While Michael was travelling up to join us in Lille, I was also on my way back from Hamburg, having just presented on the Sasanian Empire’s use of captives in the fifth century at the Social Contexts of Rebellion in the Early Islamic Period (SCORE) conference in Hamburg. I would not recommend making this journey by bus (it’s a bit long!), but the conference itself was a tremendous experience.
SCORE brought together academics focused on a wide variety of social dissidents – from warlords on the western frontiers of the Roman Empire and the eastern frontiers of the Islamic world, to freed Egyptian slaves, Constantinopolitan circus factions, and even a paper on the rebellion-thwarting foci of Islamic architecture. I came away filled with knowledge outside of my usual research, and also received a warm welcome as a representative of Sasanian studies and the Ex-Patria team.
A particularly novel feature of the conference was its format, which consisted of 10-minute summaries of pre-circulated papers followed by 35 minutes of discussions. At first, I thought this was a typo! However, in practice I think I might even prefer this style to more traditional conference structures, as it provided for a great deal of particularly lively and profitable discussions.
