British art historian
Liz James FBA is a British art historian who studies the art of the Byzantine Empire. She is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex.
Career.
James is originally from Derby, East Midlands. She received an undergraduate degree at the University of Durham in Ancient History and Archaeology. She completed a master's degree in Byzantine studies at the University of Birmingham. She received her doctorate at the Courtauld Institute in London in 1989, studying under Robin Cormack. Her thesis discussed light and colour in Byzantine art and was entitled "Colour Perception in Byzantium". Upon completion, she embarked on postdoctoral fellowships, notably at the Barber Institute. In 1993 she joined the University of Sussex.
James was appointed Professor in 2007. Her professorial lecture was given in 2011 and discussed the mosaics in the apse of Hagia Sophia.
In July 2024 James was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy.
Research specialism.
James is known as a keen promoter of all areas of Byzantine art and Byzantine culture. She has particular interests in mosaics and in gender issues. She has written extensively on mosaics, discussing practical, iconographic and materialistic approaches to the subject. She has also established a database of Byzantine glass mosaics. In the field of gender, she has discussed Byzantine empresses, eunuchs and the way Byzantine society reacted to gender. She is also interested in the relationship between text and image, believing Byzantine texts to be of equal importance to Byzantine art. James contributed to the Royal Academy's 2008 Byzantium exhibition catalogue and gave a lecture to the academy.
References.
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