April 10, 2026
It is with great sadness that colleagues at the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University have learnt about the passing of Dame Averil Cameron. Professor Cameron has been a distinguished historian and leading scholar on the Late Antique Mediterranean and Byzantium. After she studied Greats at Oxford, she taught at Kings College London for more than 20 years before being elected Warden of Keble College in Oxford in 1994. She was the first female Warden of Keble and left a lasting legacy during her 16 years of tenure. She holds numerous honorary doctorates and became Dame Commander (DBE) in 2006. Many of her books have been the standard works in the field, while at the same time she also served on numerous academic committees, societies and editorial boards. In 2024 she published her memoirs Transitions: A Historians Memoir (Brepols) which offers a very personal but concise narrative of her career from her youth to her retirement.
Professor Cameron has been a teacher, tutor and friend to many former and present colleagues at CEU. In 2004, she participated in a summer school on Late Antiquity (together with Glenn Bowersock, Sebastian Brock, Peter Brown, et alii) which led to the foundation of the Center for Hellenic Traditions in 2005 - renamed the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies in 2010. She has been on the advisory board of the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies for years and came to Budapest for a board meeting. She also delivered our prestigious Natalie Zemon Davis Lectures in 2014 (see picture) which subsequently were published as Arguing it Out: Discussion in Twelth-Century Byzantium (CEU Press 2016). Her inspiring voice in scholarship will be missed dearly.