Database of Byzantine Book Epigrams

12/06/2025

Conference Recap: "Formulaic Language in Historical Linguistics: Data, Methods, Tools, and Theory" 🔍

Our PhD student Kyriaki Giannikou recently participated in this exciting conference held in Helsinki, organized by the Academy of Finland project “The learning of Latin in the 8th to 12th century: a linguistic approach to medieval Latin literacies” in collaboration with the Classical Philological Society of Finland. 📚

Her presentation, titled “Assessing and Reassessing Formulaicity: Are Editorial Practices a Blessing or a Curse?”, explored how editorial decisions affect the study of formulaic language - particularly how relying on modern edited texts can sometimes shape or even distort our understanding, especially for texts with long transmission histories, compared to examining multiple manuscript witnesses that preserve original scribal choices. 🤓

But there was more! Kyriaki also had the chance to attend presentations by scholars researching formulaicity across diverse corpora - from Greek and Latin to Old/Middle English, Korean, Arabic, and Sardinian. 🗣️

A big thank you to all the organizers and participants for making this conference such a rewarding and inspiring experience! 💡

28/03/2025

Last week, we welcomed a motivated group of Belgian high school pupils at Afdeling Grieks UGent. Our colleague Anne-Sophie Rouckhout guided them through the fascinating world of Byzantine book epigrams and together they explored some stunning manuscripts included in our database. 🤓📖🔍

19/02/2025

Last week, our colleague Juan Bjl received the Prize for the best doctoral thesis on Byzantium from the Sociedad Española de Bizantinística! 🏆 His dissertation examined the intellectual network and philosophical thought of the 14th-century Byzantine scholar, Manuel Gabalas.

¡Enhorabuena, Juan! 🥳🎉

08/01/2025

Check out the programme of the upcoming workshop 'Narrative approaches to the Lives of ancient Greek poets', organised by our colleagues of Novel Saints - Ancient Fiction & Hagiography Research Centre. 🤩

Two days left to register, don't miss it! ✍️

We are pleased to share the exciting programme of the upcoming workshop, 'Narrative approaches to the Lives of ancient Greek poets', organized by our very own Camila de Moura. It takes place on 16-17 January. You can take part live or online, and can register here: https://www.novelsaints.ugent.be/event/narrative-approaches/

Lives of famous and less famous ancient Greek poets have proven to be a treasure trove of inspiration for authors and other artists across different times and cultures from Antiquity onwards. In recent decades, scholarship on these Lives has increasingly turned from questions of historicity to different aspects of their narrative construction and to examining how such aspects relate to aetiological, (meta)literary or other functions. Scholars have thus opened up new directions in interpreting and evaluating these fascinating texts. Our workshop inscribes itself in this recent trend and aims to investigate and discuss different aspects underlying the construction of these texts as narratives.

27/11/2024

In two days, on Friday 29 November, our PhD student Colin Swaelens will present his research on detecting similarities in Byzantine Greek book epigrams at the 'Computational Approaches to Ancient Greek and Latin Workshop', organised by KU Leuven and the University of Groningen. 👨‍💼

The workshop wil be held hybridly. For more info and the full programme: https://dcagreeklatin.web.rug.nl/.

The deadline for registration for online attendance is today. Don't miss it! ⏰

21/11/2024

Today, at 11:00 am, our director Kristoffel Demoen and PhD students Kyriaki and Colin will give an online lecture at the 8th International Byzantine Seminar Lecture Series (2024) on “Digital Methods for Byzantine Studies”, organised by the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations at the Northeast Normal University in Changchun (China). 🤓

💻 Registration is free, but required. The Zoom link will be provided upon registration: [email protected].