Following a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship based in the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham, 2014-17, I am now Lecturer in Byzantine Studies at the University of Birmingham.
My research focuses on the social and economic history of the Byzantium in the period c.300-c.1100, with particular interest in Byzantine and early Islamic Syria, Israel/Palestine and Jordan as well as southern Italy. My main interest is in the history and archaeology of the Christian communities of these regions in the early Middle Ages, which I use as a springboard from which to discuss broader patterns of diplomatic, economic and human contact across the early medieval Mediterranean and central Europe. I address these themes using a multidisciplinary approach, harnessing my expertise in archaeology and material culture, combined with additional strengths in numismatics, epigraphy and my familiarity with the traditions of Greek and Arabic historical texts. In more recent years I have developed further interests and publications in iconoclasm in the Mediterranean c.700-c.900 as well as questions of identity in Byzantine and post-Byzantine provincial contexts (c.500-1100), and peasant communities in the Mediterranean, where I have collaborated with colleagues based in Vienna, Princeton, Oxford and Tate Britain.
I am also currently the co-director of the project “At the Crossroads of Empires: the Longobard Church of Sant’Ambrogio at Montecorvino Rovella (Salerno)”. This is a British Academy funded project, collaborating with Dr. Francesca Dell’Acqua, (Università di Salerno/ Birmingham) and Prof. Chiara Lambert (Università di Salerno), and a number of higher education intuitions across the UK, Italy and the Czech Republic. The project will conduct a full archaeological and historical analysis of the ninth-century Longobard Church of Sant’Ambrogio, Montecorvino Rovella. The project will also work closely with UNESCO and the European Commission with the aim of incorporating Sant’Ambrogio within its World Heritage List, ‘Italia Langobardorum’.
Biography
I received my Bachelor’s degree in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Following a year at the Universidad de Valencia, Spain, where I developed a passion for all things ‘medieval’, and working as a field archaeologist in the UK, I moved to the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies to pursue an MA in Byzantine Studies. My postgraduate experience at the Centre further cemented my interest in the Late Antique and Early Medieval Levant and so I stayed to pursue a PhD, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which I submitted in September 2013 and successfully defended in March 2014.
I was formerly employed as a Postgraduate Teaching Fellow in the School of History and Cultures (University of Birmingham) where I taught a number of undergraduate courses on Archaeology, Late Antique and Medieval History and the material culture of the East Mediterranean. Between 2013 and 2014 I was also the co-curator, with Rebecca Darley, of the Faith and Fortune exhibition, on display at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts from November 2014-February 2015. In September 2014, I began my post as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Centre, held until 2017, when I took up the post of Lecturer in Byzantine Studies.
Publications
Reynolds, D (in press, 2017) ‘Rethinking Palestinian Iconoclasm’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 71, pagination TBC.
Reynolds, D. (with editors). ‘Death of a Patriarch: the murder of John VII in 966 and the question of the Melkite minority’, in W. Pohl and R. Kraemer (eds.), Empires and Communities (London: Routledge)
Reynolds, D. (in press, expected spring 2017). ‘Byzantium from below: rural identity in Byzantine Palaestina and Arabia, 500-630’, in Y. Stouraitis and J. Haldon (eds.); Ideologies and identities in the medieval Byzantine world (De Gruyter, Millennium-Studien: Berlin), pagination TBC.
Reynolds, D. (in press, expected Spring 2017). ‘The Christian World of Late Antiquity 300-600’, in D. Thomas (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Christian-Muslim Relations (London: Routledge), pagination TBC.
Reynolds, D (2015). ‘Monasticism in early Islamic Palestine: contours of debate’, in R. Hoyland (ed.), The late antique world of early Islam: Muslims among Christians and Jews in the East Mediterranean (Darwin Press: London), 339-91.
Reynolds, D. (with Wickham, C. and Darley, R.) 2014. Open Access Journals in Humanities and Social Science (The British Academy: London).
Recent Excavation Work
2012: The Islamic Jarash Project, Stanford University
2011: The Late Antique Jarash Project, University of Copenhagen
