This fellowship challenged popular and academic stereotypes to show how different religious groups managed, for the most part, to live peacefully alongside each other during late antiquity. We live in an era of increasing intercommunal tension and polarisation, making it important to examine how religious communities interactedin the reality of everyday life in late antiquity, a period from which many contemporary religious identities, especially those of recent incomers to Europe, were developed. Archaeological and historical discoveries relating to late antiquity can challenge assumptions made about how we approach such issues. They can inform our own approaches to the place of religion in public life, at least by challenging current origin myths and prejudices about the historical experience of different groups. Late antiquity offers an intercommunal experience of shared civic space and of the absence of ghettos, a different model to the Middle Ages of Christian Europe or Medieval Islam. The research objective was to explore the daily reality of intercommunal living within late antique cites, through an examination of urban space beyond religious buildings, particularly those areas were people chose, rather than had to, mingle. It included large baths, theatres, hippodromes, school, libraries, latrines and hospitals. It sought to track the survival of related classical monumental buildings and traditional activities in Mediterranean cities during the 4th to early 7th c. and also to see to what extent different religious identities were expressed within them. This work drew on previous research by the author which considered 'public space' , i.e. places where different groups could not avoid mingling. Enough data was collected to establish the persistence of theatres, large baths, latrines and public libraries in the 4th c. almost everywhere, and in the 5th-7th c. in the East, via repair and new construction, from archaeology, literary sources and inscriptions. Spaces were Christianised with symbols and only minor changes to sculptural assemblages. Christianity became dominant but within cities that maintained legal, civic and property opportunities for other confessions. The dissemination objectives were: (i) To promote the empirical study of the secular archaeology of the late antique city in French excavations, whilst absorbing the full range of non-archaeological specialisms available in Paris pertinent to everyday life; (ii) To promote secular public space in late antique cities to the public, supported by visualisation. Academic dissemination objectives were successfully achieved via the holding of lectures and conferences and participation in workshops (Paris, Cairo) with interested parties, on the subject of excavation method (Paris), spolia analysis (Paris), visualisation (Paris) of secular public space and on the archaeology of pagan temples (Paris). There was also considerable interest after invited lectures on my visualisation and excavation work in Reading, Munich and Vienna. Public dissemination objectives is currently being achieved via an ongoing bilingual blog supported by 3-D artistic visualisation production.
