Dr Catherine Holmes
MA, DPhil
CUF in Medieval History
University College
Email: catherine.holmes@univ.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests
Catherine Holmes' research focuses on the political and cultural history of the east Mediterranean in the high and late Middle Ages. She is particularly interested in frontier societies and relations between different religious and ethnic groups. She has recently completed a monograph on Byzantine politics, government and historiography in the 10th and 11th centuries. Her new project involves reinterpreting the Aegean world that was forged in the later Middle Ages by the collapse of Byzantium and the rise of the Ottomans.
Supervision Interests
Catherine Holmes' supervision interests centre on the political and social history of the Mediterranean world between the 11th and early 15th centuries. She is willing to supervise topics in different geographical areas: Iberia, Sicily and the eastern Mediterranean (including the Crusader States). She is particularly drawn to projects which explore encounters between different ethnic and religious groups.
Selected Publications:
- 'The Byzantine Eastern Frontier in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries' in Medieval Frontiers:Concepts and Practices. (Aldershot, 2002)
- (ed.) Literacy, Education and Manuscript Transmission in Byzantium and Beyond . Vol 42 (Leiden, 2002) 270pp.
- 'The Rhetorical Structures of John Skylitzes's "Synopsis Historion"' in Rhetoric in Byzantium. (Aldershot, 2003)
- Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976-1025). (Oxford, 2005) 625pp.
- 'Constantinople in the reign of Basil II' in Byzantine Style, Religion and Civilisation: in Honour of Sir Steven Runciman. (Cambridge, 2006) pp. 326-339
- 'Treaties between Byzantium and the Islamic World' in War and Peace in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. (Cambridge, 2008)
- 'Provinces and Capital' in A Companion to Byzantium. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010)
- 'Political Literacy' in The Byzantine World. (London, 2010)
Future Publications:
- (ed.) Between Byzantines and Turks: Understanding the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean World . (Oxford)
- 'Compilation literature and Byzantine political culture in the tenth and eleventh centuries', Dumbarton Oaks Papers . Vol 64
- 'Shared Worlds: a question of evidence' in Between Byzantines and Turks: Understanding the Late Medieval Eastern Mediterranean World.
- (ed.) Political Culture in Three Spheres .
- 'Basil II, Bulgaroktonos and the 1014 blinding of Bulgarian prisoners-of-war: mutilation and surrender in the Middle Ages' in How Fighting Ends. A History of Surrender.
- 'Archbishop Eustathios of Thessaloniki's 'Capture of Thessaloniki' as a lens for east-west encounters in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century east Mediterranean world' in Encounters in the Balkans, east Mediterranean and Black Sea, 12th-15th c.. (Leiden)
Research Interests and Activities
