Bonds that Last: The Social Life of Byzantium - Professor Claudia Rapp to deliver the annual British Academy Lecture

We’re delighted to announce that Professor Claudia Rapp will deliver the annual British Academy Public Lecture here at Leeds on Monday 10 March 2025. The lecture is free to attend and open to all, but booking is essential. Book your place here.

There will be a welcome reception from 6-6.30pm in the Esther Simpson foyer. The lecture will be recorded, and we will share details of the recording when it is available.

Lecture synopsis

Emperors and patriarchs, intellectuals and magnates dominate the narratives – whether by contemporary authors or by modern scholars – of the medieval Christian empire that ruled in the eastern Mediterranean for more than a millennium. But relatively little is known about the life of the majority of the population. In a society with strong hierarchies, what opportunities did people have to shape their social environment? This lecture presents little known evidence from texts, manuscripts, and material culture in order to explore how the Byzantines created and adapted social relations to their own advantage.

Claudia Rapp FBA is Professor of Byzantine Studies at the University of Vienna and Director of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her publications include Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (2005), Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium: Monks, Laymen and Christian Ritual (2016), and the co-authored Mobility and Migration in Byzantium: A Sourcebook (2023).

We look forward to welcoming you on 10 March. Should you have any queries, please direct them to LAHRI@leeds.ac.uk