Princeton University

John Haldon is professor of Byzantine History and Hellenic Studies.  His research centers on the socio-economic, institutional, political and cultural history of the early and middle Byzantine empire from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. He also works on political systems and structures across the European and Islamic worlds from late ancient to early modern times and has explored how resources were produced, distributed and consumed, especially in warfare, during the late ancient and medieval periods. Professor Haldon is the author and co-author of more than two dozen books. His most recent books are The social history of Byzantium (Blackwell, Oxford 2008) and Byzantium in the iconoclast period: a history, with L. Brubaker (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2010).

Professor Haldon is the director of the Euchaita/Avkat Project - an archaeological and historical survey in north central Turkey.  As well as traditional methods of field survey and historical research, this long-term project employs cutting edge survey, mapping and digital modeling techniques to enrich our understanding of the society, economy, land use, demography, paleo-environmental history and resources of the late Roman, Byzantine and Seljuk/Ottoman periods. Further information on the Euchaita/Avkat Project is available through the following links.

Website: http://www.princeton.edu/avkat
Online Article: History, Remote Sensing, and GIS: the Avkat Survey Project
Talk: Podcast
Presentation: PDF

He is also co-director of the international Medieval Logistics Project - an international project deploying Geographical Information Systems and sophisticated modelling software to analyze the logistics of East Roman, early medieval Western European and Early Islamic warfare and structures of resource allocation. (http://www.medievallogistics.bham.ac.uk/)

A native of Northumbria, England, Professor Haldon has worked at the Universities of Athens and Munich, at the Max-Planck-Institut for European Legal History in Frankfurt, and at the University of Birmingham, where from 1995 he was Director of the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies and from 2000-2004 Head of the School of Historical Studies. He came to Princeton University in 2005.   From 2007-2010 he is a Senior Fellow at the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies in Washington D.C.

Current Projects:
include continuing work on issues of medieval resources and logistics; the preparation of a critical commentary for a translation on the 10^th century military treatise, the "Taktika" of the emperor Leo VI for Dumbarton Oak Studies; the Avkat project (see above); work on various texts and related issues of the seventh to eleventh centuries; and on comparative state formation in pre-modern societies

Teaching Interests:
include a wide range of courses in the field of Byzantine history from the late Roman to the 12th century. Recent courses include "Problems of Byzantine History - Formation of Byzantium 600-850: Sources and Problems," "Transformation of the Ancient World: Byzantium 500-1200," "War and Peace in the Medieval World," and "Byzantium in the 10th Century."

Some recent publications:
Books:

Warfare, state and society in the Byzantine world, 565-1204 (London 1999)

Byzantium: a history (Stroud 2000) (also translated into German, Finnish and Greek)

The Palgrave Atlas of Byzantine History (Basingstoke, New York, 2005) (also translated into Turkish)

Editor, Elites old and new in the Byzantine and early Islamic Near East (Papers of the VIth Workshop in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, Princeton, 2005).

Editor, General issues in the study of medieval logistics: sources, problems and methodologies (Leiden, 2005).

Editor, The social history of Byzantium  (Blackwell, Oxford, 2008).

Editor with E. Jeffreys and R. Cormack, The Oxford Handbook of Byzantium Studies (OUP, Oxford, 2008).

Articles and chapters:

"Why model logistical systems," in J. F. Haldon ed., General issues in the study of medieval logistics: sources, problems and methodologies

"Economy and Society: how did the empire work?" Chapter 2 in M. Maas ed. Companion to the Age of Justinian (Cambridge 2005).

"Greek fire revisited: recent and current research," in E. Jeffreys ed. Byzantine style, religion and civilization in honour of Sir Steven Ruciman (Cambridge, 2006).

"Conflict, integration and social transformation in the 6th-8th century east," in L. Lavan, ed. Papers of the Late Antique Urbanism colloquium, Oxford 2003 (Oxford 2006).

With Jack Goldstone, "Introduction, ancient states, empires and exploitation: problems and perspectives," in L. Morris, W. Scheidel, eds. Empires and exploitation. States and social power in the ancient world (Stanford, 2008).

"Empires and exploitation: the case of Byzantium," in I. Morris, W. Scheidel, eds. Empires and exploitation. States and social power in the ancient world (Stanford, 2006).

" ‘Cappadocia will be given over to ruin and become a desert.’ Environmental evidence for historically-attested events in the 7th and 10th centuries," in Mediterranea. Festschrift Johannes Koder (Vienna, 2007).

"The resources of late antiquity," chapter 1, volume 1, in New Cambridge History of Islam, C. Robinson, ed. (Cambridge, forthcoming).

"Introduction: towards a social history of Byzantium," chapter 1 in J. F. Haldon ed., The Social History of Byzantium (Oxford, 2008).

"Social elites, wealth and power," chapter 9 in J. F. Haldon ed., The social history of Byzantium (Oxford, 2008).

"The Laudatio Therapontis. A neglected source of the later seventh or early eighth century," in Essays in honour of Averil Cameron, H. Amirav and B. ter haar Romeney, eds., (Leiden, 2006).

"Contribution to the symposium on Alex Callinicos’ Making history. Agency, structure, and change in social theory," in Historical materialism 15 (2008).

(With A. England, W.J. Eastwood, C.N. Roberts, R. Turner) "Historical landscape change in Cappadocia (central Turkey): a palaeoecological investigation of annually-laminated sediments from Nar Lake," in The Holocene  18/8 (2008).

Articles: "Primary sources," "Political-historical survey 476-800," "Military technology and warfare," "Army," "Revenues and expenditure," in E. Jeffreys, R. Cormack and J. F. Haldon, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Studies (OUP, Oxford, 2008).