxford): Cursing and Being Cursed in Late Antique Egypt.
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Wed, 2 April, 4pm — S03, School of Classics and on Teams
  Carolyn La Rocco (Oxford): Visigothic Queens: Female Power and Patronage in Late-Antique Iberia.
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Wed, 23 April, 4pm — S4, School of Classics and on Teams
  Arik Avdokhin (Oxford): Inscribing Forgetting? Towards Epigraphic Recycling and Social Oblivion in Late Antique Asia Minor.
  (CLAS Seminar)

  • • •

  Wed, 28 May, 3pm — SO3, School of Classics and on Teams
  Lluís Jerez i Bertolín (Birmingham): On societal leave: potential factors explaining the presence of harvest contractors in the Roman world.
  (Hosted jointly with the project Land and Loyalty: The Politics of Land in the Later Roman World)

  • • •

  Wed, 4 June, 2pm — Workshop, SO3, School of Classics
  “Networks in Late Antiquity“.

  Co-organised by Nicola Holm (Warsaw), Carlos Machado  (St Andrews) and Becca Grose (St Andrews).

  Confirmed contributors: Deanna Cunningham, Nicola Holm, Anna Kelley, Shannon McMillan.

  (Hosted jointly with the project Land and Loyalty: The Politics of Land in the Later Roman World)

  • • •

  Fri, 27 June, 10am – 12:30pm 
  “Sharing Perspectives on Late Antiquity: Granada-St Andrews International Meeting“

  Hybrid event
  In person: Room S3 – ground floor, Swallowgate, St Andrews.
  Online: Join meeting on Microsoft Teams
  Please send enquiries to: Eduardo Cerrato Casado [email protected]

  Programme

  10.00-10.25 Antonio López García
  “Transforming Belief: Religion and Urban Change in Late Antique Trans Tiberim (Rome)”.
  Moderator: Ian Bonze.

  10.25-10.50 Javier Martínez Jiménez
  “New Approaches to Late Antique Water Culture”.
  Moderator: TBC

  10.50-11.15 Eduardo Cerrato Casado
  “Coinage with a Message: A Practical Case in Visigothic Hispania”.
  Moderator: Alex Woolf.

  Break

  11.15-11.40 Mattia Chiriatti
  “Narrating Integration: Literary Strategies and the Germanic-Roman Encounter in Late Antique Hispania”.
  Moderator: James Palmer.

  11.40-12.15 Carolyn La Rocco
  “Monasteries and Crisis in Late Roman and Early Medieval Iberia”.
  Moderator: Becca Grose

  
  Organiser: Eduardo Cerrato Casado (Granada),
  Facilitator: Becca Grose (St Andrews)

  • • •

• 2023-2024

  15 September (Friday), all day – School II
  Workshop: Trees and the Anthropocene in Greek and Roman Antiquity
  hosted by the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies

  • • •

  5 October (Thursday), 12noon – 1pm – Medieval History, Undercroft
  ** Late Antique Lunch**
  (Please email Caroline Humfress at [email protected] by 2^nd October to confirm attendance and please mention if you have any special dietary requirement)

  • • •

  11 October (Wednesday), 2.15pm – School of Classics, Swallowgate 3
  Christian Djurslev (Aarhus), How the Christians Stole the Past: Greek Chronology and Roman History in Theophilus of Antioch’s Ad Autolycum (Classics Seminar)

  • • •

  23 October (Monday), 5.15 pm – School of History, Old Class Library
  Harry Munt (York), Imperial Holy Cities in Islamic Late Antiquity (Medieval Studies and Middle Eastern and Iranian Seminar)

  • • •

  27 October (Friday), 4.00 pm – online only
  Panayotis Christophorou (Oxford), Perceptions of Early Roman Emperors in Pseudo-Hegesippus

  • • •

  30 October (Monday), 5.15 pm – Parliament Hall
  Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield), Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople (Medieval Studies Seminar)

  • • •

  01 November (Wednesday), 4.00pm – online only
  Rocco Selvaggi (Hamburg) Vandals, Suebi, Visigoths: three different ways of Roman diplomacy to deal with ‘barbarians’

