I always find it very odd that hiring committees have a habit of treating late antiquity, a period span of c. half a century, as a period which can be done on the side by either ancient or medieval historians rather than a time frame that requires specialists in its own right.

Medieval People Vol. 40 (2026) scholarworks.wmich.edu/medpros/vol4... @mip-medpub.bsky.social @gettingmedieval.bsky.social @woodjamie.bsky.social @writinghelena.bsky.social @carrielarocco.bsky.social @jonathanseyfried.bsky.social

Really looking forward to this! :)

The digitalisation of historical records used to be a net positive. But with the rise of AI, digitalised records now run the risk of being scraped, which leads to misinterpretations and erasure of key information. You cannot replace historical analysis with a machine.

Just use footnotes. No one likes checking references at a later page.

#MosaicMonday plunges us under the cathedral of #Florence, to discover the #palaeochristian pavement of the first cathedral, S. #Reparata, from the early C5 CE, still very much part of the classical tradition, with a #mosaic floor of complex #geometric patterns. #AncientBluesky 🏺

VII.3.11 Pompeii. 1867 drawing by Schulz of lararium painting in the kitchen, now destroyed.

Help, #MedievalSky! There's an opening on our #IMC2026 Panel on Abbatial Identities within and without the Cloister. Do you like abbots/abbesses or another kind of 'monastic leader', and are you having second thoughts about skipping the IMC this year? Let me know and we might have a session for you!

trying to identify a past owner (i think) of a manuscript but this name is leading me nowhere - P. Comby, Combey, Cornby, Combeq, Cornbeg, etc etc etc... if anyone has any thoughts I'd be pleased to hear them

Preparing some of my Roman Art teaching for the week, and always love how consistent these two portraits of Emperor Septimius Severus are (eyes, mustache, beard, etc.), even though they’re in such different forms. How cool is that? ☺️ (1/3)

Preparing some of my Roman Art teaching for the week, and always love how consistent these two portraits of Emperor Septimius Severus are (eyes, mustache, beard, etc.), even though they’re in such different forms. How cool is that? ☺️ (1/3)

🥹

Some photos from the garden at @stjohnsox.bsky.social 🙂

I had the chance to speak about Peter Brown’s The World of Late Antiquity (1971) at St John’s College, Oxford (@stjohnsox.bsky.social) for the National Year of Reading 2026. 🙂 youtube.com/shorts/njfxK...

I had the chance to speak about Peter Brown’s The World of Late Antiquity (1971) at St John’s College, Oxford (@stjohnsox.bsky.social) for the National Year of Reading 2026. 🙂 youtube.com/shorts/njfxK...

As we mourn the great Averil Cameron, I point you to her autobiographical talk from 2017: on being working class and female in Ancient History wcc-uk.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2017/05/22/s...

A C10th runestone from Tryggevælde, Denmark 🪨 Ragnhild, Ulf's sister, placed this stone and made this mound, and this ship(-setting), in memory of her husband Gunulf, a clamorous man, Nærve's son. Few will now be born better than him. My 📷 Nationalmuseet

The next History of Liturgy Seminar is in London @ihr.bsky.social on Monday 16 March 17.30. Come hear Melanie Shaffer @bristolcms.bsky.social & @carrielarocco.bsky.social. In-person (chat! drinks! people!) or online. #medievalsky www.history.ac.uk/news-events/...

2-year postdoc for someone with a PhD in Classics or Ancient History www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQS114/p... @hcaatedinburgh.bsky.social

Finally got to see the bronze head of Sulis Minerva at the Roman baths 🖤

The Roman baths in Somerset, England

Finally got to see the bronze head of Sulis Minerva at the Roman baths 🖤

Roman baby shoe 🥹

Do the Visigothic kings Recceswinth and Wamba need a state funeral? (answer: no, no they do not)

Got to have a look at this 12th-century copy of Orosius’ History in the library at St John’s 🙂 (St John’s College MS 95)

A 14th-century manuscript of the Romance of Alexander (the Great) that I saw in the Treasured exhibition at the Weston Library. [Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264; fols. 43v-44r].

A 14th-century manuscript of the Romance of Alexander (the Great) that I saw in the Treasured exhibition at the Weston Library. [Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 264; fols. 43v-44r].

