The Routledge Handbook on Identity in Byzantium

by Michael Stewart (editor), David Parnell (editor), Conor Whately (editor)

This volume is the first to focus solely on how specific individuals and groups in Byzantium and its borderlands were defined and distinguished from other individuals and groups from the mid-fourth to the close of the fifteenth century. It gathers chapters from both established and emerging scholars from a wide range of disciplines across history, art, archaeology, and religion to provide an accurate representation of the state of the field both now and in its immediate future. The handbook is divided into four subtopics that examine concepts of group and specific individual identity which have been chosen to provide methodologically sophisticated and multidisciplinary perspectives on specific categories of group and individual identity. The topics are Imperial Identities; Romanitas in the Late Antique Mediterranean; Macro and Micro Religious, Regional, and Ethnic Identities, and Internal Others; and Gendered Literature, Memory, and Self in Early and Middle Byzantium. While no single volume could ever provide a comprehensive vision of identities on the vast variety of peoples within Byzantium over nearly a millennium of its history, this handbook represents a milestone in offering a survey of the vibrant surge of scholarship examining the numerous and oft-times fluctuating codes of identity that shaped and transformed Byzantium and its neighbours during the empire’s long life.

468 pages, Paperback

Published May 27, 2024

About the author

Probably like most of you readers, authors and budding authors out there, I've been into books for as long as I can remember. My earliest book memory is of reading Winston Churchill's autobiography - whilst I was still in primary school! I just loved to read - anything and everything! I think I was about 12 when I had a short story of mine used as student subject matter by an English study professor at an Oxford college (although I'm not quite sure whether that was an example of something really good or really bad!!). I can't recall a lot of my academic life during my schooling years, but that one event still stands out as the real highlight for me (and i'm sure that the story has just got better and better every time I have told it over the years!).

Unfortunately I never followed my dream and made writing or journalism my career. With a complete lack of planning on my part, I somehow ended up in business, travelling the world and starting a few businesses here and there! I guess some people might call me an entrepreneur - which has been great - but I still missed my vocation in life.

Now, at 54 years old, married to a wonderful wife and with four fantastic children I am trying to do something about that. I am finally writing, enjoying creating my own characters and telling my own stories.

My debut novel; The Angel of Time is now available on Amazon in Kindle format.


Please feel free to drop me an email and also link up with me on Twitter, Linked-in, Goodreads, etc, etc, etc. Just click on the links or go to the 'Contact' page.


Happy Reading & Writing!

Michae