9 IV 2026: John Merrington (Austrian Academy of Sciences/University of Oxford), Rationality after Rome

Edward Gibbon believed that the Fall of Rome had meant the triumph of the irrational. Persistent though it may be in the public imagination, this line of argument finds little ...

26 III 2026: Haggai Olshanetsky & Lev Cosijns (University of Oxford), Cluedo in the Eastern Desert: Who, or What, Killed Berenice and Myos Hormos? Plague, Climate, War or Competing Trade Routes

Throughout history, trade brought prosperity and wealth, founding cities in its wake. The cities of the Eastern Desert of Egypt, Berenice and Myos Hormos, were not unique in this, and ...

19 III 2026: Korshi Dosoo (Paris), Magic by the Psalms in the Coptic Tradition

The Psalms have long held a central place in the Christian tradition, used as songs of worship, as meditative aids, and as educational texts in the acquisition of literacy. One ...

12 III 2026: Aaron Butts (Hamburg), The Connected Histories of Ethiopic and Syriac Christians

There is a long-standing debate in the scholarly literature about so-called Syriac “influences” on Ethiopic Christianity. The debate has its origins with two prominent Italian scholars from several generations ago: ...

5 III 2026: Julia Doroszewska (UW), Subversive Sainthood: Late Antique Hagiography as Evidence for Religious Mentality

Subversive Sainthood: Late Antique Hagiography as Evidence for Religious Mentality My presentation reconsiders late antique Greek miracle collections that are often read as pious entertainment, arguing instead that they preserve ...

26 II 2026: Mariusz Gwiazda (UW), Marmora Christiana? Marble Use and Distribution Patterns in the Early Byzantine Southern Levant

Marble has long been treated as a key indicator of economic capacity, elite consumption, and long-distance exchange in the Roman world. In contrast, its role in the Early Byzantine period ...