The whole point of being an academic is that you need to be willing to spend three days creating a 700-word footnote that you will later delete. And you need to LIKE IT.

Hot on the heels of our 1st webinar of this season comes the 2nd: ‘Mobility and Cult of Relics in the Mediterranean from Late Antiquity to the Islamic Period: The Case of the Iberian Peninsula’ Wednesday 3 December, 17.00 (UTC) All welcome, please register here: tinyurl.com/4zns7deh

Still feel so lucky that I get to do my research in the Old Library at St John’s (@stjohnsox.bsky.social) 🙂 Such a beautiful place.

Was happy to give a talk on late Roman and Visigothic women in cinema + other art at St John’s College @stjohnsox.bsky.social, this weekend, as part of a panel on the Ancient World in Digital Media for Oxford Open Doors 2025. I talked about, e.g., Galla Placidia in Revenge of the Barbarians (1960).

a university is not for generating profit, it provides cultural enrichment via weird little gremlin people who love visigoths or haikus, and very occasionally a scientist who figures out faster than light travel

A (very short) look at some of what I’m working on during my fellowship at St John’s: www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/res...

A (very short) look at some of what I’m working on during my fellowship at St John’s: www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/res...

ACADEMIC READING ALREADY COMES WITH A SUMMARY IT IS CALLED THE ABSTRACT

We in academia are being inundated with a new fallacy: The all-tech-is-the-same fallacy. As educators, part of our job is to evaluate different technologies, using some & rejecting others based on their actual utility (or potential harm) in meeting properly *educational* goals.

Spotted this extraordinary comparandum on the Twitter account of @persiaantigua.bsky.social

I’ve been reading through Latin curse tablets (defixiones) and thought this one from Roman-period Britain was neat: someone seemingly cursing the person who stole their beehive ‘vas apium’)! 🐝 (Brit. 48.10 10; text and images: romaninscriptionsofbritain.org/inscriptions...; images by R.S.O. Tomlin)

Tomorrow!! 🏺🏛️

I was happy to speak at the Granada-St Andrews International Meeting ‘Sharing Perspectives on Late Antiquity’ at the University of St Andrews yesterday (@staclassics.bsky.social); I spoke about some aspects of the relationship between monasteries and crisis in late Roman and Visigothic Iberia

Went to see the newly-reopened Roman gallery of the Ashmolean @ashmoleanmuseum.bsky.social; liked this marble portrait of Livia (wife of Augustus). Left to the museum by Sir Arthur Evans.

For #MosaicMonday: a throwback to this unimpressed Medusa from late 2nd-early 3rd century Tarraco (Tarragona). MNAT 2921. 🏺

"The Dark Ages" violates the rule that historical periods are discretionary but not arbitrary. Periods can be redefined but not contrary to the evidence. Calling the period after the transformations of the Roman Empire "DA" is a value judgment inconsistent with the evidence. 13/

Late Roman historian here. Please stop perpetuating the narrative of a fall of Rome triggering Dark Ages. That’s not what happened at all.

Published in #Cambridge's #ClassicalStudies and #Archaeology journals, articles in this free-access collection bring together recent scholarly research on the #history, archaeology and cultural dynamics of #RomanBritain: ✅➡️ cup.org/3YMP1hO

So I think I need to do a sober thread on just how disasterously bad the new trove.scot website is, in comparison to the sites - especially Canmore - that it's replacing. tl:dr - the new site is not fit for purpose; switching off the old sites on 24 June 2025 is way way way premature.

A great resource :) “Epistolæ: Medieval Women's Letters… a collection of medieval Latin letters to and from women. The letters collected here date from the 4th to the 13th centuries, and they are presented in their original Latin as well as in English translation...” (epistolae.ctl.columbia.edu)

God exactly. The purpose of writing papers is FOR YOU TO THINK SOMETHING THROUGH, not because a prof has a deficit in their life that needs to be filled by reading 5-7 pages of mediocre bullshit. The bulk of things I recall from undergrad are things I wrote papers about.

Honouring the ancient plumbers, mosaicists, builders, and painters in an insula in #Pompeii (Region IX) who were tragically interrupted in their work. #LabourDay #MayDay