Liz James

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Liz James FBA is a British art historian who studies the Byzantine Empire. She is Professor of the History of Art at the University of Sussex. In 2024 and 2025, she won Christmas University Challenge with teammates Carla Denyer, Sophia Smith Galer and Tracey MacLeod.

She comes from Derby in the East Midlands. She earned a BA at the University of Durham in Ancient History and Archaeology, and a master's in Byzantine studies at the University of Birmingham. She completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute in London in 1989, with a thesis on light and colour in Byzantine art called Colour Perception in Byzantium. After her PhD, she did postdoctoral work, including at the Barber Institute, before joining the University of Sussex in 1993. She became a professor in 2007, and her professorial lecture in 2011 explored the mosaics in the apse of Hagia Sophia.

In July 2024, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. James is known for promoting all areas of Byzantine art and culture, with particular interests in mosaics and gender. She has written extensively on mosaics, including how they were made, what they show, and the materials used. She also created a database of Byzantine glass mosaics. In gender studies, she has written about empresses, eunuchs and how Byzantine society responded to gender. She believes texts and images are closely linked and equally important in understanding Byzantium. James contributed to the Royal Academy’s 2008 Byzantium exhibition catalogue and gave a related lecture there.