Laura Clark

• MA Antiquity (Byzantine Studies) – Distinction – University of Birmingham
• BA History (Hons.) – 1^st – University of Lincoln

PhD title

Burials, Grave Goods, and Commemoration of the Dead in Early Byzantium (4th - 7th centuries)

Course

Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies PhD/MA by Research (On-Campus or by Distance Learning)

My PhD will evaluate how death was understood and the dead commemorated in the early Byzantine period, and will provide the first examination of the significance of death and burial practices in developing Christian thought. It will be an interdisciplinary project that builds on a broad range of source-types, both textual and material, to investigate grave goods, funerals, and other services in relation to early Byzantine ideas surrounding death and the transition of the soul into the next world, and the significance of these across various socio-economic classes. My examination of practices associated with death in the transitional period from polytheist to monotheist religious culture will illuminate the interaction between religious change and customs associated with loss.

• University of Birmingham Postgraduate Colloquium in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies 2017 Paper ‘It’s a Kind of Magic: Accusations of Sorcery in the Court of Manuel I’
• International Byzantine Greek Summer School at Trinity College Dublin 2019
• University of Edinburgh International Graduate Conference in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies 2019 Poster session on ‘Byzantine Funerary Rites before the 10^th century’
• University of Birmingham New Approaches to Medieval Romance from the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond 2019 Paper ‘“Is he alive, the one who was killed by the magic art?”: an episode of magic in Livistros and Rodamni’
• President of GEM (Gateway to the Eastern Mediterranean, postgraduate society for the CBOMGS) 2019-2020
• Treasurer of Rosetta journal 2019-2020
• Member of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies