Merve Savas

Gennadius Library Kathryn and Peter Yatrakis Fellowship

Ohio State University

Research Topic: The Parade of Infamy (διαπόμπευσις) in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), 4th-15th centuries

Merve is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the Ohio State University studying late antique and medieval history. She is interested in the overlapping social, political, and legal worlds of the “long Roman period,” from the first to the fifteenth centuries. Her dissertation explores the “parade of infamy” in Byzantium and investigates how the state and society responded to political crises. Her other research interests include popular political participation in Constantinople as well as the concept of danger. At the Gennadius Library, her research focuses on the development of punitive processions in Byzantium between the extralegal sphere, the state repertoire, and the legal corpus.