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IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 113: Moving Byzantium, I: Professional Mobility within the Byzantine Empire

Monday 3 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Moving Byzantium: Mobility, Microstructures & Personal Agency in Byzantium, Universität Wien
Organiser:Claudia Rapp, Institut für Byzantinistik & Neogräzistik, Universität Wien / Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Moderator/Chair:Claudia Rapp, Institut für Byzantinistik & Neogräzistik, Universität Wien / Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien
Paper 113-aHow Byzantine Sailors Experienced Maritime Mobility
(Language: English)
Zeynep Olgun, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Daily Life, Maritime and Naval Studies, Social History
Paper 113-bAn Assortment of Harbours or a Network of Naval Bases?: The Dispersal of Maritime Forces in the Middle Byzantine Period
(Language: English)
Christos Makrypoulias, Institute of Byzantine Research, Athens
Index terms: Administration, Byzantine Studies, Maritime and Naval Studies, Military History
Paper 113-cDynamics of Movement: Villager Agency in the Byzantine Countryside
(Language: English)
Mark Pawlowski, Department of Classics & Letters / School of Visual Arts, University of Oklahoma
Index terms: Administration, Archaeology - General, Byzantine Studies, Daily Life
Paper 113-dA Law unto Themselves: Social Mobility of 6th-Century Bankers in (Legal) Comparative Perspective
(Language: English)
David Rockwell, Department of Medieval Studies Central European University Budapest/Wien
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Economics - Trade, Law, Social History
Abstract

The research programme Moving Byzantium highlights the role of Byzantium as a global culture and analyses the internal flexibility of Byzantine society. It aims to contribute to a re-evaluation of a society and culture that has traditionally been depicted as stiff, rigid, and encumbered by its own tradition. This is achieved by the exploration of issues of mobility, micro-structures, and personal agency. The papers in this session use various types of source evidence to illustrate motivations, experiences, and frameworks of professional mobility, both in terms of space and social status, for maritime, village, and commercial communities within the empire across the Byzantine centuries.