Welcome

I am a historian of late antiquity and Byzantium, and this page tells you about my academic interests. As Warden of the College I am responsible for its overall governance and chair the Governing Body and its main committees. I am also a Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and have been Chairman of the Conference of Colleges; I was a member of the University Council from 2000 until 2005.

Research Interests

My main field of research is the history of late antiquity and Byzantium. This includes an interest in church history and intellectual history. My latest book is The Byzantines (Blackwells, 2006), in the series Peoples of Europe, which was awarded the John D. Criticos Prize for 2006, and I am currently working on the functioning of religion in Byzantium. I have recently published papers on 'Byzantium and the limits of Orthodoxy' (British Academy Raleigh Lecture in History) and 'The absence of Byzantium', which appeared published in Greek and English in the Greek monthly literary journal Nea Hestia, in Jan. 2008; every issue since then until recently carried a response to this paper by a leading scholar. The Raleigh lecture argues that Byzantium was not quite the wholly religious and spiritual society that people take it to be, and 'The absence of Byzantium' that the history of Byzantium is important for understanding many modern political issues. I have also co-edited and co-authored Keble Past and Present, an illustrated history of the College, with Ian Archer, published in November, 2008. I will be on academic leave for Michaelmas Term, 2009. I have recently chaired the committee for the British Academy and AHRC-funded research project on the Prosopography of the Byzantine World (PBW), covering the period 641-1180, and have acted as an editor of volumes XII-XIV of the Cambridge Ancient History.

I taught at King's College London before coming to Keble and continue to be closely associated with the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies and the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. I am a Fellow of the British Academy and the Society of Antiquaries. I am also President of the Council for British Archaeology in the Levant (CBRL).

Recent Publications

• The Byzantines (Oxford: Blackwells, 2006)
• Cambridge Ancient History, XII: The Crisis of Empire, AD 193-337 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)
• Eusebius, Life of Constantine (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)
• Cambridge Ancient History, XIII: The Late Empire, AD 337-425 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Cambridge Ancient History, XIV: Late Antiquity. Empire and Successors, AD 425-600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)
• Changing Cultures in Early Byzantium (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996)
• Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991)
• Averil Cameron, Procopius and the Sixth Century (London: Duckworths, 1985)

Academic Biography

• Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, King's College London (1989 - 1994)
• Director, Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London (1989 - 1994)
• Professor of Ancient History, King's College London (1978 - 1989)
• I have been a visiting academic at Columbia University and the Universities of California, Berkely and Princeton, and a visiting member at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton and Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. (1967 - present)