The Medieval Academy Blog

Online Lecture: Antioch as a Center: New Research on a Dispersed Archaeological Legacy

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Mashtot Chair of Armenian Studies at Harvard University are pleased to announce the first lecture in the 2026–2027 East of Byzantium lecture series.

October 2, 2026 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -5) | Zoom
Antioch as a Center: New Research on a Dispersed Archaeological Legacy
Nicole Berlin, Davis Museum, Wellesley College

Ancient Antioch, located in present-day Antakya, Türkiye, was one of the great urban, artistic, and religious centers of the Roman and Byzantine worlds. This lecture presents new research on artifacts excavated during the 1930s Princeton expeditions and now held in museums across North America. Through provenance research, archival investigation, and close study of the objects themselves, it reconstructs the histories of these dispersed collections and reveals new perspectives on Antioch’s role as a center of artistic production and cultural exchange. The lecture also examines how archaeological objects acquire new meanings as they move from excavation sites into museum collections.

Nicole Berlin is Associate Curator of Collections at the Davis Museum, Wellesley College, where she specializes in ancient Mediterranean art and archaeology. She co-leads the international Excavating Antioch project and serves as curator of the corresponding exhibition, while her research focuses on Roman houses, mosaics, archaeological archives, and museum collections. Her publications have appeared in venues including Antioch on the Orontes (Cambridge University Press, 2023), Trends in Archive Archaeology (Brepols, 2024), and the Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal. Dr. Berlin has held fellowships at the Walters Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Johns Hopkins University. She earned her Ph.D. and M.A. from Johns Hopkins University and B.A. from Northwestern University.

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

The Marco Institute for Medieval & Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is pleased to announce a call for applications for its 2026-2027 Lindsay Young Visiting Regional Faculty Fellowships. These short-term fellowships are open to faculty (including junior and non-tenure-track faculty) with terminal degrees at institutes of higher education in Tennessee, the Southeast, and Appalachia, as well as credentialed independent scholars in the region.

Thanks to the generosity of Lindsay Young and the Aslan Foundation, these non-service fellowships are intended to bring scholars from Tennessee and neighboring regions to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where they can make use of our extensive research resources in late antique, medieval, Renaissance, and early modern fields to further their research agendas and take part in the intellectual life of the Institute.

The fellowship is typically held for one to four weeks in the spring semester or early summer, and includes a stipend of approximately $750/week, as well as one-time round-trip travel costs to and from Knoxville (up to $500). Preference may be given to those working at institutions in the state of Tennessee. Junior and non-tenure-track faculty are particularly encouraged to apply!

Applications are due by October 30, 2026. For full information and application guidelines,, visit tiny.utk.edu/LYVRF2026 or email marco@utk.edu.

BAA Postgraduate Conference Programme

Thursday 26 November 2026

The British Archaeological Association is excited to present a diverse conference which includes postgraduate students and early career researchers in the fields of medieval art history, architecture and archaeology. The BAA Postgraduate Conference offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present their research and exchange ideas.

The conference will take place online via Zoom.

Please register for the conference via this link.

10:00 – 10:10 (GMT) Opening remarks

Panel 1: “Material Complexities: Making and Remaking Medieval Art and Architecture”

10:10 – 11:30 (GMT)

Chair: Dr Róisín Astell (University of York)

• 10:10 – 10:30 Enakshi Dasgupta (University of Sussex) – Wonder-Working: Pillars and Power in Fourteenth-Century Delhi
• 10:30 – 10:50 Su’aad Redan (Courtauld) – Making (up) the Virgin’s Veil: An Investigation of Mythmaking, Imagination, and Handwork in relation to The Reliquary of the Veil in the Church of Our Lady in Tongeren, Belgium (c.1400-1550)
• 10:50 – 11:10 Chrisallo Borg (University of Malta) – Accretion and Reconfiguration of a Medieval Core in a Multi-Temporal Altarpiece in Malta
• 11:10 – 11:30 Q&A

11:30 – 11:45 (GMT) Break

Panel 2: “From the Page to the Body: Visualising Knowledge and Power”

