POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP ADRIATIC CONNECTIONS The British School at Athens and the British School at Rome jointly seek to appoint a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to their Adriatic Connections research programme. Adriatic Connections is funded by the British Academy and run by the two Schools in collaboration. The Fellowship, tenable for 18 months from 1 October 2013, is based at the BSA, but includes a three-month residency at the BSR. The Fellow will also be affiliated to a British University. Adriatic Connections supports original research into the art and archaeology of the Adriatic (broadly conceived) from the seventh century AD until the Fall of Constantinople. The Fellow will develop an original research project with a well-defined publication schedule, and support the organization of an international conference (co-editing the proceedings). Applicants are required to propose a research project within the overall scope of Adriatic Connections. There are no restrictions upon subject or chronological focus, but preference will be given to projects which complement and extend the range of research currently conducted by the BSA and BSR, and serve to link these institutions. Informal enquiries about the post may be addressed to Professor Catherine Morgan (director@bsa.ac.uk) or Professor Christopher Smith (director@bsrome.it). Further information about the institutes, their research and key staff can be found at: www.bsa.ac.uk; www.bsr.ac.uk.
Applicants should submit by e-mail to the School Administrator of the British School at Athens, Mrs Tania Gerousi (school.administrator@bsa.ac.uk) a letter of application (with a statement of how the proposed research fits with and/or extends the established work of the BSA and BSR); CV (including the names of two referees); a research proposal (1,500 words maximum) to include a publication schedule. The deadline for applications is Wednesday 24 th July 2013. Candidates must ensure that their referees send by e-mail letters of reference (preferably as pdf attachments with original signature) to school.administrator@bsa.ac.uk by this deadline. Shortlisted candidates may be invited to submit published or unpublished work. Interviews will be held in late August 2013 (economy-class travel will be supported; air travel may only be fully compensated within Europe skype interviews may therefore be requested). The Fellow will take up their appointment by October 1 st 2013. The stipend will be 25,000 per annum. The Fellow will normally be required to reside in the BSA and BSR, where accommodation will be provided. The Fellow must submit an annual report by the end of March 2014 to the Directors of the BSA and BSR for consideration by their respective Councils. The appointment will be probationary for the first sixth months, confirmation in post to be conditional upon approval of the first annual report. The Fellow will acknowledge the BSA, BSR and Adriatic Connections in all publications resulting from the Fellowship. ------------------------------------------------ ADRIATIC CONNECTIONS FROM THE SEVENTH CENTURY AD TO THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE FURTHER DETAILS The Adriatic, a major channel of east/west communication, has received little attention in recent scholarship. This is partly because the eastern shores were long closed to western research, partly because reappraisal of the nature and role of Greek colonial settlement has focused on southern Italy, and partly because the complexity of the exercise and the wide geographical and disciplinary collaborations required challenge the capacity of any single national research institution. Recent changes in the political sphere have opened the key country, Albania, to highly fruitful dialogue with western and Islamic specialists. New knowledge of the archaeology, art history and naval activity along these shores in late antique and medieval times makes a broader comparative perspective both possible and extremely desirable. In short, there is now an unprecedented opportunity to mount an interdisciplinary study of the waterway between Italy and the Balkans involving specialists in a wide range of fields, from archaeology and art history to naval and economic history.
The collaborative challenge is best met by the two Schools already engaged in the region, notably through their sponsorship of British research in Albania and the wider Adriatic zone, and their links with those bodies, in Italy, Greece and the UK, whose archaeological and historical research sustains its further development. The Schools have therefore secured British Academy funding for three connected actions - the 18-month postdoctoral joint fellowship currently advertised (based primarily in Athens), a workshop on the Roman-Late Roman Adriatic (organized by Dr Ed Bispham [Oxford] in Rome), and a major international conference on Adriatic Connections from the Seventh Century AD to the Fall of Constantinople to be organized by the Fellow in collaboration with senior colleagues in Rome early in 2015. The conference will take a comparative view of key developments in successive historical periods. The following indicative (but highly selective) historical framework may guide the framing of applicants research projects. During the seventh-ninth centuries, the Adriatic forms a critical contact