Events
Seminar series 2025-2026
People and their environments in the first millennium CE
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.
- Organisers: Prof. Helen Foxhall Forbes, Dr. Michele Abballe, Dr. Massimiliano Borroni, Dr. Jakub Sypiański, Dr. Vicky Manolopoulou
- Registration: register via Zoom
2026
- 15/07/2026, 15:00 CEST - “Imperial ecologies in the northern hinterland of Rome: environment and society on the metropolitan doorstep”
Dr. Rob Witcher, Durham University - 09/06/2026, 16:00 CEST - “New resources and shifting landscapes: human activities and environmental change in Rieti and Lucca, 600-1000 CE”
Prof. Edward Schoolman, University of Nevada, Reno - 12/05/2026, 16:00 CEST - “The role and significance of Syriac and Arabic translations of late antique agricultural treatises in the first millennium CE around the Mediterranean”
Dr. Carlo Scardino, Heinrich Heine Universität Düsseldorf - 09/03/2026, 15:00 CET - “People and taxes: the functioning of the fiscal cycle in Abbasid Egypt”
Dr. Noemie Lucas and Dr. Dalia Hussein, University of Edinburgh - 09/02/2026, 17:00 CET - “Nile floods and delta revolts in the eighth and ninth centuries CE”
Prof. Andrew Marsham, University of Cambridge, and Prof. Philip Booth, St Peter's College, Oxford - 12/01/2026, 15:00 CET - “Climate pattern and social unrest in Cyprus”
Prof. Carole Nehme [FRA], Université de Rouen
2025
- 09/12/2025, 15:00 CET - “The material Eucharist in the early Middle Ages: bread, theology and ecology”
Prof. Paolo Squatriti, University of Michigan - 10/11/2025, 15:00 CET - “The Diluvium Aquarum: geoarchaeological constraints of extreme floods in northeast Italy during the early Middle Ages”
Prof. Alessandro Fontana, University of Padua
Hybrid: Ca' Bottacin (Aula B), Dorsoduro 3911, Venice - 14/10/2025, 16:00 CEST - “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”
Prof. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, University of Vienna
Other events
2025
- 09/07/2025 - “Famine and food supply in Italy, 535-545”
Helen Foxhall Forbes
International Medieval Congress Leeds 2025, session 1249 - 09/07/2025 - “Long-term population dynamics across the Italian Peninsula in the first millennium”
Michele Abballe
International Medieval Congress Leeds 2025, session 1049 - 09/07/2025 - “Environmental challenges and landscape experience: Constantinople as a case study”
Vicky Manolopoulou and Ismini Lypiridou
International Medieval Congress Leeds 2025, session 1149 - 26/05/2025 - “Productive environments: monastic attitudes and urban space in the early Middle Ages”
Mateusz Fafinski
SSE1K lecture, Ca' Foscari, Venice - 13/05/2025 - “Religion and water across Mediterranean frontiers in the first millennium”
Massimiliano Borroni et al.
Workshop, Ca' Foscari, Venice - 26/03/2025 - “Can we learn from the past? Towards an archaeology of sustainability in Southwest Asia”
Daniel Lawrence
Guest lecture, Ca' Foscari, Venice - 25/03/2025 - “SSE1K settlement patterns workshop”
Helen Foxhall Forbes
SSE1K workshop, Ca' Foscari, Venice - 2025 - “Processing villages: litanic experiences of rural communities in Byzantium”
Vicky Manolopoulou
Invited lecture, 56th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies - Byzantium from below, University of Birmingham - 15/01/2025 - “Climate as catalyst: the role of a cold spell in the Mosul uprising of 260/873”
Massimiliano Borroni
Conference presentation
2024
- 26/10/2024 - “Lo scavo del castello di Zagonara e l'archeologia delle pianure romagnole (2017-2024)”
Michele Abballe et al.
Conference presentation, Zagonara - 27/09/2024 - “Viaggiatori nella storia del clima: avventure nei misteri del passato”
SSE1K team
Venetonight 2024, Ca' Foscari, Venice - 04/07/2024 - “Processing crisis: memorialisation and disaster management in Byzantium”
Vicky Manolopoulou
International Medieval Congress Leeds 2024 - 01/07/2024 - “The bishop and the letter: experimental responses to flooding in 6th-century Italy”
Helen Foxhall Forbes
International Medieval Congress Leeds 2024
2023
- 24/11/2023 - “Modelling the evolution of the hinterland of Ravenna: human-environment relationships in an extremely dynamic alluvial landscape”
Michele Abballe
Conference presentation - 17/11/2023 - “Geoarcheologia digitale e sul campo per la ricostruzione dell'evoluzione dei paesaggi alluvionali: il caso studio di Ravenna e del suo entroterra”
Michele Abballe
Conference presentation, Ravenna