11:45 – 13:05 (GMT)

Chair: Dr Richard Plant

• 11:45 – 12:05 Clive Lafferty (Courtauld) – Stones, Stars and Authority: Visualising Celestial Knowledge in Alfonso X’s Lapidario
• 12:05 – 12:25 Blanche Darbord (University of Cambridge) – Alexander the Great and Chivalry: Interpreting Violence in Manuscript Illuminations
• 12:25 – 12:45 Isabel Escalera Fernandez (University of Valladolid) – Accounting for Splendour: The Jewels of Isabella I of Castile
• 12:45 – 13:05 Q&A

13:05 – 13:40 (GMT) Break

Panel 3: “Devotion and Play in Medieval Religious Spaces”

13:40 – 15:00 (GMT)

Chair: Dr Alexandrina Buchanan (University of Liverpool)

• 13:40 – 14:00 Ilaria Truzzi (University of Reading) – Graffiti Game Boards in Religious Spaces: Insights into Sociability, Symbolism and Play 
• 14:00 – 14:20 Isabelle Ostertag (University of Virginia) – At the Hour of Our Death: Charnel Houses and the Lady Chapel of St. Peter Mancroft
• 14:20 – 14:40 Molly Lewis (Courtauld) – Peas, Prayer, and Profanity: An Examination of two Boxwood Micro-carvings from the Low Countries (c.1500-1525)
• 14:40 – 15:00 Q&A

15:00 – 15:15 (GMT) Break

Panel 4: “Beyond Borders: Transcultural Connections in the Global Middle Ages”

15:15 – 16:35 (GMT)

Chair: Sophia Dumoulin (Courtauld)

• 15:15 – 15:35 Isabelle Chisholm (Birkbeck) – The Unexpected Afterlife of the Southampton Psalter, c. 800 AD: Iro-Scottish Manuscripts and Moravian Metalwork
• 15:35 – 15:55 Andrea Cartia (University of Florence) – Irish Saints in Medieval Umbria: Experiences of Pilgrimage Routes, Material Culture, and Shared Geographies
• 15:55 – 16:15 Ayeshah Mohammed (MIT) – Ceramic Cartography: Reading the History of the Madrasa of Mahmud Gawan through its Tiles
• 16:15 – 16:35 Q&A

16:35 – 16:45 (GMT) Closing remarks

Online Lecture: Why Read Homer? Byzantine Scholars on the Value of Ancient Literature

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the first lecture in our 2026–2027 lecture series.

September 23, 2026 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom
Why Read Homer? Byzantine Scholars on the Value of Ancient Literature
Baukje van den Berg, Central European University, Vienna

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and the heated debates it sparked this summer vividly demonstrate the enduring power of Homeric poetry over the art and imagination of later cultures. In this lecture, I explore Byzantine responses to Homer’s epics to consider the broader role of ancient literature in Byzantine society. Beyond serving as models of language and style, the works of Homer and other ancient poets stimulated reflection on moral behavior and the human experience more broadly.

By taking the oeuvre of the twelfth-century scholar Eustathios of Thessaloniki as my starting point, I will discuss different ways in which Byzantine scholarship made ancient texts relevant for new contexts. Eustathios’ engagement with the Iliad and the Odyssey—and that of other middle and late Byzantine scholars—reveals how he used ancient poetry to instruct students in ancient Greek, teach rhetoric and literary aesthetics, and draw moral lessons from the past. At the same time, his work formulates wider ideas on the relationship between the pagan literature of antiquity and the Christian world of Byzantium.

Baukje van den Berg is Associate Professor in the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University, Vienna. Her research concentrates on Byzantine education and literary thought, with a particular focus on the role of ancient literature in Byzantine culture. She is the author of Homer the Rhetorician: Eustathios of Thessalonike on the Composition of the Iliad (Oxford University Press, 2022) and John Tzetzes on Ancient Poetry (Dumbarton Oaks, forthcoming 2027).

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/why-read-homer

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.