Lin, Wei-sheng

University of Birmingham

Research Topic: Dynamics in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-century Cilician Economy

Mr. Lin is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the geographical and institutional dynamics influencing merchant activities in Cilicia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With portolan charts and travelers’ accounts, he reviews the different prominent locations for trade through these two centuries. This research challenges the presumed prominence of Ayas in the kingdom, based on the changing prominence of trade locations. By analyzing the trade privileges obtained by the Genoese and the Venetians, he establishes distinct institutional dynamics in these two series of trade privileges and their impact on the respective merchant group’s activities in the kingdom. In the course of his fellowship at ANAMED, he aims to present an alternative narrative of medieval Eastern Mediterranean trade that has long been dominated by the rise and fall of Acre and Famagusta.