Dr Ine Jacobs
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture
University College
Research Interests
- Late Antique archaeology and architecture
- Archaeology of religion
- Popular culture
- Dark Age Asia Minor
My research focusses on late antique and Byzantine architecture and settlements, the reception of classical antiquity in later centuries and the archaeology of religion. I am particularly interested in how material and visual evidence can or cannot be combined with contemporary literary sources. I wrote my doctoral dissertation (2008) on the aesthetic maintenance of urban sites in the late antique Eastern Mediterranean, using archaeology to nuance and eventually overhaul the idea that they were slowly declining. In a similar vein, I looked into the reciprocal relations between the drastic political and religious changes taking place in the Theodosian period on the one hand and the economic developments and general prosperity in the eastern Mediterranean on the other. I am currently working on a monograph entitled Christian Leaders, Classical Habits, in which I examine how bishops and the clergy carefully curated the classical city, its institutions and its ornaments.
I was a member of the Sagalassos team (Turkey) between 2003 and 2014, director of the British Archaeological Project at Grumentum (Italy) between 2012 and 2015 and co-director of the Kostoperska Karpa Regional Archaeological Project (Republic of North Macedonia) between 2013 and 2016. Currently, I am Field Director of the New York University excavations at Aphrodisias in Turkey, where I am working on the publication of the excavations in the so-called ‘Tetrapylon Street'.
Publications
Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond
The theoretical framework known as Material Religion has emerged as a vibrant and profoundly influential approach within religious studies over the past two decades. Originating in the first decade of the 21st century from currents within cultural anthropology, Material Religion challenges a foundational assumption of much modern Western thought: that matter and spirit — materiality and religion — are fundamentally opposed. Rather than conceiving religion primarily as a system of ideas, doctrines, and beliefs, this framework accords equal significance to behaviours, practices, and objects. It reorients the study of religion towards the physical world, while simultaneously highlighting the capacity of tangible environments to mediate between humans and extraordinary powers.
DPhil Students
I would like to hear from potential DPhil students regarding: Late Antique archaeology and architecture; Archaeology of Religion; Popular culture; Dark Age Asia Minor.