About

The Byzantine Disability Hub is devoted to exploring how disability was experienced, represented, and understood in the Byzantine world. Our mission is to advance research in this emerging field while promoting values of equality, inclusion, and social awareness that remain vital today. We are committed to creating an inclusive academic space and actively encourage the participation of disabled scholars. The Hub connects researchers across disciplines, including history, archaeology, philology, literature, and art history, as well as those working in the medical humanities, social history, and cultural studies. Through dialogue and partnership, the Byzantine Disability Hub aims to foster a vibrant, interdisciplinary community that deepens understanding of Byzantium’s diverse experiences while contributing to wider conversations about embodiment, identity, and human diversity.

Team

Maroula Perisanidi is a Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Leeds. Her research explores the intersections of disability, gender, sexuality, religion, and animality in medieval and Byzantine societies. Her latest research project, A Cultural History of Disability in Byzantium (c. 1000–1200) (Wellcome Trust, 2022–2025), investigated how bodily difference was understood, represented, and lived in the Byzantine world. A forthcoming monograph from this project focuses on speech disabilities in Byzantium. Her most recent book, Masculinity in Byzantium, c. 1000–1200: Scholars, Clerics and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2024), draws from theories of gender, posthumanism, and disability to explore the role of learning, violence, and animals in the construction of Byzantine masculinities. She has also worked on canon law and clerical sexuality, including the monograph Clerical Continence in Twelfth-Century England and Byzantium (Routledge, 2019).

Maria Alessia Rossi (PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art) is an Art History Specialist at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. She is the author of Visualizing Christ’s Miracles in Late Byzantium: Art, Theology, and Court Culture (Cambridge University Press 2024). Her research interests include monumental art in the Byzantine and Slavic cultural spheres, the role of miracles in text and image, and the visualization of the infirm body in late Byzantium. She is the co-founder, together with Alice I. Sullivan, of the initiative North of Byzantium, of the digital platform Mapping Eastern Europe, and is the co-editor of the Trivent book series Eastern European Visual Culture and Byzantium (13th–17th c.). Together with Julia Gearhart, they are working on a multi-year project titled Connecting Histories: The Princeton and Mount Athos Legacy.

Georgios Makris is an Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia. He specializes in Byzantine monastic landscapes and spatial practices. His first book, Monastic Communities and Landscapes in Byzantium: The View from Thrace (Cornell University Press, 2026), examines how medieval monastic communities in Thrace forged relationships with their surrounding environment, including the broader landscape and lay society. Georgios is an archaeologist and has participated in several archaeological projects in Greece. He currently directs the Maroneia Archaeological Project, which focuses on the spatial organization and material culture of the urban core and harbor of Maroneia (funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council), and remains involved in several other projects.