British Academy Public Lecture 2025

The Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute Team look forward to hosting Professor Claudia Rapp FBA for this year's annual British Academy Public Lecture, 'Bonds that Last: The Social Life of Byzantium'.

This is an in-person public lecture. Tickets are free but we kindly ask you to book to ensure we remain within the venue's capacity.

Venue: Esther Simpson Lecture Theatre 1.01, Esther Simpson Building, Lyddon Terrace, University of Leeds

For information on the venue, including accessibility, please see: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-leeds/access-guides/esther-simpson-building

There will be a welcome reception from 6pm in the Esther Simpson cafe and the lecture will start promptly at 6.30pm.

Bonds that Last: The Social Life of Byzantium: Emperors, patriarchs, intellectuals, and magnates often dominate the narratives of the medieval Christian empire that ruled the eastern Mediterranean for over a thousand years—whether in contemporary writings or modern scholarship. However, much less is known about the everyday lives of the majority of its people. In a society defined by rigid hierarchies, what opportunities did ordinary individuals have to shape their social world? This lecture draws on lesser-known evidence from texts, manuscripts, and material culture to explore how the Byzantines created and adapted their social relationships 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).