My doctoral research assesses Byzantium over a forty-five-year period both before and after the fall of Constantinople to the Catholic Latin forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. I am interested in the relationship between urban centre and provinces, particularly in how texts and epigraphy depict ethnocultural differences. Parts of my thesis analyse depictions of ethnic 'otherization' within the former populations of the empire, in particular in the splinter-states of Epiros and Paphlagonia, and how these correlate to Byzantium's 'Roman' identity during a period of contraction. With this in mind, I analyse and discuss the contrast between elite Byzantines' ecumenical ideology compared to their increasingly narrow sense of community.
