On the Spot: Mirela Ivanova
‘What is the most common misconception about my field? That the Byzantine Empire was decadent and effeminate. I wish.’
Why are you a historian of the pre-modern Balkans and Turkey?
I was born in Bulgaria, but as an undergraduate in the UK I noticed that European history meant northwestern Europe. I set out to find if there was any history east of the Danube.
What’s the most important lesson history has taught you?
Nothing is natural, but everything can be naturalised.
Which history book has had the greatest influence on you?
Stephen Kotkin’s Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilisation.
What book in your field should everyone read?
Yannis Hamilakis’ The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece.
Which moment would you most like to go back to?
As a woman with hard-earned rights, I’ll stay in the present.
Which historian has had the greatest influence on you?
Mark Whittow taught me that history isn’t worth it unless you are having fun.
Which person in history would you most like to have met?
Constantine-Cyril, the ninth-century saint who invented the Slavonic alphabet.
How many languages do you have?
Depends who’s asking! I can get by in Bulgarian, Russian, and Turkish, and I can read Old Church Slavonic and Medieval Greek.
What historical topic have you changed your mind on?
The inevitability of the nation.
What’s the most exciting field in history today?
The study of nomads and pastoralists as a viable alternative to sedentary civilisation.
What is the most common misconception about your field?
That the Byzantine Empire was decadent and effeminate. I wish.
Who is the most underrated person in history…
The pre-modern peasantry.
… and the most overrated?
Every named person from the medieval period is proportionately overrated.
Is there an important historical text you have not read?
Augustine’s City of God.
What’s your favourite archive?
The Russian National Library.
What’s the best museum?
Cairo’s Coptic Museum.
What technology has changed the world the most?
Writing.
Recommend us a historical novel...
The Name of the Rose.
... and a historical drama?
Magnificent Century, a Turkish drama about Suleiman I.
You can solve one historical mystery. What is it?
The solution is never as interesting as the mystery.
Mirela Ivanova is Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield and the author of Inventing Slavonic: Cultures of Writing Between Rome and Constantinople (Oxford University Press, 2024).
