Rate My Professor Sylvain Destephen

Sylvain Destephen is Professor of Roman History in the History faculty at Université de Caen Normandie, where he serves as a member of the Centre de recherches archéologiques et historiques anciennes et médiévales (CRAHAM). Born in 1972, he studied history at the Sorbonne, obtaining Master's degrees in Byzantine history and Greek epigraphy. He earned his PhD in historical and philological sciences from the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 2004, with a thesis titled Le clergé des provinces du diocèse d'Asie (IVe-VIIe siècle): étude de prosopographie, directed by Denis Feissel. Destephen began his academic career as Maître de conférences in Roman history at Université Paris Nanterre (formerly Paris 10). In 2015, he defended his habilitation at the Sorbonne on the history of imperial journeys from the 4th to the 7th century. He received the Charles Diehl Prize from the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 2010 for his prosopography of western Asia Minor in Late Antiquity and was elected junior fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2012. He held a membership at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2024.

Destephen specializes in Late Antiquity, focusing on the proto-Byzantine empire, political, social, and religious history of the Roman Orient, itinerant power, women's history, Christianization, and Christian prosopography, particularly in Asia Minor. His major publications include Prosopographie chrétienne du Bas-Empire 3. Prosopographie du diocèse d'Asie (325-641) (2008), Le voyage impérial dans l'Antiquité tardive: des Balkans au Proche-Orient (2016), L'évêque de cour: figure politique, figure polémique (2017), L'Empire romain tardif 235-641 après J.-C. (2021), Gouverner l'empire romain de Trajan à 410 après J.-C. (2022), L'Empire post-romain 400-600 après J.-C. (2023), Du christianisme et des hommes dans l'Antiquité tardive: essais de prosopographie (2024), and 542. La fin de l'Antiquité (2025). He has edited numerous volumes, such as Des dieux civiques aux saints patrons (IVe-VIIe siècle) (2015), Le Prince chrétien de Constantin aux royautés barbares (IVe-VIIIe siècle) (2018), and Mélanges Denis Feissel (2024). Destephen coordinates seminars on ancient history, supervises doctoral theses, and contributes to the fields of epigraphy, governance, and elite transformations in the Later Roman Empire.