Being Byzantine is the ‘book of the thesis’. I completed my doctorate under Dr Peter Lock at Ripon & York St John College in the years 1999-2004. It was an examination of the ethnic identity of ‘Greeks’ (or as they called themselves ‘Romans’) under the impact of the Frankish conquests of the thirteenth century, with particular emphasis on the medieval Peloponnese. In 2006 and 2007 I revised the thesis and made it slightly more palatable as a read! The end result was ‘Being Byzantine’.

The book was well received (thank goodness!):

“important, sophisticated, well-planned, and intelligent… a major contribution to late Byzantine (post-1204) history and historical thought, as well as to Byzantine language and the history of ideas.”
Walter E Kaegi, University of Chicago

"This book is a jewel of writing on Byzantine identity, one of the best the discipline has seen.”
Eugenia Russell, University of London

"an important and original contribution to the understanding of the multiple and evolving forms of Greek self-identification."
David Jacoby, Hebrew University

It’s my plan to summarise some of my findings here. I found this research absolutely fascinating, and it has informed my fiction a great deal. Through my characters - especially Theodoros Karagounis - I explore what it meant to be Roman in medieval Greece.

More to follow…