Update (21/5/2025): We have filled our spare paper slot – Broderick Haldane-Unwin (University of Oxford) will be presenting on ‘Captivity and Credit: Gregory the Great...
- 2 months Ago
- 4 Min Read
By James R. Burns DID YOU KNOW that Theodoric the Great, ruler of the Ostrogoths (c. 475-526), was the son of two slaves? Well, he...
(Limoges, France, the home of Pelagia.) ‘Since the pressures of the world weighed heavily on a woman, not least on a widow, Erkanfrida needed to...
Last week, I went to the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum. It situated slavery in wide-ranging Eurasian commercial networks, through which (for example)...
- 10 months Ago
- 4 Min Read
(James C. Scott, 1936–2024. Photo credit: Yale.) By James Burns Even if one accepts that the serf, the slave, and the untouchable will have trouble...
By James Burns At this year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies at West Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Sheida, Seth, and I gave our papers on...
By James Burns and Seth M. Stadel James: I have been reading Seth’s new book on Syriac exegesis, the abstract of which is below. When...
- 2 years Ago
- 3 Min Read
The new article in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (copyright: Cambridge University Press). By James Burns I have published an article in Transactions of...
- 2 years Ago
- 4 Min Read
A Merovingian sword (Metropolitan Museum of Art). Surrounded by his enemies, the sixth-century prince and rebel Merovech handed his blade to Gailen, and asked him to...
- 2 years Ago
- 8 Min Read
Photo credit: organisers of HistoryCon In this blog post, our researcher, James Burns, summarises a conference paper he gave on the importance and pleasure of...