  • • •

  06 November (Monday), 5.15 pm – Parliament Hall
  Matthew Gabriele (Virginia Tech), Prophecy, Apocalypse, and Making History in Early Medieval Europe (Medieval Studies, The Bullough Lecture)

  • • •

  10 November  (Friday), 4.00 pm – online only
  Marzia Fiorentini (St Andrews), “Typhos the Tyrant”

  • • •

  17 November (Friday), 4.15pm– School of Classics, Swallowgate 3
  Christian Laes (Manchester), Disability and the Disabled in the Roman Empire: A Social and Cultural History (Classics Seminar)

  • • •

  22 January (Monday) – Mirela Ivanova (Sheffield), Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Weiting between Rome and Constantinople (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  31 January (Wednesday) – Giacomo Savani (St Andrews), Machines for Competition? Reassessing Rural Baths in Late Roman Britain (CLAS seminar), online, 4pm

  • • •

  05 February (Monday) – Jamie Wood (Lincoln), Lost Texts and Careless Readers in Visigothic Iberia (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  08 February (Thursday) – Neil McGuigan (St Andrews), Scottish Kings and the Old English Past (Medieval Studies Seminar), Old Class Library, 5.30pm

  • • •

  14 February (Friday) – Panayotis Christophorou (Oxford), Perceptions of Early Roman Emperors in Pseudo-Hegesippus (CLAS Seminar), Swallowgate, S03, 4.00 pm

  • • •

  19 February (Monday) – Sam Leggett (Edinburgh), The Norse and the North Atlantic: fishing and migration in early medieval Scotland (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  4 March (Monday) – Walter Pohl (Vienna), Where Rome really fell: the lands along the Danube in the fourth to seventh centuries (SAIMS Annual Lecture), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  8 March (Friday) – Anna Kelley (St Andrews), Violence and social bonds in late antique Egypt: women as victims, perpetrators, and adjudicators (Classics Research Seminar) , Swallowgate, S03, 4.15 pm

  • • •

  11 March (Monday) – Conor O’Brien (Oxford), The Rise of Christian Kingship and the Desecularization of the Latin West (Medieval Studies Seminar), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  20 March (Wednesday) – Larisa Ficulle (Vienna), Leaves of rue, Bayberries and Myrrh: Theory and Practice of Abortion in Byzantium (Classics Research Seminar), venue TBC, 4.00 pm

  • • •

  25 March (Monday) – Holger Zellentin (Tübingen), Jesus’ Confirmation of the Torah in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Medieval Studies Seminar, joint with ILCR), Parliament Hall, 5.15pm

  • • •

  5 April (Friday) – Neil McLynn (Oxford), Lost at Leuchars: Gregory Nazianzen at Sasina (Annual Lecture, Centre for Late Antique Studies /Classics Research Seminar) , Swallowgate, S03, 4.15 pm

  • • •

• 2022-2023

  3 October (Monday), 5.15pm – Dr Tim Greenwood (St Andrews): 
  “Remembering Saint Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia in late antiquity” 
  (St Andrews Medieval Studies Seminar Series)
  This seminar will take place in person in Parliament Hall and will be available on Microsoft Teams

  • • •

  11 November (Friday), 4pm – Prof. Ignazio Tantillo (Naples):
  “The Consistory of the Late Roman Emperors”
  (Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies/St Andrews Classics Research Seminar)
  This seminar will take place in person in School II, St Salvator’s Quad, and will be available on Microsoft Teams

  • • •

  23 November (Wednesday), 4pm – Dr Grace Stafford (Warsaw): 
  “Pray for the Patron: Female Donor Portraits and Women’s Patronage in Late Antiquity” 
  (St Andrews Late Antique Seminar)
  This seminar will be available on Microsoft Teams only

  • • •

  30 January  5.15pm: Arietta Papaconstantinou (Reading), “Negotiating eternity: monks, aristocrats, and phantoms” (Old Class Library and online) Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research Seminar joint with St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies

  • • •

  01 February 4.00pm: Rocco Selvaggi (Hamburg): Western Roman Diplomacy as reflected in Roman-Germanic agreements of 5th century (online)

  • • •

  Workshop
  New Approaches to the History of Plague in Late Antiquity

  Hosted by the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies
  and the Centre for Late Antique Studies
  
