Narratives are for suckers: 21st-century cinema, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, and a Late Antique Revenge Tale

Dr Adam Talib is an Associate Professor at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Durham University. His research demonstrates how the methods, concerns, and reading practices of comparative literature can illuminate the cultural lives of societies that were neither structured by the nation-state nor mediated by European languages. By combining the perspective and…

Helen of Troy and the Crusaders: classicising visions of Constantinople in 1204

Dr Foteini Spingou is a cultural historian at the University of Edinburgh working on the broad topics of Memory, Collection, Beauty, and Tradition and Empire. Her expertise lies in the relation of art and literature between the eleventh and fourteenth century Byzantium. She has also worked on late antique Egyptian wall-hangings and I'm an expert…

Jaziran Metalwork, Astral Magic, and “the Golden Wand”

Dr Francesca Leoni is Curator of Islamic Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. She specialises in the Islamic Middle East with a focus on the Persian-speaking world. Her interests include book arts; cross-cultural exchanges between the Islamic world, Europe and Asia; the history and circulation of technologies; and contemporary art from the Middle East.…

The Project to Edit the Chester Beatty Kephalaia Codex and What it can Tell Us about Early Sasanian Iran

Professor Iain Gardner is Professor of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney. He was trained in early Christian literature and the history of religions at the University of Manchester, undertaking research work on ancient manuscripts in Berlin and Vienna, and had extensive experience teaching in both Britain and Western Australia before coming to…

Anglo-American rivalry in the Middle East in the quarter-century after 1942

James Barr has worked in politics, at the Daily Telegraph, in the City, at the British Embassy in Paris, and is currently a visiting fellow at King's College, London. He read modern history at Oxford has travelled widely in the Middle East. His previous book, A Line in the Sand, is also available from Simon…