The aim of this project is the adaptation and development of concepts and tools of network, complexity and environmental sciences and global history as well as artificial intelligence for the analysis of Byzantium and its neighbouring regions withing the framework of the entire medieval world. With the help of these instruments, socio-economic, religious, political and intellectual entanglements between individuals, communities, polities and localities are visualised and analysed. The dynamics of these phenomena in time and space are analysed in a qualitative and quantitative as well as comparative perspective, positioning Byzantium in a global context of pre-modern societies. This also includes the climate and environmental history of the medieval world. The project operates as a "laboratory" at the cutting point between humanities, social sciences, mathematics and natural sciences, also in cooperation with the new IMAFO-LAB "Interfaces between Medieval Studies and Sciences".

Cooperation partners

• Complexity Science Hub, Section on Social Complexity and Collapse / Vienna   
• Princeton University, Climate Change and History Research Initiative / Princeton (USA) 
• Masaryk University Brno, Department for the Study of Religions, GEHIR (A Generative Historiography of the Ancient Mediterranean) / Brno (Czech Republic)
• Seshat: Global History Databank, Universities of Connecticut and Oxford / Oxford (UK)
• Peter Turchin, University of Connecticut, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology / Connecticut (USA)
• Robert Gramsch-Stehfest, Universität Jena, Historisches Institut / Jena (Germany)
• Vinod Nautiyal, HNB Garhwal University, Department of History / Uttarakhand (India)
• Adam Izdebski, Max-Planck-Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena (Germany)
• Oliver Reisner, Ilia State University, Department of Arts and Sciences / Tbilisi (Georgia) 
• Andrea Nanetti, Nanyang Technological University Singapore
• Michael Sigl, Klima und Umweltphysik, Universität Bern

Publications

• J. Preiser-Kapeller – F. Daim (eds.), Harbours and Maritime Networks as Complex Adaptive Systems (RGZM Tagungen). Mainz 2015, 141 S.
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, mit M. Düring, A. Jatowt und A. van den Bosch (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd HistoInformatics Workshop on Computational History (HistoInformatics 2016) (online)
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, A Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean? New results and theories on the interplay between climate and societies in Byzantium and the Near East, ca. 1000–1200 AD. Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 65 (2015) 195–242 (online)
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, Calculating the Middle Ages? The Project “Complexities and Networks in the Medieval Mediterranean and the Near East”. Medieval Worlds Issue 2/2015: “Empires in Decay” 100–127 (online)
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, Jenseits von Rom und Karl dem Großen. Aspekte der globalen Verflechtung in der langen Spätantike, 300-800 n. Chr. Vienna 2018 (selected among the history books of the year 2018).
• J. Preiser-Kapeller (with P. Turchin, T. E. Currie et al.), Quantitative historical analyses uncover a single dimension of complexity that structures global variation in human social organization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Early edition 19 December 2017
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, Die erste Ernte und der große Hunger. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt bis 500 n. Chr. Vienna 2021 (selected among the non-fiction books of summer 2021 by Austrian TV/Radio ORF).
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, Der Lange Sommer und die Kleine Eiszeit. Klima, Pandemien und der Wandel der Alten Welt von 500 bis 1500 n. Chr. Vienna 2021 (selected among the non-fiction books of summer 2021 by Austrian TV/Radio ORF).
• A. Izdebski - J. Preiser-Kapeller (eds.), A Companion to the Environmental History of Byzantium. Leiden - Boston 2024.
• J. Preiser-Kapeller (ed.), Moral Meteorologies. The interpretation of celestial phenomena and climate anomalies in the global Middle Ages. Special Issue of De Medio Aevo 13/1 (2024, open access)
• J. Preiser-Kapeller, W. A. McGrath, R. Pfister, et. al. The Circulation of Yersinia pestis in Central Eurasia before and during the First Plague Pandemic (Second to Eighth Century CE): Palaeogenetic and Historical Evidence and Sociopolitical, Ecological, and Climatic Factors. Human Ecology (August 2025)