Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

(previous years)
 

Nikolas Bakirtzis studied Archaeology and Social Anthropology in the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received his PhD in Art and Architectural History from Princeton. He is Assistant Professor at the Cyprus Institute and his research and teaching interests concentrate on the study of the architectural heritage and the cultural landscapes of the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean with a focus on monasticism, fortifications and historic cities. Among his recent research projects is EU supported Marie Curie project ‘Tracing Identity in the Eastern Mediterranean’ which offers a comparative analysis of late medieval architecture in Cyprus, Rhodes, Chios and Crete, as well as, the interdisciplinary study of the experience of heritage in contested urban environments like the Cypriot capital Nicosia. 

In Byzantium, the making of a monastic community relied upon sophisticated systems and processes, weaving politics and power with design and spirituality in order to insert stability and culture into the Empire’s hinterlands. ‘Making a Byzantine Monastery’ offers both an in-depth case study, focusing on the monastery of St. John Prodromos in Northern Greece, and a synthetic overview of the complex phenomena and systems that supported the foundation and growth of monasticism in the middle and late Byzantine periods. This examination of the practical, spiritual, and economic methods that allowed monastic communities to gain strength and influence is organized into three main themes that correspond to the suggested layers of a monastic foundation: narrative, landscape and architecture.

Casper de Jonge is Assistant Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Leiden University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 2006. His research concentrates on ancient Greek literary criticism, rhetorical theory and the history of classical scholarship. Apart from various articles, he has published a monograph, Between Grammar and Rhetoric. Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Leiden / Boston: Brill 2008). In 2008 he was a visiting research fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. In 2010 he was awarded a scholarship by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research for his research project on the ancient Greek rhetorical treatise On the Sublime (Peri hupsous) and its intellectual context. He is the current editor in chief of the Dutch classics journal Lampas.

Haris Exertzoglou read Economics and History in Athens and London where he supported his PH.D Thesis on “Greek Bankers in Constantinople, 1850-1881” (King’s College, University of London). He is Professor of Cultural and Social History with the Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean. He has published extensively on the history the Greek Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire in the 19^th and early 20^th century. He is the author National Identity in Constantinople in the 19^th Century. The Greek Literary Association of Constantinople 1861-1912, [in Greek] Athens 1996 (Turkish translation,“Osmanli’da Cemiyetler ve Rum Cemaati. Dersaadet Rum Cemiyeti Edebiyesi”, Turk Vakfi Yurt Yayinlari appeared in 2004) and “The lost Homelands beyond Nostalgia. A Socio-cultural history of the Ottoman Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, 1850s –1900s”, [in Greek] Athens/ Nefeli 2010. He is currently writing a monograph on the relation of Hellenization, Orientalism and acculturation in the late Ottoman period.

Other publications include, “Shifting Boundaries: Language, Community and the “non-Greek speaking Greeks”, Historein (1) 1999, “Investments and Investment Behavior in the Ottoman Εmpire: the development of a Greek-Οttoman Βourgoisie,1850-1914 ” in Ch. Issawi, D. Gondicas (eds) Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism: Politics, Economy and Society in the nineteenth Century, Darwin Press 1999 89-115,  “The Cultural Uses of Consumption: Negotiating Class, Gender and Nation in Ottoman Urban Centers during the 19^th Century”, IJMES 35(1) February 2003, “Reconstituting Community: Cultural Differentiation and Identity Politics in the Christian Orthodox Communities in the late Ottoman era”, in Mina Rozen (ed.), Homelands and Diasporas. Greeks, Jews and their Migration, London, I.B Tauris, 2008, 137-154, “Metaphors of Change: Tradition and the East/West Discourse in the late Ottoman Empire”, in Anna Frangoudaki - Caglar Keyder (eds), Copying with Modernity: Greece and Turkey in their Encounter with Europe, 1850-1945, London, I.B Tauris, 2007, 43-59, “Medicine, Philanthropy and the Construction of Poverty in Istanbul in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries”, in Lorans Baruch - Vangelis Kechriotis (eds), Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, Athens, Alpha Bank Historical Archive, 2010, 249-276, “Trajectories of social history: a report”, Historein (forthcoming issue).

The purpose of this research is to unravel the complex connection between nation building and acculturation in the context of the late Ottoman Empire and with particular reference to the Greek Orthodox communities. Although the study of Greek nationalism in the Ottoman Empire is undertaken in many studies little has been said in regard with its relation to a “civilizing” mission. If this hypothesis stands then we should rethink the relation of nationalist discourse with colonial and orientalist discourses and in the end the crooked line relating the “West” with the “East”, ‘tradition” with “modernity”.

