Dr Ine Jacobs

Research Profile

Research Activities

I was a member of the Sagalassos team (Turkey) between 2003 and 2014, director of the British Archaeological Project at Grumentum (Italy) between 2012 and 2015. I now co-direct the Kostoperska Karpa Regional Archaeological Project (FYROM) and am field director at Aphrodisias (Turkey).  Because I am an archaeologist, I mainly deal with material evidence, but I am particularly interested in how this relates to and can (or cannot) be combined with literary sources. My doctorate looked into the how and why of late antique and Early Byzantine urban development and representation. In a first postdoctoral fellowship I investigated the reciprocal relations between the drastic political and religious changes taking place in the Theodosian period on the one hand and the economic developments and general prosperity in the eastern Mediterranean on the other. Since then I have been focussing ever more on the influence of Christianity on contemporary society. I am examining how the augmenting power of bishops over their congregations is expressed in the urban fabric as well as how ordinary people enacted their personal, everyday religiosity. 

After a degree in Archaeology at Leuven (Belgium), I obtained a grant from the Research Foundation Flanders to start a DPhil. The same foundation also funded my postdoctoral research as well as a long research stay in Munich. In the meantime, I had also become Lecturer in Roman Archaeology at the University of Brussels. In October 2013, I moved to Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellow in Classics. Since January 2015, I am the Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture at Oxford.

Publications
Teaching

Undergraduate teaching

Undergraduate course lecture:

  • FHS core paper: Urbanisation and Change in Complex Societies

Undergraduate course convenor:

  • FHS option: Byzantium: the transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Postgraduate teaching

Postgraduate taught course options in:

 

Doctoral Supervision

I am happy to supervise on topics related to late antique urbanism, the archaeology of religion and popular culture in Late Antiquity, and the Byzantine Dark Ages.

Current students

From Pompey to Augustus: What can coinage contribute to our understanding of client kingdoms in central Asia Minor during the late-republican period?
Denise Miebach | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisors: Jerome Mairat and Ine Jacobs
Byzantine hermitages and hermits of the geographically north part(s)of Cyprus: An ethnoarchaeological approach
Gabriella Makri | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisor: Ine Jacobs
Excavating the Archives: Reassessing the Archaeological Histories of the Basilica Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Basilica di San Clemente
Kelly McClinton | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisor: Ine Jacobs
Living in the ruins: Geyre, Aphrodisias, and the archaeology of memory
Miranda Gronow | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisor: Ine Jacobs
Monumental Fountains of the Roman West: 50 BCE – 250 CE
Kate Halcrow | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisors: Janet DeLaine and Ine Jacobs
The network of fortified settlements of Eastern Central Greece from the late 6th c to the Ottoman Conquest
Katerina Vavaliou | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisor: Ine Jacobs
Brick Tombs in the Sichuan Basin during the Eastern Han Period (AD 25-220): Regional Identity and Cultural Fusion
Lily Liu | DPhil Archaeology | Supervisors: Wendy Morrison and Ine Jacobs

Past students

Women, Gender, and Society in Late Antiquity: A Study in Visual Culture
Grace Stafford (2020) ORA | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisor: Ine Jacobs
The Archaeology of Middle Byzantine Aphrodisias
Hugh Jeffery (2019) ORA | DPhil Classical Archaeology | Supervisors: Bert Smith and Ine Jacobs

Key words: domestic space, excavations, gender and identity, religion, resilience, urbanism, wealth, material religion , architecture, Classical-Roman, medieval, late antique, Byzantine, Europe, W Asia