Cameron was born on 8 February 1940 in Leek, Staffordshire, the only child of working-class parents Tom Roy Sutton and Millicent Sutton. She read literae humaniores at Somerville College, Oxford, and was married, from 1962 to 1980, to Alan Cameron, with whom she has a son and a daughter.
Cameron's early articles explored early Byzantine and medieval writers including Agathias, Corippus, Procopius, and Gregory of Tours from literary and historical perspectives. Her early monographs, Agathias and Procopius and the Sixth Century were accompanied by a number of influential edited collections, including Images of Women in Antiquity, edited jointly with Amélie Kuhrt, and History as Text. With Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, originating as the Sather Classical Lectures at Berkeley, Cameron sparked a scholarly conversation about 'the power of discourse in society' in later antiquity, seeking to understand 'how Christianity was able to develop a "totalizing discourse"'. Along with Peter Brown, Cameron was a pioneer of the field of late antiquity, and her mature scholarship has included substantial surveys such as The Later Roman Empire, AD 284-430 and significant editorial commissions, including joint editorship of volumes 12, 13, and 14 of the Cambridge Ancient History. She has also written on late antiquity and the emergence of Islam, having been a co-founder of the series Studies on Late Antiquity and Early Islam, and recently published a number of influential studies opening up the subject of literary, philosophical and theological dialogues and debates in Byzantium from the early Christian period to the twelfth century, Dialoguing in Late Antiquity, Arguing it Out and an edited volume with Niels Gaul. Her short book, Byzantine Matters and essays including 'The absence of Byzantium' have given rise to lively debate about the methodology of Byzantine studies.
Selected bibliography
Books and edited volumes
Agathias,
Images of Women in Antiquity, ed. with Amélie Kuhrt,
Procopius and the Sixth Century,
History as Text, ed.
The Greek Renaissance in the Roman Empire, ed. with Susan Walker
Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse,
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Sources, ed. with Lawrence I. Conrad
The Later Roman Empire, AD 284-430,
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East II: Land Use and Settlement Patterns, ed. with G.R.D. King
The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East III: States, Resources and Armies, ed.
The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, AD 395-600, ; rev/ and expanded ed.
Late Antiquity on the Eve of Islam, The Formation of the Islamic World, ed.
The Byzantines,
Dialoguing in Late Antiquity
Byzantine Matters
Arguing it Out: Discussion in Twelfth-Century Byzantium
Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium, ed. with Niels Gaul
Byzantine Christianity.
Journal articles
Recent articles include 'The Cost of Orthodoxy', Church History and Religious Culture, vol. 93 339-61, and 'Early Christianity and the discourse of female desire', repr. from Women in Ancient Societies, ed. L. J. Archer, S. Fischler and M. Wyke, 152-68, with an afterword, in The Religious History of the Roman Empire. Pagans, Jews and Christians, ed. J.A. North and S.R.F. Price, 505-30, and 'Byzantium and the limits of Orthodoxy', Raleigh Lecture in History,, 139-52.