Lucas McMahon
Title: Postdoctoral Fellow
Degrees:
BA (Hons) University of Calgary
MA University of Ottawa
MA Central European University
PhD Princeton University
Biography:
Dr. McMahon completed a PhD in history from Princeton University in 2022. He studied under esteemed Byzantine historian John Haldon, former president of the international body overseeing the discipline.
For the last two years Dr. McMahon has held a SSHRC postdoctoral position at the University of Ottawa, where he completed a master’s degree in classics. He also holds a master’s degree in medieval studies from Central European University, and an undergraduate degree in ancient medieval history from the University of Calgary.
Read the UW News article about Dr. McMahon and his work
Current Research:
Currently, Dr. McMahon is working on his Banting project, Information and Empire in New Rome, AD 600-1200. Often intangible, abstract, and detectable only through its effects, information was the dark matter that held together pre-modern empires. Information and Empire is an anarchist history of information control in the medieval eastern Roman Empire that focuses on the total information regime by which the state watched its neighbours, repressed dissent, and extracted the resources necessary for its existence and reproduction. The aim is to comprehend the lived experience of empire in the distant past while also providing a template for understanding the relationship between information, power, and the state in a comparative historical perspective.
Research Interests:
Late Roman and Byzantine history, pre-industrial states, pre-industrial economies, medieval Greek historiography, borders and frontiers, Byzantine foreign relations, digital spatial analysis (GIS).
Publications:
2024. “Manuel I Komnenos’ policy towards the Sultanate of Rum and John Kontostephanos’ embassies to Jerusalem, 1159-61,” Crusades 23, no. 2, 1-20 (preprint), DOI: 10.1080/14765276.2024.2405810.
2024. “Anna Komnene, the Kontostephanoi, and the Norman invasions of 1107-1108 and 1147-1149,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 117, no. 3, 693–734. DOI: 10.1515/bz-2024-0043.
2024. Review of: Tor, Deborah, and Alexander Beihammer (eds.). The Islamic–Byzantine border in history: From the rise of Islam to the end of the Crusades, in: Al-Masaq 36, no. 1, 127–29: DOI: 10.1080/09503110.2024.2307105.
2024. Review of: Dixon, Carl. The Paulicians. Heresy, Persecution, and Warfare on the Byzantine Frontier, c. 750-880, in: Speculum 99, no. 4, 1283–85. DOI: 10.1086/732414.
2024. Review of: Vroom, Joanita (ed.). Feeding the Byzantine City: The Archaeology of Consumption in the Eastern Mediterranean (ca. 500-1500), in: Early Medieval Europe 32, no. 2, 232–34. DOI: 10.1111/emed.12703.
2023. Review of: Marjanović, Dragoljub. Creating Memories in Late Eighth-Century Byzantium: The Short History of Nikephoros of Constantinople, in: Porphyra 28, 59–61.
2022. Review of: Fabbro, Eduardo. Warfare and the making of early Medieval Italy (568-652), in: International Journal of Military History and Historiography 42, no. 2, 422–24.
2022. “Digital perspectives on overland travel and communications in the Exarchate of Ravenna (sixth through eighth centuries),” Studies in Late Antiquity 6, no. 2, 284–334. DOI: 10.1525/sla.2022.6.2.284.
2021. “Logistical modelling of a sea-borne expedition in the Mediterranean: the case of the Byzantine invasion of Crete in A.D. 960,” Mediterranean Historical Review 36, no. 1, 63–94. DOI: 10.1080/09518967.2021.1900171.
2018. (with Abigail Sargent) “Environmental History of the Late Antique Mediterranean: a bibliographic essay,” Late Antique Archaeology 11, 17–30.
2016. “Examining the historical claims of De Velitatione Bellica: guerrilla warfare in eighth-century Byzantium,” Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU 22, 22–33.
Projects:
Mapping Medieval Metadata, an online dataset of Byzantine lead seals with find-spots: https://cdh.princeton.edu/projects/mapping-medieval-metadata/