Alexander Sherborne

As part of my keen interest in the History and Literature of the Early Medieval Mediterranean and Middle East, the doctoral project I am undertaking will focus on the literary manipulations of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (610-641 CE), comparatively examining how Greek, Georgian, Latin, Arabic, Syriac and Armenian writers used this figure and his role in the monumental events of his times for particular narrative and ideological purposes in subsequent centuries.

Within the University of Oxford, I am a member of Magdalen College, at which I also completed an MPhil in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies, my thesis thereof being an exploration of previously unrecognised literary aspects of a core chronicle in the early medieval Georgian historiographical canon.

My current research, supervised by Professor Phil Booth, is generously funded by the OOC AHRC DTP, the Clarendon Fund, and Magdalen College, Oxford.