Dr Judith Ryder (née Gilliland)
Wolfson College
Research Interests
Byzantine history, theology and culture, particularly 11th and 14th centuries.
My doctoral thesis was on Demetrius Kydones, one of the principal Byzantine political and intellectual figures of the fourteenth century, not to mention one of the most important sources for study of the period. Kydones' political career spanned at least four decades, from the 1340s to the 1380s. During these decades, the political landscape of the Eastern Mediterranean was being drastically reshaped, principally by the expansion into Europe of the Ottoman Turks. Kydones, a Latin scholar, influenced in particular by the writings of Thomas Aquinas (some of which he translated into Greek), was a leading advocate of improvement of relations between Byzantium and the Latin West as crucial to Byzantine survival. My thesis examined how Kydones' career and writings can contribute to developing a nuanced understanding of Byzantine political and cultural developments in these years of crisis.
Since completing my thesis, I have continued to work on Kydones but have also become involved as a researcher on the 'Prosopography of the Byzantine World': www.pbw.kcl.ac.uk. This has taken me into research on the Byzantine 11th century, particularly, although not exclusively, areas related to theology and ecclesiastical history.
In 2010 I was appointed General Editor to the proposed new series, Translated Texts for Byzantinists (TTB), to be published by Liverpool University Press. This is a sister-series to the well-established and highly successful Translated Texts for Historians, also published by LUP. TTB takes up where TTH leaves off, c. 800 AD, and intends to include translations of texts from a wide range of genres. Please send any proposals or suggestions for the series to me at: judith.ryder@history.ox.ac.uk. I am also very happy to answer any questions about the series.
Recent Publications
- The Career and Writings of Demetrius Kydones. A Study of Fourteenth-Century Byzantine Politics, Religion and Society, Brill (series: The Medieval Mediterranean), 2010
- 'Changing Perspectives on 1054', Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 35 (1), 2011, pp. 20-37
Reviews
- ‘Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The misinterpretation of a fiction and its original meaning. With a contribution by Wolfram Brandes: ‘The satraps of Constantine’, by Johannes Fried’, New Blackfriars 89, 361-363 (2008)
- ‘Erzbischof Leon von Ohrid (1037-1056): Leben und Werk (mit den Texten seiner bisher unedierten asketischen Schrift und seiner drei Briefe an den Papst), by Elmar Büttner’, New Blackfriars 9, 614-616 (2010)
Forthcoming Publications
- 'Divided Loyalties? The Career and Writings of Demetrius Kydones', in Martin Hinterberger, Chris Schabel (eds), Greeks, Latins, and Intellectual History 1204-1500, Leuven, Peeters (2011)
- 'Catholics' in the Byzantine political elite: the case of Demetrius Kydones', in Liz James, Sarah Lambert (eds), Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, Brepols (2011)
- 'Byzantium and the west in the 1360s: the Kydones version', in Catherine Holmes, Jonathan Harris (eds), Byzantines, Latins, and Turks in the Eastern Mediterranean World after 1150, OUP (2011)