zone between Constantinople and Italy, with the issue of icon veneration at its core. In terms of trade, by the mid-eighth century Ravenna was gradually replaced by Chioggia and later Venice; the rise of Venice and its relations with Constantinople and other major Adriatic ports feature prominently. During the tenth-twelfth centuries, trade contacts changed with the development of ports and settlements on both coastlines, the arrival of Norman forces in southern Italy and an increase in Venetian military and mercantile naval forces. Venice also sought to establish control over several Albanian ports. The period of crusading from 1098 onwards involved new forms of shipping in the Adriatic, with larger transport fleets designed to convey forces to the East. After the successful foundation of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, extended maritime routes brought more shipping to the Adriatic, with accompanying changes in taste, style and knowledge. The Venetian attack on Zara and determination to control other port cities, plus the triumphant sack of Constantinople, encouraged the Republic to build up its overseas empire after 1204. Finally, study of the thirteen-sixteenth centuries requires analysis of the Italian ports of the western shore and the growing importance of sites such as Butrint, Ragusa, Zara/Zadar and Parenzo on the eastern shore. Ottoman expansion in the Balkans and control of the Adriatic also forms a critical development. Related themes include artistic influences visible in architecture, mosaic and fresco; the economic influence of Italian trading groups and Venetian occupation of parts of the East Mediterranean; Italian rivalry with the Ottomans; Byzantine exiles in Venice; political rivalry between the reduced Byzantine empire, Ottoman power, local separatist forces and Hohenstaufen influence via Sicily under Frederick II; and the piracy and slavery which serviced the needs of Arab rulers on the southern shores of the Mediterranean. ***************************** THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS The British School at Athens is an educational charity founded in 1886. It now forms part of the British Academy's network of Sponsored Institutes and Societies (BASIS) which sustains and supports British research overseas. The School exists to promote research of international excellence in all disciplines pertaining to Greek lands, from fine art to archaeometry, and in all periods to modern times. The School does this through:
a programme of research undertaken both alone and in collaboration with UK-based and other overseas institutions; an academic programme of seminars, lectures, and conferences; our internationally renowned library; the provision of services for members, including applications for study and fieldwork permits; advice on the development of research programmes; access to accommodation and facilities in Athens and Knossos; provision of online services; promoting the use of our archival, laboratory, and museum collections by the scholarly community worldwide; the provision of funding (including studentships and visiting fellowships) for research in Greece, and to enable Greek researchers to visit the UK; the provision of internships and training courses for undergraduates, postgraduates, and schoolteachers. Details of current School projects and the Strategic Plan for Research 2011-2015 may be found at www.bsa.ac.uk. Size and Scope The School, which was founded in 1886, is an institute for advanced research and a registered UK charity (no. 208673). It maintains a hostel offering affordable accommodation to members, a world-class library, archive, laboratory for archaeological science, and offices in Athens; a smaller hostel, library and museum for study purposes in Knossos; and an office in London. It has five full-time academic staff, three research fellows, three full-time and two part-time administrative/secretarial staff, three full-time library/archival staff; and five full-time and two part-time domestic staff. The academic staff, the research fellows, the IT Officer, and the Archivist are all actively engaged in research, and all staff are encouraged to undertake professional development. In addition, the School is supported by research-active non-executive staff in the UK, notably the Chairman of Council (Professor Malcolm Schofield) and the honorary treasurer (Dr Carol Bell). It offers two full studentships and several smaller bursaries for scholars every year, and in various ways aids the research of around 2,000 scholars worldwide. Its average annual turnover is approximately 1.3m pounds. Staffing The School has the following research staff, details of whose research interests and publications are available at www.bsa.ac.uk: Full-time academic staff: Professor Catherine Morgan, Director; Dr Evangelia Kiriatzi, Director of the Fitch Laboratory; Mr Robert Pitt, Assistant Director; Dr Matthew Haysom, Knossos Curator; and Dr Noémi Muller, Scientific Research Officer (from 1/9/2013). Full-time research fellows: Dr Areti Pentedeka, Williams Fellow in ceramic petrology; Dr Chryssanthi Papadopoulou, Leventis Fellow; and Dr Ozge Dilaver Kalkan, Balkan Futures Fellow (co-appointment with the British Institute at Ankara). Research-active staff with other primary responsibilities: Dr Jéan-Sebastien Gros, IT officer; and Ms Amalia Kakissis, Archivist.