  Friday 3 February 2023

  Schedule

  9.00-9.05: Introduction
   
  9.05-9.50: Peter Sarris (Cambridge): Why Historians of the Justinianic Plague need to know more about the Black Death
   
  9:50-10:35: Gunnar Neumann (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig): Archaeogenetic Insights into Yersinia pestis from the First Plague Pandemic
   
  10:35-11 Coffee
   
  11.00-11:45: Scott Johnson (Oklahoma) and Kyle Harper (Oklahoma): Eyewitness to Mass Mortality: John of Ephesus, the Ecclesiastical History, and the Plague of Justinian
   
  11:45-12:30: Helen Foxhall-Forbes (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice): Science, Society and the Environment: Approaches to Change in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
   
  12:30-1:15 Lunch
   
  1:15-2:00: David Orton (York): What Zooarchaeology can tell us about Rats in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Introducing the RATTUS Project
   
  2:00-2:45: Elena Xoplaki (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen): Climate over the Greater Eastern Mediterranean during the 6th-8th centuries AD simulated with the fully forced COSMO-CLM
   
  2:45-3:30: James Palmer (St Andrews): Pandemic and the Medicalisation of Religious Culture in the West (c. 540-c. 740)
   
  3:30-4:00 Coffee
   
  4.15-5.45: Kyle Harper: The Long First Plague Pandemic: A View from Italy (Annual Lecture for the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies) (School 2)

  • • •

  03 February  4.15 pm: Kyle Harper (Oklahoma): The Long First Plague Pandemic: A View from Italy (Annual Lecture for the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies) (in-person) (School II)^*

  • • •

  15 February   4.00pm: Giacomo Savani (St Andrews) Machines for Competition? Reassessing Rural Baths in Late Roman Britain (online)

  • • •

  10 March 4.15 pm: James Corke-Webster (KCL): Legislation, Charges and Christians: Problems and Solutions (School of Classics, room S03) 

  • • •

  15 March 4.00pm: Anna Kelley (St Andrews) Weaving the Glory of God: Monastic Commercial Production in the Late Antique Textile Industry (online)

  • • •

  21 March 5.15pm: Lisa Eberle (Tübingen), “Law, Narrative, and Entitlement in the Roman Empire, 100 BCE – 100 CE” (venue TBC) Joint ILCR, School of History and School of Classics Lecture

  • • •

  23 March Masterclass with Lisa Eberle (Tübingen), “Beyond Boring: Letters of Recommendation as Sources for (Legal) Historians” (time and place TBC)

  • • •

  29 March 4.00pm Robert Wisniewski (Warsaw/Leverhulme Visiting Professor, Reading): Clerical look. How did clerics start to differ from lay people?(School of Classics, room S03)

  • • •

• 2021-2022

  Wednesday 29 September 4pm – Cristina La Rocca (Padua):
  “Paupercula. A woman alone between poverty, disability, and redemption (6th-9th centuries) (Poverty and Inequality series)”

  • • •

  Wednesday 13 October 4pm – Ann-Sophie Schoess (St Andrews):
  “Ariadne’s Second Abandonment: Traces of Ovid’s Fasti in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca?”

  • • •

  Wednesday 3 November 4pm – Jane Sancinito (Lowell):
  “Finding Piracy in Late Antiquity” (Poverty and Inequality series)

  • • •

  Wednesday 10 November 4pm – John Fabiano (Toronto):
  “Plebeius Labor: Work, Profession, and Poverty in the Late-Roman City” (Poverty and Inequality series)

  • • •

  Wednesday 24 November 4pm – Christel Freu (Rouen):
  “Contrasts and Inequalities in the societies of the capitals of Byzantine Egypt: the cases of Antinoopolis and Oxyrhynchos” (Poverty and Inequality series)

  • • •

  Lived Spaces in Late Antiquity
  Conference, 8 – 10 December, 2021
  
  This international conference will approach the world of Late Antiquity from the perspective of space, how it was perceived, defined, and constructed through social, political, and cultural interactions. Space is the fundamental dimension of social life, the arena where it unfolds and the stage where social values and hierarchies are represented; analysis of space allows us to understand history through different means of shaping, occupying, controlling space. Space-oriented approaches have had a remarkable impact on late antique scholarship, leading to exciting new evaluations of changes in architecture and topography As such, traditional debates over the nature and dimension of urban and rural settlements are being left aside in favour of a more organic perspective that combines historical and archaeological analyses to show how elements of continuity and change were articulated in new and creative ways in different parts of the Mediterranean. This conference brings together specialists from different disciplines to look at space as a lived entity, as how it was used and how it gave shape to social life at a time of unprecedented historical change. Topics to be examined include the fate of Classical structures; the development of funerary spaces; the conceptual redefinition of space; and how religious and secular foundations redefined social life.

