Mark Whittow

Mark Whittow (24 August 1957^[1] – 23 December 2017) was a British historian, archaeologist, and academic, specialising in the Byzantine Empire. He was a university lecturer at the University of Oxford and a Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.^[2][3][4]

Mark Whittow
Born	(1957-08-24)24 August 1957 Cambridge, United Kingdom
Died	23 December 2017(2017-12-23) (aged 60) Oxfordshire, United Kingdom
Academic background
Education	Trinity College, Oxford
Thesis	Social and Political Structures in the Maeander Region of Western Asia Minor on the Eve of the Turkish Invasions (1987)
Doctoral advisor	James Howard-Johnston
Academic work
Institutions	University of Reading King's College London University of Oxford (1998–2017)
Notable works	The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025

Early life and education

Whittow was born in Cambridge.^[5] He attended Lord Wandsworth College in Long Sutton, Hampshire.^[6] From 1976 he read Modern History at Trinity College, Oxford, and in 1987 earned a DPhil in Byzantine history and archaeology.^[2]

Academic career

Whittow was a research fellow and lecturer at Oriel College and held faculty positions at the University of Reading and at King's College London, before returning to Oxford in 1998 as a fellow of St Peter's College and University Lecturer in History. He became a fellow of Corpus Christi and University Lecturer in Byzantine Studies in 2009.^[2][7] He was Senior Proctor of the university for the 2016/2017 academic year.^[8] In November 2017, he was announced as the next Provost of Oriel College, Oxford; he was to take up the post in September 2018.^[9][10]

Personal life

Whittow was married to Helen Malcolm, a QC and Deputy High Court Judge.^[9]

He died in a car accident in Oxfordshire on the evening of 23 December 2017, aged 60.^[7]

Selected works

• The Making of Orthodox Byzantium, 600–1025 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996) ISBN 9781349247653
• 'Recent Research on the Late Antique City in Asia Minor: the Second Half of the 6th c. Revisited', in Recent Research in Late Antique Urbanism, ed. L. Lavan, JRA Supplementary Series 42 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2001), pp. 137–53 ISBN 1887829423
• 'Early Medieval Byzantium and the End of the Ancient World', Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009), pp. 134–53
• 'The Middle Byzantine Economy (600–1204)', in The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, ed. J. Shepard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 465–92
• 'The Late Roman/Early Byzantine Near East', in The New Cambridge History of Islam I, ed. C. Robinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 72–97
• (ed. with Marc Lauxtermann) Byzantium in the Eleventh Century: Being in Between. Papers from the 45th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Exeter College, Oxford, 24–26 March 2012 (London: Routledge, 2017) ISBN 9781138225039