Niels Gaul

Niels Gaul studied Byzantine history and Classics at the universities of Bonn, Cologne, and Oxford. Before joining CEU’s Department of Medieval Studies in November 2007, he was the Dilts-Lyell Research Fellow in Greek Palaeography in the University of Oxford (in association with Lincoln College), 2005–7; a junior fellow at Dumbarton Oaks/Harvard University, 2004/5; and a lecturer in the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Cologne, 2002–4. In 2006, he became the founding programme director of the biennial Lincoln College International Summer School in Greek Palaeography.

At CEU, he teaches Byzantine history, culture and rhetoric from c.600 to 1453, as well as classes on medieval Greek manuscript studies and current literary and discourse theory. He presently serves as director of the doctoral program in Medieval Studies.

He is currently working on a handbook of Greek palaeography & Byzantine manuscript studies as well as a monograph on the connection of mimēsis, (rhetorical) self-fashioning, and the revival of civic spirit from the middle through the late Byzantine periods. 

Since coming to CEU, he has hosted an international workshop on ‘Charismatic authority, spiritual friendship: comparative approaches to networks of learning, Byzantine east and Latin west, c.1000–c.1200’ (together with Dr Sita Steckel, 2008) and an international symposium on ‘Centre and periphery in the age of Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos: from De ceremoniis to De administrando imperio’ (together with the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2009). Publication of the proceedings is in progress.