Rebecca Darley is a historian and writer who has traveled the world studying the eastern Mediterranean and the western Indian Ocean in ancient and medieval times. Since completing her doctorate in Byzantine studies at the University of Birmingham, she has taught at King’s College London; Birkbeck, University of London; and the University of Leeds. She is currently a senior research fellow at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilization in Istanbul.  Rebecca has won numerous awards for her teaching as well as research grants to study at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., and to undertake research in India and Sri Lanka.

As part of her research, Rebecca has been fortunate to spend considerable time in Italy, Turkey and Greece, and to visit Jordan, Israel and northern Europe. She was part of a Getty program dedicated to the art and material culture of the Crusades and served as a lecturer for the John Hall Venice course. She has a long history of working with museums to curate or consult on exhibitions of ancient material, especially coins. A scholar of the Byzantine Empire, Rebecca is fascinated by places like northeastern Italy, Sicily, and the Adriatic coast, where the empire met other influences, creating unique expressions of Mediterranean culture steeped in millennia of shared traditions and competing identities. She has presented her research globally and published internationally in fields ranging from archaeology and classics to museology.

Rebecca is drawn to the power of the past to help us connect with places and people, to make sense of the world, and to relate to different lives and cultures. The opportunity to engage directly with sites, objects, and landscapes and to think with other interested people about the everyday minutiae and the huge connecting forces of history is her greatest passion.