Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

(previous years)

Julian R. Baker received his doctorate from the Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, Birmingham University, in July of 2002. His dissertation dealt with the monetary life of Greece during the one-and-a-half centuries following 1204. He has an undergraduate degree from Edinburgh University in History, with emphasis on the western medieval and Byzantine periods, and a post-graduate degree in Greek Archaeology from Birmingham, as much as being trained in numismatics (notably at the Barber Institute, Birmingham, and the American Numismatic Society). For the purposes of research, Julian Baker was resident in Greece over a number of years, where he studied coin hoards and excavation finds in a range of locations. More recently, while based in Italy, he has expanded his interests to the related Kingdom of Naples in Angevin times, and is leading separate projects on later medieval coinages in Constantinople, and the excavation finds at Sparta, funded by the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara and the British Academy respectively.  [Last Updated 2004]

Chrysi Kotsifou completed a B.A. in English and History at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, in 1997. She continued with an M.A. in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King’s College, London, which led to her Ph.D. dissertation on Travel to and within Byzantine Egypt. The Evidence from Hagiography, submitted in 2002. In the course of her graduate studies, Chrysi Kotsifou also studied Coptic, including all dialects and Coptic Paleography, at the University College London. For the academic year 2002-2003, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Research fellow at the Center for the Study of Early Christianity at the Catholic University of America. Her post-doctoral research concentrates on the papyrological evidence regarding the role of monasteries in Byzantine Egypt.  [Last Updated 2004]

Effie Rentzou holds undergraduate degrees in Classics from the University of Athens and in French literature from the Sorbonne. A Greek State Scholarship supported her graduate studies at the Sorbonne, where she earned a DEA in semiotics and a PhD in comparative semiotics and stylistics. Her dissertation on Surrealism and Literature: A Comparative Study of Greek and French Surrealism is an interdisciplinary study comparing Greek and French surrealism from three different perspectives: history, rhetoric, and poetics. She has published articles on Greek surrealism and, since 1999, writes a bi-weekly page of cultural criticism for a major Greek newspaper. Her central interests are Greek avant-garde and modern literature of the 20th century, how it figures in modern Greek culture, and its relation to and interaction with the international literary scene. Her current project is an intellectual biography of Nicolas Calas.  [Last Updated 2004]

Youval Rotman was trained at the University of Tel Aviv, earning a B.A. in History and Computer Science in 1991 and an M.A. in History with a thesis on “eunuchism” in the Later Roman Empire. In 1997 he began his doctoral studies at the University of Paris. His research was on slavery in Byzantium (sixth to eleventh centuries), challenging the idea of decline of ancient slavery, while focusing on the characteristics of medieval slavery. This work was recently revised and prepared for publication. After defending his Ph.D. dissertation on Slaves and Slavery in the Byzantine World, 6th – 11th Centuries, he was awarded a post-doctoral Fellowship from Yad Hanadiv, Jerusalem.  [Last Updated 2004]

Warren Woodfin graduated from Williams College in 1996 with Highest Honors in Art History. He holds an M.A. (1999) and a Ph.D. (2002) in Art History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on the intersections between ecclesial liturgies and the ceremonies of statecraft in Byzantium and the medieval West. Byzantine textiles and costume are a particular interest and the subject of his doctoral dissertation on Late Byzantine Liturgical Vestments and the Iconography of Sacerdotal Power. At Princeton, he is completing a book on Byzantine liturgical vestments and their embroidered decoration. Previously, Woodfin was a Junior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks and Visiting Assistant Professor in Art and Art History at Duke University.  [Last Updated 2004]

Post-Doctoral Fellows 2002-2003
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2001-2002
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2000-2001
Post-Doctoral Fellows 1992-2000