30 IV 2026: Anastasiia Liakhovich (UW), Between Languages, Landscapes, and Power: Linguistic Strategies of Naming Space in Middle Byzantine and Medieval Armenian Hagiography

This paper explores how Middle Byzantine Greek and medieval Armenian hagiographies use linguistic strategies and narrative devices to create imaginary geographic worlds. Moving beyond the view of landscape as a ...

23 IV 2026: Maria Mossakowska-Gaubert (CNRS, Orient et Méditerranée / UW), Silk in Late Antique Egypt: Texts and Textiles

Throughout antiquity, silk fabrics were a luxury commodity and a marker of social status due to their high cost. They probably first appeared in the eastern Mediterranean at the end ...

16 IV 2026: Andrew Wilson (University of Oxford), The Archaeology of the Third-Century Crisis

This paper explores what archaeology might be able to add to our understanding of the third-century crisis, narratives of which variously include political instability, military anarchy, barbarian invasions, economic disruption, ...

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 ...