Zeynep Olgun

University of Cambridge, Newnham College / Dumbarton Oaks

Ariane Condellis Fellow, Gennadius Library

Research Topic: The Byzantine Ship: Seafaring, State, and Society

Zeynep Olgun is a historian specializing in the maritime aspects of Byzantine society and culture. She is particularly interested in methodological approaches that integrate material and textual sources that centre the sea in the study of human experience. She holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge (2026) and was a Junior Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (2025–2026). She earned an MA in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies from Central European University in Vienna (2022) and an MA in Maritime Archaeology from Koç University in Istanbul (2020). Her previous work focused on timber supply for Byzantine shipbuilding, daily life onboard ships, maritime labour, and ship as an object and metaphor in Byzantine literary culture.

As the Ariane Condellis Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, she is working on her first monograph, The Byzantine Ship: Seafaring, State, and Society, which adopts a ‘history from the sea’ approach, using the ship as a lens through which to explore Byzantine maritime life as an intercommunal contact zone, where socially and economically marginalized seafarers and elite actors interacted and coexisted.