The Byzness, 2nd November 2025
Oxford University Byzantine Society
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THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY BYZANTINE SOCIETY
The Byzness, 2nd November 2025
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1. NEWS AND EVENTS
2. CALLS FOR PAPERS
3. JOBS AND SCHOLARSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
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The OUBS is thrilled that the CfP for the 28th International Graduate Conference, entitled Decline and Flourish: New Paradigms of Decline & Renewal in Late Antiquity and Byzantium, has been released. The Conference will be held in Oxford and online next year, February 28th & March 1st, 2026.
You will find the CfP and poster attached to this email, as well as on the OUBS Website. If you wish to submit an abstract, please ensure you send it to the Byzantine Society email by Saturday November 29th: byzantin...@gmail.com.
We hope to be able to provide funding support to those who absolutely require it to travel to Oxford for the conference. Please highlight to us if your attendance at the conference is dependent on receiving this financial support when you send in your submission.
We cannot wait to read all of your fantastic abstracts!
All my very best,
Maddie
For those wishing to submit an event, call for papers job or scholarship opportunity to the Byzness please send details to the committee at byzantin...@gmail.com indicating the relevant list for The Byzness our external to Oxford and year-round newsletter or The Byzantine Lists our Oxford-centered events and circulated only in term-time. Please keep the listing brief and include all relevant information in the body of the notice. Outside of exceptional circumstances, we only share events once.
1. NEWS AND EVENTS
Mediating Touch: Ivory Pyxides and the Eucharist
Evan Freeman, Simon Fraser University
A large body of round ivory boxes, also known as pyxides, survive from late antiquity. Each pyxis was cut from a section of elephant tusk and decorated with carvings. Most were likely produced around the Eastern Mediterranean between the fifth and seventh centuries CE, but the precise origins and functions of these objects are difficult to pinpoint. Several boxes display motifs associated with the Eucharist, leading scholars to speculate that they may have been used to bring the Eucharist home, on journeys, or to those who could not come to church. More recently, it has been suggested that ivory pyxides were used by worshippers who felt unworthy to receive Communion directly in their hands, as prohibited by canon 101 of the Quinisext Council held in Constantinople in 691/692. This talk offers a close examination of ivory pyxides that may have been used for receiving Communion in church as described by this canon. It argues that these boxes and their iconographic motifs were designed to appeal to the senses of sight and touch. If they were used for receiving Communion as described by the Quinisext Council, such boxes would have mediated physical contact with the Eucharist, warned and protected against the dangers of faithless and unworthy touch, and offered biblical models for worshippers to imitate as they sought salvation in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Evan Freeman is Assistant Professor and Hellenic Canadian Congress of British Columbia Chair in Hellenic Studies in the Department of Global Humanities and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. He researches art and ritual in the Byzantine world.
Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/mediating-touch
Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjc...@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.
We invite submissions for 20-minute papers that investigate the relationships between memory, objects and buildings, as well as those involved in making, commissioning and viewing them. Respondents might consider themes including but by no means limited to:
The role of images in preserving, rewriting or reframing the past, and in creating, re-creating and reinforcing memory
Agendas of patronage and the politics of remembering and forgetting in the construction of memory
Death, commemoration and the visual cultures of remembrance
Genealogy, dynastic representation and strategies of commemoration
Architecture, monuments and urban spaces as sites of shared or contested memory
The staging and restaging of memory in rituals and processions
The transmission of memory across geographical, cultural and temporal boundaries
The afterlives of medieval images and their role in shaping modern memory of the Middle Ages
We invite PhD candidates to submit an up to 250-word paper proposal and title, a short CV, together with their complete contact details (full name, email, and institutional affiliation) by 14 December 2025. Please send these to Sophia Dumoulin (sophia....@courtauld.ac.uk).
There may be some limited funding to support travel and accommodation costs for those without institutional support. If you would require funding support, please include a brief budget alongside your abstract.
CfP: Vulnerability and Power in Late Antiquity (4th-9th centuries) -- Second International Postgraduate Conference of the GCLA
27-29 April 2026, Ghent (BE)
Understanding the dynamics of vulnerability and power is important for the study of any period, not least for Late Antiquity (broadly defined here as spanning the fourth to ninth centuries, across a wide geographical scope), where we see significant negotiations of power in a time of great transformation.
While power has often been the focus of scholarly attention on Late Antiquity (e.g., in the spheres of religion, politics, and literature), vulnerability, closely intertwined with power, has received less sustained attention. By focusing on vulnerability, we seek to provoke a reassessment of ongoing research on power in Late Antiquity, and invite a reconsideration of power from fresh perspectives.
We are interested not only in larger late antique institutions of power, but also the more vulnerable groups of society. Contemporary fields shaped by the insights of vulnerable communities, including decolonial and intersectional thought, have reimagined resilience, agency and systemic vulnerability; thus we seek to bring late antique society into conversation with contemporary approaches drawn from the studies of migration, gender and sexuality, disability, childhood, family structures, socioeconomic inequalities, and so on. Another important area for consideration is environmental vulnerability, including, for example, the significance of extreme weather events and climate change on the levels of ecology, society, and culture. A more literal understanding of vulnerability (i.e., the potential to be wounded), is also relevant here: war, violence, illness, and the vulnerable body are rich fields for inquiry. Furthermore, as researchers, we are part of institutions that are shaped by dynamics of vulnerability and power. We therefore think that inquiries into Late Antiquity can enrich and deepen meta-disciplinary reflections on academia as a sphere of vulnerability and power.
