Nathan D.C. Websdale

DPhil Thesis Submitted Michaelmas 2025; Defended January 2026.

Title:

Panspermía and the Romaíoi: Performative Ethnicity and the Weaponization of Space in Byzantium’s Post-Imperial Networks c.1190-1235.

Research Topic:

My doctoral research discussed the rhetoric of ethnicity in Byzantium in a forty-five-year period in the generation that witnessed the fall of Constantinople to the Catholic forces of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the political fragmentation that followed. 

I am interested in the relationship between urban centre and provinces, particularly in how texts and epigraphy depict differences in a projected ethnic plane. Parts of my thesis analyse depictions of innovated 'otherization' within former populations of the empire, in particular the splinter-states of Epiros and Paphlagonia. I then analysed how these correlate to the criteria of Byzantium's Roman identity during a period of contraction and the rise of terms hostile to ethnic mixing - the panspermía. The panspermía functioned to describe the amorphous enemy. Supposedly foreign, it often contained peoples of shared language and religion. Therefore, I discussed the contrast between elite Byzantines' ecumenical ideology and projections of power against an increasingly narrow sense of community. These are poignant narratives of the social reaction to contemporary crises.

Additional Research Interests:

Byzantium, Crusader Studies, Slavonic Studies, Despotate of Epiros, History of the Caucasus, Classical Greece, Late Antiquity, Historical Sociology, Anglo-Saxon England, Napoleon, Ottoman Empire, Epistolography, Network Studies, Environmental History.

https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/patronage-and-power-in-the-pre-modern-mediterranean 

Supervisor: Dr Ida Toth

https://oxford.academia.edu/NathanWebsdale

President, Oxford University Byzantine Society (2022-2023)

Graduate Outreach Tutor, Researcher in Residence: Faculty of History

Educational Background:

BA History (First Class) : Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016.

MA Late Antique and Byzantine Studies (Merit):  Intercollegiate University of London, 2017.

• Recipient of the Patriarch George II of Cyprus Scholarship.

ESL Teacher: ELC Anifadis, Chalkida, Greece

DPhil History: Wolfson College, University of Oxford, 2021–2025.

• Recipient of the Tsiter-Kontoupoulou Visiting Fellowship at the University of Vienna, 2025.

Affiliations:

Royal Historical Society - Postgraduate Member

Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies - Member

Epiros: The Other Western Rome - Convenor

Dumbarton Oaks Coins and Seals Summer Programme - Participant