The chronicles of Rus and Muscovy offer the fullest picture for the state formation of a set of polities that covered the territorial expanse of modern (western) Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. The transformation of rituals and ceremonies of rulership is a novel lens through which to better understand the unique political culture of early Rus and Muscovy, following the period of Mongol suzerainty.

About the speaker:

Dr Alex Vukovich is a Junior Research Fellow in Byzantine and Slavonic History and Literature.

Her research makes salient the interconnectedness of the Byzantine world through written culture, focusing on Byzantium, the Balkans, and Rus/Muscovy, and her broader academic interests lie in the history of political thought and practice, medieval religion, and material culture. Following an early interest in the Eastern Mediterranean as a zone of cooperation and conflict, dialogue and disintegration, her early research focused on the transmission of Byzantine political culture to the late medieval Balkans (fourteenth to sixteenth centuries) and the role of elite women in cultural patronage, the founding and endowment of monasteries and churches.