Postgraduate researchers from the following fields are especially invited to participate: Arabic Studies, Archaeology, Art History, Biblical Studies, History, Jewish Studies, Linguistics, Literary Studies, Reception Studies, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Theology. We welcome researchers working with languages such as Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian, Gothic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Slavonic, Sogdian, Syriac.
Possible topics may include but are not limited to:
• The dynamics of vulnerability associated with Late Antiquity specifically – e.g., interrogating conceptions of Late Antiquity as a period of vulnerability, decline, and crisis; reflecting on the historical vulnerability of Late Antiquity as a discipline
• Theories and practices of vulnerability and power in literature, philosophy, and politics; how individuals or groups in power dealt with their own vulnerabilities.
• Representations of vulnerability and power in art, literature, architecture, and so on.
• Negotiations of vulnerability and power in a variety of social contexts, such as in the family, church, city, state, or on an imperial level.
• Attitudes towards tolerance, exclusion or persecution of vulnerable groups, such as religious, ethnic, and linguistic minorities, or those experiencing poverty, illness, or disability.
• Resilience and the power of resistance among vulnerable groups.
• Management of and responses to environmental risks such as drought, earthquake, fire, and so on.
We invite applications from postgraduate researchers (PhDs and advanced Master’s students). To be considered for a 20-minute paper, please send an email to gclap...@ugent.be with a paper title, an abstract of max 300 words, a short bibliography (max 10 titles), and a brief academic biography by 7 January 2026.
Applicants will be notified by early February 2026. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us and visit our website: https://sites.google.com/view/gcla2ndphdconference/call-for-papers.
CfP: The Long Middle Ages - A new seminar series at the University of Leeds
Submissions deadline: November 28th, 2025
We are excited to announce a new interdisciplinary seminar series for postgraduate students and early career researchers on the Long Middle Ages, a period covering the Late Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Periods. This series aims to bring together scholars working across this period to establish new connectivity and inclusivity between these disciplines, and to provide a more relaxed space for new and emerging researchers to present and test out ideas.
We welcome submissions of 20-30 minute papers from postgraduates and early career researchers working in any discipline and on any topic related to the late antique, medieval and early modern periods. Papers will be followed by time for questions and further discussion.
Seminars will commence in early 2026 and run on a regular basis until summer. If you are interested in presenting a seminar, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words as well as a short biography to the organisers at thelongm...@gmail.com by Friday 28 November 2025.
All seminars will take place at the University of Leeds in a hybrid format, with fully online formats available upon request. Please provide your preference in your submission. If you have any further questions, please do get in touch. We look forward to receiving your proposals!
Please note, we are currently only accepting proposals from UK-based postgraduates and ECRs, unless speakers are able to cover their own travel or can have a fully online presentation.
CfP: 'Biblia Africana: (Egypt, Nubia and Ethiopia). The Bible in its African Reception, from Antiquity to the Middle Ages'
Faculty of Protestant Theology in Brussels (FUTP – www.futp.be)
It is often said that Christianity took root in Africa during the missions of the 19th century, in
the wake of European colonial ventures. However, the numerous textual and archaeological
documents that have survived attest to the fact that Christianity took root on African soil as
early as the first centuries AD. Born within the framework of the Roman Empire, Christianity
spread both within and far beyond the imperial limes. First present in Egypt and then in North
Africa (in the 1st and 2nd centuries), the new religion spread to more distant lands, reaching
Ethiopia as early as the 4th century and Nubia in the 2nd century. From this time onwards,
Christianity became a major cultural and spiritual reality that would have a lasting impact on
new civilizations on the African continent. The dissemination, translation and reception of
Biblical text played a key role in the emergence of specific Christian identities: with the
adoption and acculturation of the Bible—or, more precisely, of the texts that were to make up
the Bible—in Africa, new literary languages flourished, as did countless intellectual
productions, learned and popular traditions and artistic works, while new forms of Christian
liturgy were born. This imprint of Biblical text, in its reception and dissemination, thus sketches
out a singular profile for each region, in the variety of its literary, liturgical and artistic
expressions. A source of inspiration for Christians in Africa since Antiquity and the Middle
Ages, the Bible continues to be a cultural, religious and political foundation for believers on
the African continent.
Location: Faculté universitaire de Théologie protestante (FUTP) – Bruxelles (www.futp.be)
Presentations should last about 20/25 minutes and may be given either in English or in French. Proposals (250 to 300 words) accompanied by a short biographical note including the author’s current institution, and subject of research should be sent by the 15th of December 2025.
Some proposals may also be selected for publication in the conference proceedings.
The deadline for submissions is 15th December 2025.
Proposals can be sent to the following addresses:
Xavier Philippart (xavier.p...@futp.be)
Aurélien Zincq (aurelie...@futp.be).
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Madeleine Duperouzel
DPhil in History
President, Oxford University Byzantine Society
http://oxfordbyzantinesociety.wordpress.com