Alexander Sarantis (DPhil Oxon) ist Historiker für politische, militärische und wirtschaftliche Entwicklungen im Byzantinischen Reich und hat sich auf den Zeitraum vom 5. bis 8. Jahrhundert spezialisiert. Zu seinen Werken zählen eine Monografie über Justinian’s Balkan Wars und ein Sammelband zum Thema War and Warfare in Late Antiquity. Nach Lehrtätigkeiten an Universitäten im Vereinigten Königreich hatte er in den letzten Jahren eine Reihe von Forschungsstipendien in Deutschland und Polen inne. Derzeit arbeitet er an einem DFG geförderten Projekt zum Thema „Kriegsführung und Resilienz im byzantinischen Anatolien, 600–750”, mit dem Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie (LEIZA) als Gastgeber. Gleichzeitig bereitet er eine Monografie über The Balkans Between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Warfare, Migration, and Socio-Economic Change, 565-750 vor.
2006
DPhil in Byzantine History, University of Oxford (St. Anne’s College)
2001
MStud in Byzantine History, University of Oxford (St. Anne’s College)
2000
BA (Hons) in History, University of Bristol
March 2021-March 2023
ULAM research fellow, funded by NAWA (Polish Agency for Academic Exchange) and Assistant Professor in Byzantine and Early Medieval History at the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw
February 2019-December 2020
Alexander von Humboldt Research fellow (experienced researchers), hosted by the Byzanz zwischen Orient und Okzident Research group, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum (RGZM)
January-December 2018
Research fellow, Migration und Mobilität in Spätantike und Frühmittelalter project, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
September 2017-January 2018
Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval History (Fixed-term contract), Departments of History and Classics, Ancient History and Egyptology, Swansea University
January 2015-June 2017
Lecturer in Early Medieval History (Fixed-term contracts), Department of History and Welsh History, Aberystwyth University
September 2011-January 2015
Associate Lecturer in Late Antique Archaeology, Classical and Archaeological Studies Department, University of Kent (Hourly-paid)
elected February 2017
Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
October 2009
Honorary Research Fellow, Centre for Late Antique Archaeology, University of Kent
October 2006-August 2013
Senior Editor of the Late Antique Archaeology series
• ‘Alexander Demandt’s ‘Römisch-germanische Grenzpolitik’: a response from an eastern Roman perspecive, 4th-7th c.’, Geistes-, sozial- und kulturwissenschaftlicher Anzeiger 159, ed. D. Shanzer (ÖAW, Vienna, 2025) pp. 101-16. DOI: 10.1553/anzeiger159-1s101
‘A land of small forts and cross walls: the 6th-c. Balkans according to Procopius’ Buildings’, in The Imagery and Aesthetics of Late Antique Cities, eds. M. Ritter and E. Turquois (Brepols, Turnhout, 2025) pp. 131-44. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.BAT-EB.5.144224
With A. Izdebski et al., ‘Consilience in practice: social-ecological dynamics of the Lake Volvi region (Greece) during the last two millennia’, Journal of Quaternary Science 39.1(2024), pp. 1-22. (I contributed historical analysis sections). https://doi.org/10.1002/jqs.3645 Open Access.
• ‘The Impact of raiding and migration on Balkan settlement patterns and rural economies, 5th-8th centuries CE’, in The European Countryside during the Migration Period: Patterns of Change from Iberia to the Caucasus (300-700CE) (Ergänzungsband zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 137), eds. I Bavuso and A. Castrorao Barba (De Gruyter, Berlin, 2023) pp. 263-306. doi/10.1515/9783110778298-012
‘Two worlds in crisis: warfare, political change, and economic recession in Anatolia and the Balkans, ca. 565-750’, in Festschrift for James Howard-Johnston, (Travaux et Mémoires), eds. P. Booth and M. Whitby (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilisation byzantines, Paris, 2022) pp. 163-90.
‘The socio-economic impact of raiding on the eastern and Balkan borderlands of the eastern Roman empire, 502-602’, Millennium 17 (2020), pp. 203-64. doi/10.1515/mill-2020-0008
‘Justinian’s Novella 11: Memory and political propaganda in the build-up to the Gothic War’, Early Medieval Europe 27.4 (2019), pp. 494-520. doi.org/10.1111/emed.12375
‘Military provisioning in the sixth-century Balkans’, The Journal of Late Antiquity 12.2(2019), pp. 329-79. doi.org/10.1353/jla.2019.0019
Justinian’s Balkan Wars: Campaigns, Diplomacy and Development in Illyricum, Thrace and the Northern World, A.D. 527-65 (Francis Cairns Publications, Prenton 2016) 500 pages.
Editor, with N. Christie, War and Warfare in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Brill, Leiden 2013) 2 vols. 1,085 pages.
‘War and diplomacy in Pannonia and the north-west Balkans during the reign of Justinian: the Gepid threat and imperial responses’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 63 (2009) pp.15-40.
History and archaeology of the Byzantine empire, 4th-8th c.
