Matthew has been a research fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas since October 2021.
Research Interests
- Byzantine history
- Late medieval history
- Historiography
- Comparative history
- Narratology
- Philosophy of history
- Gender and queer history
Experience
- Researcher in History of Ideas – University of Oslo (2021–present)
- Marie Curie Junior Fellow in History and Literature – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (2023–24)
- Fellow in Byzantine and Renaissance History – Boğaziçi University & Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (2020–21)
- Postdoctoral Researcher in Byzantine History – University of Vienna (2020)
- Fellow in Byzantine Studies – Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Harvard University (2019–20)
- Postdoctoral Researcher in Byzantine History – Austrian Academy of Sciences (2018–19)
Education
- DPhil in History – University of Oxford (2014–18)
- MRes in Byzantine Studies – University of Birmingham (2013–14)
- BA (Hons) in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History [First Class] – Durham University (2010–13)
Current Projects
Past Projects
Tags:
Classics,
History of ideas,
Historiography,
Medieval Studies,
Byzantine History,
Philosophy of History,
Narratology
Publications
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2026).
Byzantine Queer History and Norwegian Homonationalism.
Lambda Nordica: Tidskrift om homosexualitet.
ISSN 1100-2573.
31(3-4).
doi:
10.34041/ln.v.856.
Full text in Research Archive
Show summary
This article aims to demonstrate how queer readings of premodern historiography can make meaningful contributions to contemporary political struggle and to make one such contribution. It uses fifteenth-century Byzantine depictions of Ottoman sultans as heretical, barbaric, and sexually non-normative to denaturalise the very different (and yet uncannily similar) combination of religious, ethnic, and sexual alterity in contemporary Norwegian homonationalist discourse. It seeks to unpick the anti-Muslim and anti-migrant implications of the neoliberal story of LGBT+ rights accumulation told in the framing of skeivt kulturår 2022, the commemoration/celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the decriminalisation of sex between men in Norway. Specifically, it seeks to draw out the positioning of the Norwegian state in that framing, by leveraging the temporal and cultural alterity of Byzantine historiographical invective. The objective is to disturb the complacent production of a story of Norwegian queer history as a dimension of benign Norwegian liberalism and exceptionalism. The specific role of the premodern past in Norwegian homonationalist narratives is illustrated through the example of an exhibition within the framework of skeivt kulturår 2022, which was ultimately cancelled because of a text naming Norwegian state violence and use of the term homonationalism. In the process, this article seeks to identify a way for Byzantine queer history to do useful work in the present.
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2023).
Imagining Action: Explanation in Twentieth-Century Historiographical and Fictional Rewritings of the Chronicle of Morea.
In Kulhankova, Marketa & Marciniak, Przemyslaw (Ed.),
Byzantium in the Popular Imagination: The Modern Reception of the Byzantine Empire.
I.B. Tauris.
ISSN 9780755607303.
p. 207–224.
Full text in Research Archive
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2023).
Publication and Citation Practices: Enclosure, Extractivism, and Gatekeeping in Byzantine Studies.
In Ivanova, Mirela & Anderson, Benjamin (Ed.),
Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Towards a Critical Historiography of Byzantine Studies.
Penn State University Press.
ISSN 9780271095264.
p. 133–142.
doi:
10.5325/jj.6195052.15.
Full text in Research Archive
Show summary
In a recent paper, Dan-el Padilla Peralta examined the publication and citation practices of three prominent North American classics journals to lay the foundations for exposing and demystifying the anti-Black and racially exclusionary genealogies that white Euro-American classicists have invented for themselves and their field.¹ Byzantine studies urgently requires similar treatment. The work of classicists such as Padilla offers more than just a useful starting point for Byzantinists, given the closely related and often coeval development of classical and Byzantine studies as scholarly disciplines.
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2022).
Stories of emperors, sultans, and cities: Comparing protagonists in the histories of Doukas and Leonardo Bruni.
Byzantine and modern Greek studies.
ISSN 0307-0131.
46(2),
p. 196–213.
doi:
10.1017/byz.2022.4.
Full text in Research Archive
Show summary
One of the defining features of the Byzantine historiographical tradition is the dominant narrative roles played by emperors and, in the later period, by Ottoman sultans. This article explores this characteristic feature of the tradition through comparative analysis of the structuring roles occupied by such characters in the fifteenth-century History of Doukas and the protagonistic role of the Florentine people in the contemporary History of the Florentine People by Leonardo Bruni. Transhistorical comparison, organized around two case studies, serves to denaturalize the roles played by emperors and sultans in both Byzantine and modern historiography.
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew Cameron
(2020).
In the Name of the Father, the Husband, or Some Other Man: The Subordination of Female Characters in Byzantine Historiography.
Dumbarton Oaks Papers.
ISSN 0070-7546.
74,
p. 303–328.
Full text in Research Archive
View all works in NVA
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2026).
Re-Thinking Byzantine History: The Short Thirteenth Century and the Reconquest Metanarrative.
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew & Ivanova, Mirela
(2025).
From Footnote to Protagonist: Medieval Bulgarian Rulers between Byzantine and Romantic Nationalist Historiography.
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2025).
Bysantinsk hemmelighold møter USA på det tjueførste århundre – Roland Betancourt, The Secrets We Keep: Hidden Histories of the Byzantine Empire (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute 2024).
Arr - Idéhistorisk tidsskrift.
ISSN 0802-7005.
p. 139–140.
Full text in Research Archive
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2024).
Response to Eirene-Sophia Kiapidou’s Human Networks and Historiography: Constructing the Character of ‘Friend’ and ‘Fellow Scholar’ in the Proems of Byzantine Historiography.
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2024).
Re-Thinking Byzantine History: The Discipline of Byzantine History, History Writing, and the Metanarrative of Reconquest (1204–61).
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2024).
‘Nathanael Aschenbrenner and Jake Ransohoff (eds), The Invention of Byzantium in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2021)’.
Byzantine and modern Greek studies.
ISSN 0307-0131.
doi:
10.1017/byz.2024.10.
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew
(2023).
Byzantine History Writing and Narrative Theories of Character; or Who decides what a (minor) character is?
Full text in Research Archive
-
Kinloch, Matthew & Morcom, Thomas Patrick
(2023).
Unruly Casts and Awkward Protagonists: Possible Premodern Contributions to the Narrative Theory of Characters.
Full text in Research Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
Kinloch, Matthew; Nilsson, Ingela & Poulsen, Aske Damtoft
(2022).
Narrative and Narratology in Pre-Modern Historiography.
Full text in Research Archive
-
View all works in NVA
Published
Oct. 25, 2021 12:17 PM
- Last modified
Oct. 27, 2026 3:05 PM
