Academic Interests

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    About

    I am a historian of cross-cultural exchanges in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. My research reinterprets the history of the seventh-century papacy through the perspective of its networks. Although this period is frequently seen as when the unity of Christendom fractured, by considering together admirers of Rome from both the post-Roman West and the Eastern Roman Empire, I argue that we can trace how echoes of Greek disputes were passed westwards by these transnational pro-papal networks. My publications therefore focus on the influence of eastern ideas on Latin authors, particularly Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede, and argue for a more interconnected Christendom at the end of late antiquity.

    Education

    2015–2019: PhD in History, University of Manchester.

    Thesis: ‘Ecclesiastical Networks and the Papacy at the End of Late Antiquity, c. 550–700’.

    2014–2015: MSt in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford.

    2011–2014: BA in History, University of Oxford.

    Publications

    Journal articles:

    ‘The Fall of Merovingian Italy, 561‒565’, Early Medieval Europe (forthcoming) [open access].

    ‘Bede, the Papacy, and the Emperors of Constantinople’, English Historical Review 136 (2021), pp. 465–97 [open access]: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceab113.

    ‘Justin under Justinian: The Rise of Emperor Justin II Revisited’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 75 (2021), pp. 121–42 [opem access]: https://archive.org/details/DOP75_05_Lin

    ‘Justinian’s Frankish War, 552‒ca. 560’, Studies in Late Antiquity 5.3 (2021), pp. 403–31.

    ‘The Merovingian Kingdoms and the Monothelete Controversy’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 71.2 (2020), pp. 235–52.

    Book chapters:

    ‘Reimagining Communities in Late Antiquity: The Case of Gregory of Tours and Justin II’, in R. Broome (ed.), Creating Communities and Others in Early Medieval Europe (forthcoming) [open access].

    ‘Rereading Absence: Silent Narratives in the ‘Life of Eligius of Noyon’’, in M. Fafinski and J. Riemenschneider (eds.), The Past Through Narratology: New Approaches to Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Heidelberg), pp. 27–39 [open access]: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.921.c13612.

    ‘A Tale of Two Exiles: Maximus the Confessor and Wilfrid of York at the End of Late Antiquity’, in D. Rohmann, J. Ulrich, and M. Vallejo Girvés (eds.), Mobility and Exile at the End of Antiquity, Early Christianity in the Context of Antiquity, vol. 19 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2018), pp. 285–99.

    ”Never had there been such happy times’: Byzantine Rome and the Making of the Anglo-Saxon Church, c. 640–680′, in K. Stewart and J. Wakeley (eds.), Cross-Cultural Exchange in the Byzantine World, c. 300–1500 A.D.: Selected Papers from the XVII Oxford University Byzantine Society’s International Graduate Conference, Byzantine and Neohellenic Studies, vol. 14 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), pp. 85–99.

    Sihong Lin

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