  View updated conference program (pdf)

  This conference was generously sponsored by the School of Classics at St Andrews, the Classical Association, and the Institute of Classical Studies.

  • • •

  7 February (Monday), 5.15pm – Mathieu Tillie (Paris)
  Dating the Hadith. Methodological reflections on the emergence of prophetic authority in early Islam (SAIMS/ILCR seminar)

  • • •

  11 February (Friday), 4.00 pm – Corisande Fenwick (London)
  Building God’s empire: archaeology, religion and the Byzantine reconquest of Africa Classics (School of Classics seminar)

  • • •

  16 February (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Uiran Gebara da Silva (Pernambuco)
  Late Roman Rural Communities and Scale: the Colonate as Micro-Spatial History (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)

  • • •

  18 February (Friday), 4.00 pm – James Corke-Webster (London)
  By whom were (the) early Christians persecuted? (School of Classics seminar)

  • • •

  30 March (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Alexandra Madela (St Andrews)
  Competing with Homer in Late Antiquity: Poetic ambitions of the Orphic Argonautica’s anonymous author (CLAS)

  • • •

  6 April (Wednesday), 4.00 pm – Kim Bowes (Pennsylvania)
  Portfolios of the poor: Household economics in the Roman and late Roman worlds (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)

  • • •

  8 April (Friday), 4.00 pm – Philipp von Rummel (Berlin)
  Simitthus in the first millennium AD. The multiple transformations of a Roman town in Africa (Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies/School of Classics)

  • • •

  13 April (Wednesday), 5.00 pm – Daniel Caner (Indiana)
  An Early Byzantine Notion of the Deserving Poor (CLAS Poverty and Inequality Series)

  • • •

• 2020-2021

  Wednesday 27 January 4pm – Dr Byron Waldron (Sydney):
  “Brothers in Arms: Military Politics, Fraternal Imagery and the Age of the Tetrarchy”

  • • •

  Friday 5 February 4pm – Adrastos Omissi (Glasgow):
  “Hamstrung Horses: Dating Constantine’s Departure from the Court of Galerius” (Classics Research seminar)

  • • •

  Monday 8 February 5.15pm – Søren Sindbaek (Aarhus):
  “Northern Emporium: The Archaeology of Ribe, the Anglo-Saxon Mission in Frisia, and the Making of Viking-Age” (Institute of Medieval Studies Seminar)

  • • •

  Wednesday 03 March 4pm – Prof. Marcelo Cândido da Silva (São Paulo):
  “Karol and Sisenand: power and social mobility in early medieval Italy”

  • • •

  Friday 12 March 4pm – Kristina Sessa (Ohio State):
  “Disaster in Late Antiquity: Scale, Agency, and Narrative”- Centre for Late Antique Studies Annual Lecture

  • • •

  Wednesday 17 March 4pm – Dr Robert Wisniewski (Warsaw):
  “Counting Prebyters in Late Antique Rome”

  • • •

  Friday 19 March 4pm – Koen de Temmerman (Ghent):
  “A Life (not) to Die for: Eremitic Monasticism in Pseudo-Nilus’ Narrations” (Classics Research Seminar)

  • • •

  Wednesday 21 April 4pm – Prof. Sabine Panzram (Hamburg):
  “The Christianization of the Iberian Peninsula – Myth and Reality”
  

  • • •

• 2018-2019

  * Week 1 – Wednesday 19 September – 2.05pm School I, St Salvator’s
  Michael Hanaghan (Cork) ‘Praise, Blame, and Roman Emperors: A Visual Study of Constantius II in Epideictic Literature’

