Pre-project workshop: Local Dynamics of Globalization in the pre-modern Levant

Next week I'm heading to Oslo to take part in a pre-project workshop for an exciting project called Local Dynamics of Globalization in the pre-modern Levant. The project, headed by Terje Stordalen, Professor of Theology, Oslo, and Oystein La Bianca, Professor of Anthropology, Andrews University has been awarded Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) status for the academic year 2014/15. Nine scholars from Europe, North-America and Norway along with a wider "outer circle" of project participants will work together to "[investigate] how local cultures in the pre-modern Levant adapted policies, trends, habits, and technologies that reached them through imperial and other globalizing channels, and also how local discourse fed back into trans-local dialogue". Chronologically, our research stretches from the Bronze Age to the Ottoman period. You can read more about our group and our planned work here. My contribution will be a study of The In-Betweens: Studies of Traders, Soldiers, Administrators and Nomads in the Ancient Levant, which will fit nicely into my research on the NeRoNE project. The purpose of this first meeting will be to get to know each other personally and professionally, as well as to meet our hosts and se our facilities at the CAS.

Call for papers!

Together with Dr. Kerstin Dross-Krüpe, Marburg, I'm hosting this session at the ASOR annual meeting in Baltimore nov. 20-23.

Sinews of Empire: Networks in the Roman Near East

Most of the Near East was under Roman rule for almost seven centuries, representing the longest period of political stability in the history of the region. Since the 1990s there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in the field, with studies moving emphasis from the metropolitan to regional and local points of view, but arguably most contributions have continued to cast representatives of imperial rule as protagonists or antagonists in narratives of domination, resistance, integration and fragmentation. In this session we aim to move the focus of attention to the everyday ties of trade, religion and day-to-day regional politics connecting people and places in the Roman Near East. How did networks develop? What where the institutions underpinning interaction and fostering integration on local, regional and imperial levels? What impact did formal and informal rules have on economic, social and political activities within these networks? How did networks react to stress on imperial level, such as invasions, economic crisis or civil war? We especially welcome papers situating empirical data within theoretical frameworks such as Social Network Analysis or New Institutional Economy, in order to facilitate comparison between groups, over time and between different parts of the Roman Near East.

Details can be found here: http://www.asor.org/am/2013/2013-call-for-papers.shtml
Deadline for abstracts is feb. 15.

We're hiring!

The call for a PhD candidate at the NeRoNE project is now open (until Feb. 25th). Read the official announcement here and contact me for more information.