The Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies (CLAIBS) offers a leading research and teaching environment that combines world-class expertise in its three constituent disciplines. Based in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology it promotes collaborative projects, interdisciplinary research and teaching – at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels – in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies across the the University of Edinburgh’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and beyond.
Mission
The Centre promotes a high level of expertise in the core corpora of sources informing the study of the Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine past covering textual traditions, documentary sources and material culture. We offer language-based training and/or expertise in Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Syriac and Armenian (also in cooperation with the University of St Andrews) – with further opportunities regularly available through collaborations e.g. for Coptic – as well as fieldwork opportunities on archaeological sites and in museums and manuscript collections.
CLAIBS
- promotes cutting-edge research within and across Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies with a particular focus on interdisciplinary research and its dissemination;
- offers ambitious undergraduate and postgraduate teaching that introduces students to the importance and long-lasting impact of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine phenomena not least in the framework of our MSc programme in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies;
- nurtures student led projects and events within and across our constituent disciplines;
- fosters training and career opportunities for early career and doctoral researchers;
- cooperate with colleagues specialised in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies from other institutions through collaborative research, joint PhD supervision, fieldwork projects, and student-led initiatives;
- shares its work with the wider public.
In line with the University of Edinburgh’s Strategy 2030, the Centre fosters creativity and innovation through flexible, inclusive structures that inspire and enable staff and students at all career stages to achieve their individual and collaborative research goals.
Scope
The Centre’s activities showcase the importance of longue-durée and historical perspectives as CLAIBS focuses on the so-called Long Late Antiquity in all its ramifications up to 800 and, with Byzantine and Islamic culture, to the end of the Eastern Roman empire in the fifteenth century, which witnessed the contemporaneous arrival and expansion of the early Ottoman empire. Our geographical focus is on the territory of the Roman and Sassanian empires and their successor states in the early medieval west and the Byzantine empire and its neighbours as well as the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates and Seljuk, Mongol, Mamluk and early Ottoman empires and their neighbours.