  • • •

  * Week 2 – Wednesday 26 September – 2.05pm Arts 7, The Scores
  Lenia Kouneni (St Andrews) ‘From spiritual visions to archaeological digs: David Russell and The Walker Trust excavations of the Great Palace in Constantinople’

  • • •

  * Friday 12 October – 4.10pm Swallowgate 11
  Gianfranco Agosti (La Sapienza) ‘The Dark Side of the Nile. Greek and Coptic Paideia in Late Antiquity’

  • • •

  *Workshop: Epigraphy and Literature in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
  Week 6 – 04/03 (Monday) – St Mary’s College Hall
  Invited speakers: Gianfranco Agosti (Rome, La Sapienza), Jason König (St Andrews), Peter Kruschwitz (Reading), Carlos Machado (St Andrews), Elisa Merisio (Rome, La Sapienza), Jason Moralee (Massachussetts Amherst), Silvia Orlandi (Rome, La Sapienza), Beppe Pezzini (St Andrews) Andreas Rhoby (Vienna), Francesco Stella (Siena), Ida Toth (Oxford).
  
  A University of St Andrews/Università di Roma La Sapienza workshop, funded by The British Academy.

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  Jason Moralee (Massachussetts Amherst), ‘Love, Hatred, and Madness: The Emotional Lives of the Capitolium’ (a joint lecture for the Centre for Late antique Studies and the Centre for Landscape Studies)
  Week 6 – 05/03 (Tuesday), 5pm – School of Classics, S11

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  Sebastian Schmidt-Hofner (Tübingen), ‘Quoddam sacerdotium: the Mysteries of the State and the Self-perceptions of the late Roman bureaucratic elite’ (annual lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies)
  Week 8 – 03/04 (Wednesday), 2pm – Arts seminar room 7

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  Bryan Ward-Perkins (Oxford), ‘Archaeology and the end of Antiquity’ (The Student Archaeological Society of St Andrews)
  Week 8 – 05/04 (Friday), 5pm – School V

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  Tim Greenwood (History), ‘Armenia and Iran in Late Antiquity: New Perspectives’ (a seminar of the St Andrews Institute of Medieval Studies)
  Week 9 – 08/04 (Monday), 1pm – Parliament Hall, South Street

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  * Jan Willem Drijvers (Groningen), ‘The forgotten emperor Jovian (363-364) between history and legend’
  Week 9 – 09/04 (Tuesday), 5pm – School of Classics, S11

  • • •

  * Julia Hillner (Sheffield), ‘Helena Augusta: Writing a Life Forward’
  Week 10 – 19/04 (Friday) 4pm – School of Classics, S11

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  * Bruce Frier (Michigan), ‘What held Roman law together?’ (Joint meeting of the Institute for Legal and Constitutional Research, University of St Andrews and the Edinburgh Roman Law Group.)
  10 May (Friday) – Old Class Library, 71 South Street

  • • •

  * St Andrews/Tübingen Workshop: The First Millenium AD
  A two-day interdisciplinary workshop for graduate students and early career researchers sponsored by St Leonard’s College, St Andrews.
  Thursday 23-Friday 24 May 2019

  Venue: Lecture room 2, The Gateway, North Haugh

  PROGRAMME

  Thursday, 23 May

  09.00 – Arrival and welcome

  09.15-10.45 – Panel 1 (Chair: Jason König)

  * Georgios Mouratidis (St Andrews): Grants of citizenship and boule-membership to successful performers during the Empire

  * Theresia Raum (Tübingen): There and back again: Herakleios and the Survival of the Eastern Roman Empire, 610-630

  * Carolyn La Rocco (St Andrews): Some material evidence for inter-religious interaction on the late antique Iberian Peninsula

  10.45-11.15 – Coffee break

  11.15-13.15 – Panel 2 (Chair: Tim Greenwood)

  * Gabriel Gabbardo (St Andrews): Pigs and Nuns – A Julianic Anti-Christian persecution?

