The University of Oxford and Exeter College became my academic home in April 2026. After growing up in Greece and studying at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (BA, 1995), I pursued doctoral studies at the University of Vienna (PhD, 2000). The final years of the latter were supported by fellowships in the United States (1998–2000), where I subsequently began my teaching career—first at the Catholic University of America (2000–2005) and later at Brown University (2006–2020), where I held the rank of Professor of Classics upon my departure. My tenure at Brown included a joint appointment in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University) and service as Director of the Medieval Studies and Modern Greek Studies programs. In 2018, I returned to Europe to assume a position in Byzantine Philology at the University of Crete, followed by a senior research appointment at the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens (2023). My work has been recognized with various honors, notably a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2018. I currently serve as a Senior Fellow in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks (2023–) and am part of Retracing Connections, an international project exploring the circulation of narratives between Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic.
Research and Teaching
My work is dedicated to a diachronic study of the Greek literary tradition, extending from the fourth into the fourteenth century CE and expanding into the post-Byzantine period. Throughout this chronological arc, I seek to combine the technical rigors of philology with the broader insights of cultural and anthropological inquiry. At that, I approach the vast corpus of late antique, medieval, and early modern Greek literary production as a dynamic transformation of the ancient Greco-Roman and early Christian traditions within the nexus of later, diverse and changing cultural worlds. Central to my research has been a career-long engagement with the 11th-century polymath and ingenious writer Michael Psellos, whose protean corpus has served as a gateway to the broader study of rhetoric, literary theory, self-representation, and fiction throughout the Byzantine literary landscape. Beyond the production of elite learned circles, my research has delved also into the “storyworlds” of middle- and lower-register Greek, particularly religious prose narratives and sacred song.
Selected Publications
Books
- Euthymios the Iberian, Theodore of Edessa(together with Charis Messis; Uppsala University, 2026)
- Volume I. Introduction
- Volume II. Theodore’s Life: Critical Edition of Versions α and β, with Annotated Translation of β.
- Saints at the Limits: Seven Byzantine Popular Legends(Harvard University Press, 2023).
- The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature (Oxford University Press, 2021). Discussion in: What do we mean by “Byzantine literature”?, with Stratis Papaioannou
- Μιχαὴλ Ψελλός. Ἡ ρητορικὴ καὶ ὁ λογοτέχνης στὸ Βυζάντιο (Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2021).
- Michael Psellos: Epistulae, 2 vols. (Critical edition; De Gruyter, 2019).
- Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes (Harvard University Press, 2017).
Recent Articles
- “The Synaxarion of Constantinople as Historiography: The Case of the M* Recension.” In L. Neville and J. Beneker (eds), Ancient Histories and History Writing in New Rome: Traditions, Innovations, and Uses (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, forthcoming).
- Portraits of the Reader in the Middle Byzantine Period.” In C. Virág and N. Gaul (eds.), Reinventing Antiquity in Middle Period China and Byzantium: Ritual, Learning and Visual Culture(Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming).
- “Gender (and Sexuality) in Byzantine Literature.” In M. Meyer and Ch. Messis (eds.),The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium (Routledge, 2024) 346–76.
- “The History of the Kontakion Revisited—and a Plea for the Study of Byzantine Sacred Song after the Year 1000.” In M.–L. Goiana and K. Kubina (eds.), Cult, Devotion, and Aesthetics in Later Byzantine Poetry (Brepols, 2024) 29–57.
- “The Philosopher’s Tongue: Synaxaria between History and Literature. With an Excursus on the Recension M of the Synaxarion of Constantinople and an Edition of BHG 2371n.” In A. Lampadaridi, V. Déroche, and C. Høgel (eds.), L’histoire comme elle se présentait dans l’hagiographie byzantine et médiévale/ Byzantine and Medieval History as Represented in Hagiography (Uppsala University, 2022), 151–97; available also online, at: http://uu.diva–portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1620926/FULLTEXT01.pdf
