Practical
Thursday, 25 September, 2025
- 17:00 until 20:00
Free of charge
The Vrije Universiteit Brussel, VUB's research group 'Social History of Capitalism', the Ghent-Brussels Alliance Research Group in Urban History and John Latham-Sprinkle invite you for the book launch of 'The Kingdom of Alania by John Latham-Sprinkle'.
About the book
The kingdom of Alania was the most powerful polity in the medieval North Caucasus. It contained strategic mountain passes across the Caucasus mountains, as well as urban centres larger than any in contemporary Rus'. Its kings retained power from the mid-ninth to the late eleventh centuries, intermarried with the ruling families of Georgia and Byzantium, and led armies that terrorised the South Caucasus.
In this, the first book to explore the subject in the English language, John Latham-Sprinkle sheds light on how the kings of Alania came to embody 'the power of the foreign' – the status which accrued to individuals who could access the material and spiritual products of distant lands – thus rendering the development of a state structure unnecessary. Challenging existing narratives that centre elites and the state, Latham-Sprinkle provides an important contribution to the historiography of medieval state formation, Christianisation, and transregional connection."
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Programme
- Welcome & introduction by Professor Hugh Kennedy (SOAS, University of London)
- Conversation & Q&A with the author, led by Professor Frederik Buylaert (Ghent University)
- Reception with Georgian wine and Armenian snacks
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About the author
John Latham-Sprinkle is a historian of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caucasus. His research has two main strands: the history of slavery in the Black Sea, and its connections with the wider Mediterranean and Afro-Eurasian world. And the history of polities on the borderlands of the Byzantine Empire, notably in the Caucasus, and their relationships with each other.
John did his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London on the North Caucasian Kingdom of Alania, supervised by Prof. Hugh Kennedy and Dr. Teresa Bernheimer. He then taught at Saint Xavier University and Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, USA, before moving to Ghent University in 2019. From 2021 to 2024, he held an FWO Junior Postdoctoral Fellowship, which investigated comparisons and links between the medieval Black Sea slave trade and political developments in 14th-15th century Egypt and West Africa. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Vrije Universiteit Brussel since 2024. He is about to begin an FWO Senior Postdoctoral Fellowship investigating the creation of theories of race in the context of European colonies in the late medieval Black Sea.
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About the speaker
Professor Hugh Kennedy is one of the world’s leading historians of the early Islamic world. He has taught at St Andrews and SOAS, written ten major books (including the classic The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates), and published widely on Islamic history, archaeology, and the medieval Middle East. His works have been translated into more than ten languages.
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The world needs you
This initiative is part of VUB's public programme, a programme for everyone who believes that scientific knowledge sharing, critical thinking and dialogue are an important first step to create impact in the world.
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