Notes on Contributors
Johan Bakker
obtained his doctorate at the University of Leuven. Specializing in palynology, he studied environmental change from the Late Classical period to the present in the territory of Sagalassos.
Henriette Baron
is a post-doc researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) in Mainz (Germany) specializing in Byzantine Human–Animal Studies. Her book Tiere im Byzantinischen Reich reviews zooarchaeological research for the Byzantine Empire. Together with F. Daim she edited the conference volume A Most pleasant Scene and an Inexhaustible Resource, Steps towards a Byzantine Environmental History.
Chryssa Bourbou
is a bioarchaeologist at the Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania (Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports) and an External Scientific Collaborator at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland).
James Crow
teaches Roman and Byzantine archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. He studied at the Universities of Birmingham, Newcastle and Sofia. He was later based in Ankara and subsequently directed excavations on Hadrian’s Wall. He lectured at Warwick and Newcastle Universities before his current post as professor of Classical Archaeology at Edinburgh. In Turkey he has directed survey projects on the Black Sea and from 1994 in the west hinterland of Istanbul, surveying and documenting the Anastasian Wall and the Water Supply of Byzantine Constantinople. He is the current chair of the British Institute at Ankara. His extensive publications include two books on Hadrian’s Wall, a monograph on the water supply of Constantinople, an edited volume on Byzantine Naxos and the Aegean, and numerous articles on frontiers, fortifications, hydraulic infrastructure and landscape archaeology in the eastern Mediterranean including the Byzantine Cyclades and the Black Sea. He is currently part of a project investigating past and contemporary water issues in Istanbul with a focus on the Acropolis/Topkapi Saray area.
Michael J. Decker
is Maroulis Professor of Byzantine History and Orthodox Religion at the University of South Florida.
Warren J. Eastwood
is currently an Honorary Lecturer at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham. He is a biogeographer and palaeoecologist and researches past environmental change for the last 25,000 years or so in the eastern Mediterranean region where he has worked for the past 30 years. His main specialism is elucidating natural versus human-induced vegetation change using pollen analysis (palynology) and works closely with archaeologists and historians and is a core member of the University of Princeton’s Climate Change and History Research Initiative (CCHRI). His research interests also include climate change and the impact of major volcanic eruptions and tephrochronology of volcanic ash layers preserved in lake and peat sediment archives. Warren is currently a member and Honorary Secretary of the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara (BIAA).
Dominik Fleitmann
is a Quaternary geologist and palaeoclimatologist and professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences of the University of Basel, Switzerland.
John Haldon
is emeritus Shelby Cullom Davis ‘30 Professor of European History and Professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies at Princeton University and a Co-Director of the Climate Change & History Research Initiative and Director of the Environmental History Lab within the Program in Medieval Studies.
Adam Izdebski
is Independent Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany and Professor of Human Ecology and Environmental History at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
Eva Kaptijn
focuses on human–landscape interaction with a special interest in landscape archaeology, ancient water management, and the social aspects of subsistence economy. She is currently working for Erggoed Gelderland, the Netherlands.
Jürg Luterbacher
is Director Science and Innovation and Chief Scientist at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva, Switzerland and professor at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.
Henry Maguire
is Emeritus Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He specializes in Early Medieval and Byzantine art. His most recent book is Nectar and Illusion: Nature in Byzantine Art and Literature (New York, 2012).
Mischa Meier
is Professor for Ancient History at the University of Tübingen. His research interests encompass Greek History (esp. Sparta), the early Principate and Late Antiquity. Among his monographs are Das andere Zeitalter Justinians (22004), Anastasios I. (22010) and Geschichte der Völkerwanderung (82021).
Lee Mordechai
is Senior Lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Lee has worked on historical disasters, including earthquakes and floods, and has focused his work in recent years on the 6th century Justinianic Plague and the 536 event.
Jeroen Poblome
is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leuven. As director of the Sagalassos Archaeological Research project he coordinates research programmes into past and present socio-ecological systems, social innovation, governance, sustainable development, and resilience.
Johannes Preiser-Kapeller
is a researcher at the Institute for Medieval Research/Department for Byzantine Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences and lecturer in Byzantine and Global History at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the history of Byzantium, the medieval Mediterranean and the Caucasus in a global perspective, as well as on historical network analysis, complexity studies, and environmental history. His recent publications include the monograph “Der Lange Sommer und die Kleine Eiszeit. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt von 500 bis 1500 n. Chr.” (Vienna 2021).
Abigail Sargent
is a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. She focuses on the histories of rural societies in the high medieval West.
Peter Talloen
was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven. His research interests comprise the archaeology of cult, material culture, urbanisation, and acculturation processes in ancient Anatolia from the late Iron Age to the Middle Byzantine period. He is currently working at the Suleyman Demirel University in Isparta, Turkey.
Costas Tsiamis
is Physician-Cytologist and Assistant Professor at the Department of Public and One Health of University of Thessaly (Greece). He received his Ph.D. in Historical Epidemiology at the Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He specializes in Historical Epidemiology and Public Health. He teaches History of Public Health, Migrant and Refugee Health and Health Diplomacy.
Ralf Vandam
was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Leuven. Landscape Archaeology, Human–environment Interactions, Material Culture Study, Late Prehistoric Archaeology, Early Complexity, Ancient Anatolia. He is currently working at the Vrije Universiteit, Brussel.
Myrto Veikou
specializes in Byzantine Studies (Archaeology, History, Philology) at Patras University, with particular interest in the investigation of the concepts of space and spatiality in Byzantium. She has been publishing on medieval settlement and spatial studies, based on Byzantine material culture and literary texts, since 2009. Her book Byzantine Epirus, a topography of transformation. Settlements of the 7th–12th centuries in Southern Epirus and Aetoloacarnania, Greece (Brill 2012), addressed the history of medieval settlement as a result of interaction between physical/social space and human agency, and set forth a new theory on the historicity of natural space.
Sam White
is professor of political history at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and formerly professor of history at the Ohio State University. His work specializes in environmental and climate history and the uses and politics of history. He has written books on the Ottoman Empire and colonial North America as well as articles on disease, disasters, climate reconstruction, and theory and methods in interdisciplinary history.
Elena Xoplaki
is researcher at the Department of Geography, Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change, Centre for International Development and Environmental Research, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany.