Exeter Fellow Dr Ugo Mondini to Research Eleventh-Century Byzantine Language Teaching at Harvard’s Dumbarton Oaks

Dr Ugo Mondini, British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Supernumerary Fellow at Exeter College, has been awarded the prestigious Research Fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Harvard University), in Washington, DC.

Therefore, from September 2025, he will continue his research project on language education in the eleventh-century Byzantine Empire at Dumbarton Oaks. Dr Mondini will finalise there a series of articles offering a new critical edition and a socio-linguistic re-evaluation of all the preserved sources related to eleventh-century schedography, a new teaching method that emerged in that period and remained influential in Greek instruction for five hundred years. He will also investigate the reception and use of ancient Greek grammarians in medieval teaching practices. In doing so, his objective is to show how language was taught, why a new teaching method was needed, and how teachers adapted ancient material for new teaching practices. He will return to Oxford (and Exeter) in May 2026.

Alongside days of intensive research and writing in a leading research centre for Byzantine studies with an exceptional specialised library and museum, Dr Mondini’s residency at Dumbarton Oaks will enable him to present his research at academic institutions and conferences throughout the United States, thanks also to the continuous support of Exeter College. This will include invited lectures at the Laboratory for the Study of the Greek Language (The Ohio State University) and at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Temple University).