  * Maurits De Leeuw (Tübingen): Beyond the bold bishop and the angry empress: Opposition against John Chrysostom

  * Federico Montinaro (Tübingen): Abbasid Syria in the Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 869/870

  * Ian D. Morris (St Andrews): A pillow of figs: Late Antique ‘sleeper’ legends in Early Muslim exegesis

  13.15-14.30 – Lunch

  14.30-15.00 – Research at Tübingen

  15.00-16.30 – Panel 3 (Chair: Roger Rees)

  * Dennis Jussen (Radbout/St Andrews): The Collection and its Collective: Pliny, Pacatus, and the Panegyrici Latini

  * Andreas Abele (Tübingen): Reading the ‚Dullest Epistles in the Latin Language’ by the Book. A Narratological Approach to the Letters of Symmachus

  * Maria Merino (St Andrews): Riddles and Praise: A Poetic Epistle to Charlemagne

  16.30-17.00: Coffee break

  17.00-18.30: Plenary lecture

  Prof. Mischa Meier (Tübingen): The Roman Context of Early Islam

  Friday, 24 May

  09.00-11.00 – Panel 4 (Chair: TJ Lang)

  * Francis Rouvinez (St Andrews): The Gospel of Mark in the Context of Ancient Biography

  * Martina Vercesi (St Andrews): Quale regnum exinde iustorum! Qualis civitas nova Hierusalem!: Revelation 19 – 21 in the exegesis of the Christian communities of Roman Africa from the II to the V century.

  * David De Marco (Tübingen): Augustine’s presentation of Porphyry in De ciuitate Dei 10

  * Hiu Ki Chan (St Andrews): Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s Theology of Virginity in De Virginitate

  11.00-11.30 – Coffee Break

  11.30-13.00 – Panel 5 (Chair: Rebecca Sweetman)

  * Marzia Fiorentini (St Andrews/Sapienza): Liberalitas in the 4th century: a rhetorical analysis

  * Sarah Bühler (Tübingen): Ordo renascens: Coping strategies of the imperial élites in Italy, 395-493 CE

  * Caroline Belanger (Tübingen/St Andrews): The Right to Roman Hegemony: Virtue and Empire in Avienus’ Descriptio

   13.00-14.30 – Lunch

  14.30-15.00: Research at St Andrews

  * Paolo Tedesco (Tübingen): The Political Economy of the Late Roman Empire: An Essay in Speculation

  15.00-16.30 – Panel 6 (Chair: Caroline Humfress)

  * Cameron Houston (St Andrews): The Politics of Ethnic and Spatial Discourses Concerning Late- and Post-Carolingian Lotharingia

  * Luise Nöllemeyer (Tübingen): Provence Around 900: Modern and Medieval Narratives

  16.30-17.00 – Coffee Break

  17.00-18.30 – Plenary Lecture

  Prof. Jill Harries (St Andrews): Pliny’s Private State

  This interdisciplinary workshop is generously sponsored by St Leonard’s Doctoral and Postgraduate College, St Andrews, with the support of the School of Classics, the School of History, and the University of Tübingen.

  • • •

• 2017-2018

  Week 1 – 18/09/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
  Alex Woolf (St Andrews): ‘Ethnicity and Ethnic Replacement in the Early Insular World’

  • • •

  Week 2 – 29/09/2017, 4:05pm – Room S11, School of Classics
  Kim Czajkowski (Edinburgh): ‘Law and Administration at the Edges of the Empire: the Case of Dura Europus’

  • • •

  Week 4 – 09/10/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
  Janneke Raaijmakers (Utrecht): ‘Material for thought: relic veneration in the earlier Middle Ages. Devotion, reflection and doubt’

  • • •

  Week 8 – 06/11/2017, 5:15pm – Old Class Library, St John’s House
  Janet Coleman: ‘Reflections on the Self Itself: in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and what happened next?’

  • • •

  Week 2 – 09/02 (Friday), 4pm – School of Classics, S11
  Richard Marshall (Glasgow): ‘Themistius reads Suetonius’

  • • •

  Week 3 – 14/02 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
  Rebecca Usherwood (St Andrews): ‘Becoming an Emeritus Emperor: definition, communication, and confusion’

  • • •

  Week 4 – 21/02 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
  Brendan Wolfe (St Andrews): ‘What does the study of the Goths contribute to theology?’