Pantelis Kalaitzidis studied Theology in Thessaloniki, and Philosophy in Paris, Sorbonne, where he obtained his M.A. His doctoral thesis deals with the issue of Greekness and Anti-westernism in the Greek “theology of the ’60s.” He has published three books, and over 60 articles in Greek, French, English, German, Romanian, Serbian, Russian, Byelorussian, and Arabic, mainly in the areas of the eschatological dimension of Christianity, the dialogue between Orthodox Christianity and modernity, theology and modern literature, religion and multiculturalism, religious nationalism and fundamentalism, issues of renewal and reformation in Eastern Orthodoxy,and post-modern hermeneutics of Patristics. He has a rich editorial activity, being the editor of many collected volumes (mainly issued from the Volos Academy’s conferences), while at the same time serving as the editor of the English-speaking theological series “Doxa & Praxis: Exploring Orthodox Theology” (WCC Publications) He has been a visiting scholar at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Boston, and Princeton Theological Seminary. For the last twelve years he has been the Director of the Volos Academy for Theological Studies. He teaches Systematic Theology at the Hellenic Open University, at St. Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology in Paris (as Visiting Professor), and Religious Studies at the University of Thessaly, in Volos, Greece. His last book Orthodoxy and Political Theology has been published by WCC Publications (Geneva, 2012).

David Kennedy is Winthrop Professor in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia. He has a BA (Hons) from the University of Manchester (1974) and a D.Phil from Oxford University (1980). He has held academic positions at the Universities of Sheffield and Reading and at Boston University. He has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, a previous Seeger Fellow and a Visiting Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. His research area is the archaeology of the Roman Near East with particular focus on Roman Arabia. He has worked in Jordan since 1976 and since 1997 has conducted there the only programme of Aerial Archaeology in the Middle East. The resulting Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East and the associated flying and fieldwork programme are in the process of being transferred to Oxford University. He has published books on the Roman military and frontiers, the Roman city of Zeugma and the Decapolis city of Gerasa as well as – with Robert Bewley, Ancient Jordan from the Air.

Current research is on the hinterlands of the major cities of Roman Arabia – Gerasa, Philadelphia and Petra. Much of what survived until a century ago has been lost to development and recovering a history of life beyond the urban centres requires piecing together evidence from a range of sources - ancient reports, archaeological survivals, survey and excavation reports, aerial photographs. Much can also be revealed through the eyes of the scores of western travellers ‘east of Jordan’ in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Prominent amongst these were the Germans Brünnow and von Domaszewski and Americans led by Howard Crosby Butler. The extensive archives of both those expeditions are housed in Princeton University.

Alexander Lingas is a Senior Lecturer in Music at City University London. Having received his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from the University of British Columbia, his present work embraces historical study, as well as ethnography and performance. He is the founder and Artistic Director of the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. His awards include Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies with cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the British Academy's Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship, and the St Romanos the Melodist medallion of the National Forum for Greek Orthodox Church Musicians (USA).

Michael Llewellyn-Smith studied classics at New College Oxford and modern history at St Antony’s College Oxford. In 1973 he published Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922. After 30 years in the British Diplomatic Service, ending as Ambassador in Greece, he returned to modern Greek studies. In 2004 he published Olympics in Athens 1896: The Invention of the Modern Olympic Games, and Athens: A Cultural and Literary History. He is Vice President of the British School at Athens, where his main task is to conceive and generate projects and partnerships in the modern field; and Hon Fellow of St Antony’s College Oxford. He has written, reviewed and lectured extensively on modern Greek history and culture, on subjects ranging from Dimitris Vikelas and Steven Runciman to Eleftherios Venizelos. 

George Manginis took his BA in Archaeology at Athens and completed his MA and PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Since 2001 George has taught Theory of Art History and Archaeology, Early and Medieval Islamic and Ottoman Architecture and Chinese Ceramics at SOAS, the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sotheby’s Institute and the Aga Khan University in London as well as at the Benaki Museum in Athens. He is currently a SOAS Senior Teaching Fellow on Early Islamic Art and Architecture and will join New College of the Humanities in 2014 to teach the Art and Architecture of Byzantium. He has worked as a consultant for the Benaki Museum and for the Greek Cathedral of Saint Sophia, London. He has excavated at several sites in Greece, Cyprus, France and Egypt.

