The volume - whose chapters originated at panels at the International Byzantine Congress in
Belgrade and at the IMC in Leeds - seeks to offer an introduction into various aspects of
social and geographical mobility and the intrinsic relationship between the two as well as
into the microstructures of social action in the Byzantine world during the high and late
Middle Ages. Based on a balanced approach to the role of personal agency and social structure
the authors of the individual chapters seek to clarify how and why various kinds of people
mobilized to either change place and or social position or to form groups whose actions shaped
social reality both at the imperial centre and the provincial periphery.
