Agenda

09 Dec 2025 15:00

People and their Environments in the First Millennium CE

online

This seminar series focuses on relationships between people and their environments in the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE. The papers explore social, intellectual, religious and political contexts from around the Mediterranean in the first millennium CE, and draw on evidence and methodologies from the disciplines of history, archaeology and environmental science. The seminars will all take place online; one seminar (10th November, Prof. Alessandro Fontana) will also be an in- person event (and therefore hybrid).

Register for the seminar: link

Organisers:
Prof.ssa Helen Foxhall Forbes
Dr Michele Abballe
Dr Massimiliano Borroni
Dr Jakub Sypian ́ski
Dr Vicky Manolopoulou

SEMINARS

14/10/2025, 16.00 CEST
Prof. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
(Universität Wien)
About volcanoes, icons, solar storms, and toads. The identification and interpretation of extreme events and celestial phenomena in 8th and 9th century Byzantium and in trans-Eurasian comparison.

10/11/2025, 15.00 CET
Prof. Alessandro Fontana (Università di Padova)
The Diluvium Aquarum: geoarchaeological constraints of extreme floods in Northeast Italy during the Early Middle Ages
IN PERSON (HYBRID) – Aula B,
Ca’ Bottacin, Dorsoduro 3911, Venice

09/12/2025, 15.00 CET
Prof. Paolo Squatriti (University of Michigan)
The Material Eucharist in the Early Middle Ages: Bread, Theology and Ecology

12/01/2026, 15.00 CET
Prof. Carole Nehme (Université de Rouen)
Climate pattern and social unrest in Cyprus

09/02/2026, 17.00 CET
Prof. Andrew Marsham (University
of Cambridge) and Prof. Philip Booth (St Peter’s College, Oxford)
Nile Floods and Delta Revolts in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries CE

09/03/2026, 15.00 CET
Dr. Noemie Lucas (University of Edinburgh) and Dr. Dalia Hussein (University of Edinburgh)
People and Taxes: The Functioning of the Fiscal Cycle in Abbasid Egypt

12/05/2026, 16.00 CEST
Dr. Carlo Scardino (Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf)
The Role and Significance of Syriac
and Arabic Translations of Late Antique Agricultural Treatises in the First Millennium CE around the Mediterranean

09/06/2026, 16.00 CEST
Prof. Edward Schoolman (University of Nevada, Reno)
New Resources and Shifting Landscapes: Human Activities and Environmental Change in Rieti and Lucca, 600-1000 CE

15/07/2026, 15.00 CEST
Dr. Rob Witcher (Durham University)
Imperial ecologies in the northern hinterland of Rome: environment and society on the metropolitan doorstep

This seminar series is organised by the team members of SSE1K: Science, Society and Environmental Change in the First Millennium CE (ERC Consolidator Grant 101044437, PI Prof.ssa Helen Foxhall Forbes). Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Organized by

Department of Humanities (Helen Foxhall Forbes); NICHE

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Programme - Seminar series 2109 KB

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