Margaret Mullett read Medieval History and Medieval Latin at Birmingham University. After a postgraduate year in Greece she returned to Birmingham to work with Anthony Bryer on Byzantine letter-writing, resulting in a PhD on the letter-collection of Theophylact of Ochrid. She was appointed to a lectureship in Greek in Queen's University Belfast in 1974, a lectureship in Byzantine Studies in 1983 and senior lectureship in 1992. She has held research fellowships at Dumbarton Oaks (Center for Byzantine Studies) and at Princeton (Program in Hellenic Studies); she held a British Academy Research Readership from 1995 to 1997.

Professor Mullett has written on literacy, patronage, genre, gender and friendship in Byzantine society and has edited a book on the classical tradition, Alexios I Komnenos (with Dion Smythe); and two on eleventh- and twelfth-century monasticism, The Theotokos Evergetis and eleventh-century monasticism, and Work and worship at the Theotokos Evergetis (with Anthony Kirby). Her Theophylact of Ochrid: Reading the letters of a Byzantine archbishop appeared in 1997 in the Birmingham Byzantine series published by Variorum. She is director of the British Academy's Evergetis Project (an international and interdisciplinary project on middle Byzantine monasticism) and sits on the Academy committee for the Prosopography of the Byzantine Empire. She is general editor of Belfast Byzantine Texts and Translations, and on the editorial boards of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Dialogos and Histos. She is currently working on eleventh- and twelfth-century literary networks, consolatio, travel genres, eunuchs, typika and letters. She is also QUB Director for the Gender Initiative.

Publications
Metaphrastes, or, gained in translation: essays and translations in honour of Robert H. Jordan, ed. M. Mullett (BBTT, 9, Belfast, 2004)
M. Mullett, 'Constructing identities in twelfth-century Byzantium', Byzantium matures: choices, sensitivities and modes of expression (eleventh to fifteenth centuries), ed. C. Angelidi (Athens, 2004), 129-144
—, 'Literary biography and historical genre in the life of Cyril Phileotes by Nicholas Kataskepenos', Les vies des saints a Byzance: genre litteraire ou biographie historique? ed. P. Odorico and P. Agapitos (Paris, 2004), 387-410
—, 'Rhetoric, theory and the imperative of performance: Byzantium and now', Rhetoric in Byzantium, ed. E.Jeffreys (SPBS, 11, Aldershot, 2003), 151-170
—, 'Detecting relationships in Byzantine; literary texts: the case of epistolography', Epistolographie und Epigrammatik, ed. W. Hoerandner and M. Gruenbart (Paris, 2003), 63-74
—, 'The classical tradition in the Byzantine letter', Byzantium and the classical tradition, 75-93
Mosaic. Festschrift for Peter Megaw, ed. J. Herrin, M.E. Mullett, and C. Otten-Froux (London, 2002)
M. Mullett, 'Travel genres and the unexpected', Travel in Byzantium, ed. R. Macrides (SPBS, 10, Aldershot, 2002), 259-284
—, 'A new literary history of Byzantium; a worthwhile endeavour?', Towards the new literary history of Byzantium, ed.P. Odorico and P. Agapitos (Paris, 2002), 37-60
—, 'Reading the bible in the Life of Cyril Phileotes', Literacy, education, and manuscript transmission in Byzantium and beyond, ed. J. Waring and C. Holmes (Leiden, 2002), 139-164
—, 'Theophylact of Ochrid, In defence of eunuchs', Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, ed. S.F. Tougher (Cardiff, 2002), 177-198
—, 'Founding a monastery and writing it down', Desert monasticism: Gareja and the Christian East, ed. Z. Shkirtladze (Tbilisi, 2001), 63-76
—, 'The other in Byzantium', Strangers to ourselves, ed. D. Smythe (SPBS, 8, Aldershot, 2000), 1-22
—, 'Friendship in Byzantium: genre, topos and network', Friendship in medieval Europe, ed J. Haseldine (Stroud, 1999), 166-184
—, 'From Byzantium with love', Desire and denial in Byzantium, ed. L. James (SPBS, 7, Aldershot, 1999), 1-22
M. Mullett, Theophylact of Ochrid: reading the letters of a Byzantine archbishop (Birmingham Byzantine and Ottoman Monographs, 2, Aldershot, 1997)
—, '1098 and all that: Theophylact, the bishop of Semnea and the Alexian reconquest of Anatolia', Peritia, 10 (1997), 237-252
Alexios I Komnenos, I, Papers, ed. M. Mullett and D. Smythe (BBTT, 4.1, Belfast, 1996)
—, 'The imperial vocabulary of Alexios I Komnenos', Alexios I Komnenos, I, Papers (BBTT, 4.1, Belfast, 1996), 359-397
—, 'Originality and Byzantine letter-writing: the case of exile', Originality in Byzantine literature, art and music, ed. A.R. Littlewood (Oxford, 1996), 39-58
—, 'Alexios and imperial renewal', New Constantines, ed. P. Magdalino (SPBS, 2, Aldershot, 1994), 257-267
—, 'The madness of genre', Homo Byzantinus, DOP, 46 (1992), 235-243
—, 'The language of diplomacy', Byzantine diplomacy, ed. J. Shepard and S. Franklin (SPBS, 1, Aldershot, 1992), 203-216
—, 'Dancing with deconstructionists in the gardens of the Muses', BMGS, 14 (1990), 258-275
—, 'Patronage in action', Church and people in Byzantium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1990), 125-150.
—, 'Writing in early medieval Byzantium', The uses of literacy in early mediaeval Europe, ed. R. McKitterick (Cambridge, 1989), 156-185
—, 'Byzantium: a friendly society?', Past & Present, 188 (1988), 3-24
—, 'Aristocracy and patronage in the literary circles of Comnenian Constantinople', The Byzantine aristocracy, ed. M. Angold (Edinburgh, 1984), 173-201
—, 'The disgrace of the ex-basilissa Maria', BS, 45 (1984), 202-211