  • • •

  Week 4 – 21/02 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
  Silvia Orlandi (Rome): ‘Speeches on stone: a roadmap towards Late Antiquity through epigraphy’ – Annual lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies

  • • •

  Week 5 – 28/02 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
  Gabrielle Thomas (Durham): “‘Vulnerable, Yet Divine’: Retrieving Gregory Nazianzen’s Account of the Imago Dei”

  • • •

   Week 6 – 07/03 (Wednesday), 11.15am – St Mary’s College Hall
  Crystal Addey (Glasgow/St Andrews): ‘Oracles of Fire: The Formation and Reception of the Chaldean Oracles’

  • • •

  Week 6 – 07/03 (Wednesday), 2pm – School of Classics, S11
  Silke Diederich (Cologne): ‘A Commentary on the Tabula Peutingeriana’

  • • •

• 2016-2017

  Week 6, 17th October, 5:15pm:
  Middle Persian court records from Tabarestãn: Recent Evidence on Legal Proceedings in Eighth-Century Iran. 
  Professor Maria Macuch (Freie Universität, Berlin)
  Old class library, St John’s House, South Street.
  Organised jointly by Institute for Medieval Studies and Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research.

  • • •

  Week 6, 18th October, 2pm:
  Legal Constructions of Consanguinity: Succession in Sasanian Iran
  Professor Maria Macuch (Freie Universität, Berlin)
  New Seminar Room, St John’s House, South Street.

  • • •

  Week 7, 28th October, 4pm:
  The Byzantium that could have been? Learning and the Transmission of Classical Texts in the Ninth Century. 
  Professor Niels Gaul (Edinburgh)
  School II, St Salvator’s Quad

  • • •

  Week 9, 11 November, 4pm:
  The lives of the Justinian Code from Constantinople to Cambridge
  Dr Simon Corcoran (Newcastle)
  School II, St Salvator’s Quad

  • • •

  Week 10, 18 November, 4pm:
  Landscape approaches and settlement archaeology in post-Roman central Greece
  Dr Athanasios Vionis (Cyprus)
  School II, St Salvator’s Quad
  Annual Lecture for the Centre for Landscape Studies

  • • •

  Week 1, 27th January, 4:05 pm:
  Christianization and the Dynamics of Patronage in Late Antiquity – From Conflicts to Everyday Nuisances?
  Maijastina Kahlos (Helsinki)
  School I, St. Salvator’s Quad

  • • •

  Week 2, 30th January, 5:15pm:
  Infamy and Exclusion in Late Antiquity (Roman and Early Canon Law)
  Lorena Atzeri (Università degli Studi di Milano)
  Old Class Library, St Johns House, South Street
  (Organized by the Institute of Medieval Studies and the Institute of Legal and Constitutional Research)

  • • •

  Week 4, 13 February, 5:15pm:
  Xenodochia and Public Health in Merovingian Francia
  Prof. Peregrine Hordern (Royal Holloway, University of London)
  Old Class Library, St Johns House, South Street

  • • •

  Week 10, 14th April, 4:05pm:
  Elite Contestations and the Crisis of 455
  Professor Michele Salzman (University of California, Riverside)
  School I, ST. Salvator’s Quad
  Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies

  • • •

  Workshop: Researching the Poor, 19 April 2017

  • • •

  Week 11, 21st April, 4:05pm:
  Landscapes of the Roman Poor
  Kim Bowes (University of Pennsylvania/American Academy in Rome)
  School I, St. Salvator’s Quad

  • • •

• 2015-2016

  Seminars and lectures

  • ‘Documenting the emergence of the Cult of Saints: possibilities and challenges’
    Bryan Ward-Perkins (Oxford), 26 February 2016, 4:05pm, School V, St Salvator’s Quad
    Annual Lecture of the Centre for Late Antique Studies

  Conferences and calls for papers

  • Praising Constantine, Regionalism and Integration, 29 April 2016
  • Nineteenth Roman Military Equipment Conference: Cavalry in the Roman World, 6-10 June 2016
  • Regionalism and Integration in the Later Roman Empire, 15-16 June 2016
  • God and the gods in Late antiquity – where next?  11 July 2016

  Late Antique Reading Group

  All are welcome at a new reading group for primary and secondary sources on Late Antiquity, hosted by the School of Divinity, meeting at 4pm on Tuesdays at the Byre, beginning on the 13th of October with discussion of S. Elm’s ‘Sons of Hellenism’, available as an e-book through the Library.

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