Arietta Papaconstantinou is a social and cultural historian of the late antique and medieval eastern Mediterranean, with a particular interest in the period of transition between the Roman and the Islamic empire. She works with the documentary evidence from Egypt and Palestine, which throws invaluable light on the evolution of Christian communities under Muslim rule. Her current research focuses on power dynamics in village communities, and how these were affected by imperial policies and demands. Other interests include religious change, its everyday manifestations in local communities, and its relation with broader social and political developments; and multilingualism and language change in imperial contexts. Arietta teaches late antique history at the University of Reading and is an associate member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies in Oxford and of the Institute for Byzantine Studies at the Collège de France.