It took a few days, but our job ad is finally up on all the normal online academic job sites! If you're an ancient historian looking for a good tenure-track job, you should take a look. Here it is on the Society for Classical Studies website, for example: www.classicalstudies.org/placement-se...

🚨JOB ALERT: Are you a historian of the ancient world? Are you looking for a tenure-track assistant professor job? Would you like to earn a high salary and live in an exciting city? If so, you should read our job ad and apply online here: cuhk.taleo.net/careersectio...

Historians often try to explain why things happened, but this is an unusual case in which I tried to explain why something *didn’t* happen. Just published, ‘Untranslatable Law’ in Toma and Bara (edd.), ‘Latin Translations of Greek Texts from the 11th to the 13th Century’: brill.com/display/book...

Wandering around the Met in New York, trying to fight off jet lag before the AHA begins tomorrow. I keep coming across artefacts, thinking ‘that looks familiar’, and then recognising them from images that I use in my lecture slides! #AHA25

Happy New Year! I am at Hong Kong International Airport, waiting for a 3:20am flight to New York so that I can attend the annual conference of the American Historical Association. I wouldn’t stay up this late for a party, so why am I doing it for work?!? #AHA25

This was definitely the most memorable new headline this year

Merry Christmas! God bless us, everyone!

Is this a glimpse of the last #Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449-1453)? The Ephorate of Antiquities of Achaia discovered this fresco in a church near Aigio, possibly the only portrait of Constantine made during his lifetime: greekcitytimes.com/2024/12/13/p... #medievalsky

I’m marking hand-written exams for the first time in years. It’s fascinating to see how many students were all drawn to one or two topics on the essay question (they had a choice of six). More fascinating still, one essay topic was so unpopular that literally nobody (out of a class of 30) chose it!

My best friend made it into the Financial Times!

On my way to invigilate my first ever in-person university exam today. I used to just give take-home final papers. However, thanks to the modern technological progress of #AI, they get to experience course assessment the same way I did when I was a student!

Welcome back Principality of Antioch

Amazing developments in #Syria. When I woke up and read the news this morning, I thought it might all be over for Assad in a day or two. Turns out that it was more like an hour or two! It’s a useful reminder that historical change comes gradually at first… and then very suddenly.

The Biden administration doing what it can to lose any remaining good will it still has in its last days.

I’m obviously not South Korean or very knowledgeable about South Korea, but I don’t find it reassuring that the attempt to impose martial law ended the way it did. Yes, lawmakers were able to overturn it with a vote, but they had to break into the National Assembly building first! #SouthKorea

In my #Byzantine History class yesterday, we discussed how the Ottoman Mehmed II took the title ‘Kayser-i Rum’ (1453) and Ivan IV of Moscow became ‘Tsar’ (1457). Made me wonder: how many ‘Roman Empires’ have there been in history? Original Western Eastern/Byzantine HRE Ottomans Russia … any others?

I’m lecturing on the 14th century this week, which means I get to show off the #Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320)! ‘It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.’ #medievalsky

A couple of days ago, I shared an image of a 14th-century Italian classroom. In the interests of balance, here is a 12th-century #Byzantine classroom. Two ‘philosophers’ sit at the front and address a group of students in this folio from the Madrid Skylitzes. #medievalsky

‘Embrace technology’ - easy words to throw out in a webinar, policy memo, or (in this case) a THE op-ed. Not so easy to define what this actually means for us in practice, though. Should we ‘embrace’ students using AI to cheat on homework? Fewer platitudes and more specifics, please.

This is about onions, but I have the same complaint about recipe cooking times in general. Why is it that it takes me an hour to cook something that is supposed to take 30 minutes? Am I just a slow cook? Is the recipe optimistically assuming a best-case scenario? Or is it just lying?

The intersection of science and religion? This 14th-century #Byzantine monk is using an astrolabe to take astronomical readings while a scribe jots down the results. Natural science is an underappreciated aspect of the 'Palaiologan Renaissance' of late #Byzantium. #medievalsky

Replace the books with computers, and it isn't so different from a modern lecture! This C14 carving from Verona shows the physician Antonio Pelacani (d. 1327) lecturing to students in a medieval classroom. I'll be doing something similar when I show it to my own students tomorrow... #medievalsky

I was lucky to be able to present some of my research on Byzantine legal manuscripts at a conference in Taiwan recently (‘lucky’ in a very literal sense - there was a super typhoon the day before!). Here are some of my favourite highlights from the manuscripts that I discussed! #ByzantineLaw

This is wrong for the following reasons: 1. McClane wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t Christmas. 2. It’s the Christmas party that allows Hans Gruber to take over the building. 3. Killing terrorists helps McClane rediscover the true meaning of Christmas: it’s all about family.

Pleased to see that I’ve been able to rebuild so much of my old Twitter network so quickly here! I do wonder, though, how to people make the time to read and write posts across so many different platforms?

Hello Bluesky! I’m a historian of law and religion in the Byzantine Empire (esp. 11th-12th centuries), though I’m also interested in medieval Western Europe and the Islamic world. I live and work in Hong Kong, so I like to follow Chinese and Asian current affairs too.