Nathan 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 1190-1235.

Research Topic:

My doctoral research discusses 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.

Within the contrast between elite Byzantines' ecumenical ideology compared to their increasingly narrow sense of community are poignant narratives of reactions 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.

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