Emotions are integral to social life and social relations. When it comes to understanding the variety of the hitherto unacknowledged ways in which they informed, motivated and organised individual and collective behaviours within and across a wide range of social situations in the day-to-day living in Late Antiquity, few sources are…

The Quran today is recited in ten distinct canonical reading traditions. These differ from one another in terms of phonology and morphology and, to a lesser extent, meaning. Our earliest formal description of seven of these reading traditions stems from the 10th century, more than three centuries after the Quran was composed and first recited.…

Colloquium - Consuming Ecologies:

Environment and Society in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

29 March 2025

9am-6pm

Romans were raised to think about the past as something they not only learned about but participated in through school exercises, literary compositions, and rituals that had them take on the personae of historical or pseudo-historical figures. This lecture explains how this practice encouraged Romans to use the lens of the past to understand…

Six Latin sermons attributed to the fourth-century Syrian theologian Ephrem the Syrian (c. 306-373) circulated in western Europe from the sixth century onwards.  These sermons share common themes, including the need for compunction and repentance motivated by fear of the Last Judgment and the value of weeping and contrition to temper God’s…