Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

(previous years)

Petre Guran's main research interests lie in the field of religious anthropology applied to Byzantine society and culture. More precisely, he is interested in the web of mutual influences that linked theological thought to the structures of society and political power in the Byzantine world. He has studied and taught in Romania (Lecturer in the Seminar of Political Anthropology, University of Bucharest); France (Lecturer and Managing Director for the academic program "First College of European Citizenship: Monasteries and European Identity," organised by the Council of Europe, and supervisor of the group of Romanian students; research mission at the Centre for Byzantine Studies of the Collège de France for the research team on Constantine Porphyrogenitus De ceremoniis); and Germany (Lecturer on early Byzantine Hagiography and the concept of sainthood, sanctus versus sacer, at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich). He defended his dissertation on Royal Sanctity and Universal Power in the Orthodox Commonwealth at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2003). During the period 1995-2004, he was research fellow at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest.  [Last Updated 2006]

Benedetta Bessi is a Classical archaeologist who studied in Florence, Munich, and Athens. She previously taught History and Archaeology of Rome and Classical Mythology at the Rome Center of Richmond, the American International University of London. As a fellow of the Italian Archaeological School of Athens (1995-1998) she has been involved in field projects and researches on Crete and the Cycladic islands, with a special interest in the island of Siphnos. A member of the Italian mission to Sabratha, Libya, since 1998, she obtained her Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Messina with a dissertation on the necropolis of this Punic-Roman emporion. Besides Greek and Roman archaeology, her present research focuses on the history of Greek archaeology and in particular the early Florentine humanistic circles and Classical antiquity.  [Last Updated 2006]

Jack Fairey holds an undergraduate degree in History from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, B.C.) and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Modern Balkan and Ottoman History from the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation, "The Great Game of Improvements: Religious Reform and European Imperialism in the Eastern Mediterranean" (2004), examines the competing efforts of British, French, Russian, and Austrian diplomats to control the nature and speed of secularizing reforms among the Orthodox Christian and other non-Muslim communities of the Ottoman Empire during the mid-nineteenth century. His research interests include the post-Byzantine history of the Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and European diplomacy in the Near East. He has previously taught modern Greek history at York University in Toronto.  [Last Updated 2006]

Jennie Hirsh received her Ph.D. in December 2003 from the Department of History of Art at Bryn Mawr College, where she wrote a dissertation on pictorial and literary self-representation in the oeuvre of the Greek-born Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico. She also holds an MA in Italian Renaissance Art from Bryn Mawr, an MA in Italian from Middlebury College, and a BA in Classical Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. From 2003-2005, she was Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture at Oberlin College. Prior to that appointment, she taught adjunct courses on modern and contemporary art, the history of Western Art, Italian Renaissance art and architecture, postwar Italian cinema, and Italian language at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, Moore College of Art & Design, and Temple University.  [Last Updated 2006]

Lidia Santarelli completed her Ph.D. in History and Civilization at the European University Institute, Florence, with a dissertation on the Italian occupation in Greece during the Second World War. A member of the Research Project on "The Impact of Nazi and Fascist Rule in Europe, 1938-1950," sponsored by the European Science Foundation, she has taught (2002-2005) contemporary history at the University La Sapienza Rome, where she has developed several courses on war and conflicts in the twentieth century. Between 2003 and 2005 she also taught history of South-Eastern Europe at the University of L'Aquila, Italy. Her main areas of interest are: war, civil war and ethnic conflicts; nation building and nation state in thes Balkans; Fascist culture and ideology; military violence, war crimes, systems of occupation. She has published extensively on topics related to her research activity.  [Last Updated 2006]

Angela Volan received her B.A. in Philosophy and Art History from the University of Michigan in 1993. She went on to earn an M.A. (1997) and Ph.D. (2005) in Art History from the University of Chicago, specializing in the art and visual culture of Byzantium. Her doctoral dissertation explored the political and cultural significance of Byzantine apocalyptic imagery as it developed in the late and post-Byzantine periods, particularly in regions undergoing colonial transformation. In 2001 and 2002, she conducted field research in Crete and mainland Greece as both an Alexander S. Onassis Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow. Her current research focuses on the production and circulation of illustrated versions of Byzantine apocalyptic texts in the Greek colonies of Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. She is particularly interested in the influence of Italian humanist scholarship in post-Byzantine Greece and its impact on the revival of Byzantine apocalypticism during this time.  [Last Updated 2006]

Post-Doctoral Fellows 2004-2005
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2003-2004
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2002-2003
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2001-2002
Post-Doctoral Fellows 2000-2001
Post-Doctoral Fellows 1992-2000