Infrastructure and Facilities The School s principal research infrastructure consists of its Library, its Museum, its Fitch Laboratory and its facilities at Knossos. The Library in Athens contains over 70,000 monographs, 1,000 periodical titles and 2,000 maps, and has space for 50 readers. It is staffed by two full-time librarians (Mrs Penny Wilson- Zarganis and Ms Sandra Pepelasis) with the help of a student library assistant. Members have 24- hour access. While providing a broad research-level coverage of Greek history and archaeology of all periods, it specialises in the fields of Aegean prehistory, ancient art and epigraphy, and Byzantine and modern Greek studies; it also houses historical collections (such as George Finlay s library) and a fine collection of Greek and Balkan journals. The library is particularly rich in the area of Byzantine and medieval material culture, extending into the principal contact cultures which shaped the Byzantine world: in this area it complements the primarily literary and historical holdings of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies. The School s collections are enhanced by those of the other foreign schools and institutes in Athens with whom we have reciprocal arrangements giving access to a unique collection of more than 450,000 titles on Hellenic Studies. We have particularly strong links with the neighbouring Blegen and Gennadius libraries of the American School, with whom we now share a common electronic library catalogue (AMBROSIA, American British Online Search in Athens) available via www.bsa.ac.uk. The Archive contains records of the School s field projects going back to 1886; material from the Byzantine Research Fund, ca. 1895-1936 (ca. 6,500 unique plans, drawings and photographs of Byzantine architecture - some of buildings now destroyed); the George Finlay papers, including journals from the Greek War of Independence; travel notebooks (Gell, Stuart); ethnographic records and a large collection of glass negatives. The archivist is responsible for access and conservation of the collection, and for projects to conserve, electronically catalogue and digitise images from selected collections. The Marc and Ismene Fitch Laboratory for Science-based Archaeology, founded in 1974, was the first of its kind in Greece. It specialises principally in the analysis of inorganic materials (mainly pottery, as well as metals, wall paintings, and glass) and in geophysical prospection, specialisms which are complementary to the work of the neighbouring Wiener Laboratory of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. It maintains facilities for petrological analysis of pottery (facilities for thin section preparation and 2 research polarising microscopes coupled with a digital photography system) and a WD-XRF instrument for chemical analysis. It houses comparative collections of over 10,000 archaeological samples and over 3,000 geological samples. For the needs of geophysical prospection it has a magnetometer and a resistivity meter. It also maintains a reference collection of animal bones and seeds with ample space for strewing archaeological material, and is able to offer annually a bursary on bioarchaeology and a senior visiting fellowship. It is staffed by its director, scientific research officer, part-time research and administrative assistant, the Williams Fellow, and project-related research assistants. The Fitch plays a full part in the School s postgraduate teaching activities, currently staging an annual short course on ceramic petrology. At Knossos, the BSA maintains a hostel, a small library (specialising in matters Cretan and prehistoric) and the Stratigraphical Museum (a storeroom and study centre) with a curator and a small part-time staff. The Stratigraphical Museum houses finds from excavation in Knossos and elsewhere in Crete from the time of Arthur Evans (1905) to the present, representing a vast
scholarly resource of international significance. Proximity to the School s hostel allows scholars to study material intensively year round. The School s administrative and academic staff (principally the Administrator) makes use of the School s wide-ranging connections to help individual scholars with permit applications. The research infrastructure is underpinned by the IT network, maintained by the IT Officer. His role includes both the integration of IT into research strategies and outcomes, and the development of web-based digital resources for researchers and the wider community. Dissemination and Publication of Research The BSA publishes the results of its own research in all fields. The School s Annual (running since 1895 and now published by CUP) is devoted to publishing the work of the School, which comprises articles written by its officers and other members, the work of the Fitch, and preliminary reports on fieldwork. The School also compiles an annual account of archaeological fieldwork in Greece, Archaeology in Greece, which is published online (in collaboration with the École française d Athènes) and in a print digest in collaboration with the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies as part of Archaeological Reports. Final reports on major excavation or survey projects usually appear in the School s Supplementary Volumes or Studies series, also used for publishing the School s conferences. The School recognises its role in conserving and facilitating access to the archives (in all media) produced by major archaeological and non-archaeological projects. To this end we are active in cataloguing and digitizing our Archive, and in making it available via the School website. ***************************** THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ROME The British School at Rome is a centre of interdisciplinary research excellence in the Mediterranean supporting the full range of arts, humanities and social sciences. We create an environment for work of international standing and impact from Britain and the Commonwealth, and a bridge into the intellectual and cultural heart of Rome and Italy. Our mission for over a century has been to promote knowledge of and deep engagement with all aspects of the art, history and culture of Italy by scholars and fine artists from Britain and the Commonwealth, and to foster international and interdisciplinary exchange. We do this through: highly selective residential awards for the very best scholars, artists and architects research-friendly facilities including accommodation in Rome which are dedicated to helping scholars and artists to maximise their time in Italy lectures, exhibitions and conferences by leading practitioners across the humanities, visual arts, architecture and archaeology dedicated archaeological services to support fieldwork projects a world-class research library and access to other research libraries in Rome an internationally recognised peer-reviewed journal and monograph series
intensive specialist taught courses for students The BSR has an outstanding research Library, photographic archive, reciprocal arrangements with many other Libraries belonging to foreign academies in Rome through the URBS and URBS Plus networks, and a comfortable residence with full board available. BSR research is published in Papers of the British School at Rome, and our monograph series, now published with Cambridge University Press. Details of the BSR s staff, research and other activities may be found at www.bsr.ac.uk. *****************************