The Medieval Caucasus Network has for a number of years been at the forefront of building scholarly networks and facilitating communication on studies of the medieval Caucasus region. We take a broad definition of our region, methodologies, and time period, including studies of the Subcaucasus, South or Trans- Caucasus, and North Caucasus in our work, and seeking to facilitate communication across boundaries of field, approach, and nationality.
In particular we annually organise the Caucasus panels for the Leeds International Medieval Congress, and we maintain a mailing list for medievalists with an interest in Caucasus studies.
Our Convenors
We have a group of convenors working on different parts of the medieval Caucasus region: the current convenors are John Latham-Sprinkle (VUB), James Baillie (Austrian Academy of Sciences), Kate Franklin (Tufts University), Irakli Tezelashvili (Courtald Institute of Art), Whitney Kite (Mount Holyoak College) and Nick Evans (Birkbeck, University of London).
Previous convenors include Bella Radenovic (Courtald Institute of Art), who was a member of the committee from 2022 to 2025.
John Latham-Sprinkle is a specialist on the medieval Kingdom of Alania. His research interests include work on non-elite groups, popular intellectual movements, and social situations in the medieval period. He is one of the co-founders of the Medieval Caucasus Network.
James Baillie is a specialist on high medieval Georgia (11th-13th centuries), on digital methods and using data think about the historic past, and on the modern reception of medieval history. He is one of the co-founders of the Medieval Caucasus Network.
Nick Evans is a specialst on the early medieval north Caucasus and the Eurasian steppe. He works on medieval economic anthropology, the study of how different people and polities in the medieval world thought about economic activity. He joined the network convenors in 2020.
Kate Franklin is an archaeologist and anthropological historian who works on the medieval ‘silk roads’ and their connections through the Caucasus. Her other research interests include the imaginaries of medieval landscape, gender, and the body; medieval material history; and the reconstruction of medievalism and materiality in the modern world. She joined the network convenors in 2022.
Irakli Tezelashvili (Courtald Institute of Art) is an art historian who works on high medieval Georgian art, especially through the lens of its clerical patrons and examining the complex relationship between religious figures, the Georgian polity, and the wider Christian and artistic milieus with which they interacted. He joined the network convenors in 2025.
Whitney Kite (Mt Holyoak College) is a historian of architecture and art especially focused on Armenian religious architecture and its relationship to landscape. Her research interests include the interaction between topography, space, and social-religious function of buildings, the representation of historic architecture in 19th-21st century context, and medieval interactions with the ecology, wildlife, and domesticated animals of the Caucasus. She joined the network convenors in 2025.