CONTACT AND CONFLICT IN FRANKISH GREECE AND THE AEGEAN

The conference will be dedicated in memory of Konstantinos Ikonomopoulos, student of the Hellenic Institute and the History Department of Royal Holloway (1980-2009).  The conference will explore new aspects of the interaction between Byzantine Greeks, Latins and Turks in the period between the Fourth Crusade (1204) and the fall of Constantinople in 1453. It will combine the participants' original research on crusading in the Greek East in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the latest advances in Byzantine and Crusade historiography. A broad range of themes will be explored, including the implementation and evolution of the crusade in the area, the religious landscape and political balance of a land shared by Orthodox Greeks, Catholic Latins and Muslim Turks, and the role of trade in fostering closer contact between the three sides. The conference programme brings together both established academics and postdoctoral research students from Britain and beyond.