The research George will undertake at Princeton forms part of a wider project on the content and historiography of the George Eumorfopoulos Chinese Ceramics Collection held at the Benaki Museum. The catalogue of a selection from the collection (700 artefacts) will be completed. The unpublished correspondence between Antonis Benakis and George Eumorfopoulos will be examined. Finally, study into inter-war and post-World War II Greece will allow a better understanding of the historical context within which the collection was donated to Greece and of the ensuing years, during which it lay dormant. This project will perceive the body of the collection as a living material interacting with its context and will try to explore its contemporary manifestations and suggest future ones.

Nikolaos Papazarkadas (D.Phil., University of Oxford, 2004) is an Associate Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in Greek epigraphy and has published extensively on inscriptions from Athens, Boeotia, and the Cyclades. He is now one of the four senior editors of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. His book Sacred and Public Land in Ancient Athens came out in 2011 (Oxford University Press). He has also co-edited three volumes: Interpreting the Athenian Empire, London: Duckworth 2009 (with J. Ma and R. Parker); ATTIKA EPIGRAPHIKA: Studies in Honour of Christian Habicht, Athens: Greek Epigraphic Society 2009 (with A. A. Themos); and Epigraphical Approaches to the Post-Classical Polis: 4th Century B.C. — 2nd Century A.D., Oxford: Oxdord University Press 2013 (with P. Martzavou). While at Princeton, he is working on Boeotian epigraphy, finishing, amongst others, the publication of the proceedings of the international Boeotian Epigraphy Sumposium that he organized at Berkeley in September 2011.

Georgia Pateridou studied French Language and Literature at the University of Thessaloniki. She obtained her M.A. in Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s College, London, and her Ph.D. at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the literary and critical work of Yannis Psycharis. She currently teaches modern Greek literature at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Ioannina. She has also taught at the Hellenic Open University European and Modern Greek Literature. She is collaborating in the research project funded by the ESRC, “Remembering Absence: Catastrophe, Displacement, and Identity among Chiots and the Chiot Diaspora,” under the supervision of Nicolas Argenti ( Brunel University). Her research interests include European and modern Greek prose fiction of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century, and in particular the literature of the Greek diaspora. She has published in collaboration with the Institute of Modern Greek Studies an unknown novel by Yannis Psycharis (2009). She is also the author of the book: ‘In order to come to another exile’: Narratives of Place in the Generation of the 1880s (2012).

Ravi Sharma is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Clark University, where he teaches a range of courses in the history of philosophy, with a focus on ancient Greek thought.  He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the joint Classics-Philosophy graduate program of The University of Texas at Austin, and his research has covered topics in the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle, and the Greek medical tradition.  At present, he is engaged in a project on the philosophical inspirations of Plato’s Theory of Forms.  Recent publications include: “Diocles of Carystus on Scientific Explanation” (Classical Quarterly, 2012) and “Socrates’ New Aitia: Causal and Metaphysical Explanations in Plato’s Phaedo” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2009).

Rossitza Schroeder received a B.A. in History and M.A. in Byzantine and Balkan History from Sofia University, an M.A. in Art History from Southern Methodist University, and a Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Maryland.  Currently she is an assistant professor of art and religion at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her research concerns the images in the subsidiary spaces of late Byzantine churches and the ways in which they stimulated transformational experiences by illustrating rites of passage and especially by facilitating private meditations. She considers them as ways to get out of the ordinary and into the realm of the divine, as means of meditation and mental preparation for those coming in and moving toward the central space of the church to encounter the holy. She has published articles in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Gesta, Studies in Iconography, Word and Image and in several edited volumes.

Evgenia Sifaki studied English Literature and Culture at the Universities of Thessaloniki and King’s College London. She teaches Literary Theory and Criticism at the University of Thessaly (Department of Education). Her research interests include Romantic, Victorian and early twentieth-century literature, poetry and travel writing. She has contributed several essays to collective volumes, as well as academic journals such as Synchrona Themata (Athens) Gramma (Thessaloniki), Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge), Études Irlandaises (Paris) and the European Journal of English Studies (London). Her most recent research project involves a comparative study of the dramatic monologue in Victorian poets (mainly R. Browning and A. Tennyson) and C. P. Cavafy.

Stavros Vlizos graduated from the University of Ioannina (1989). He received his Ph.D in Classical Archaeology from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (1997) with a dissertation on the reception of late classical and Hellenistic cult statues. He is currently Researcher and Assistant to the Director of the Benaki Museum and from 2010 lecturer at the Ionian University in Corfu where he teaches a range of courses in cultural heritage management, with a focus on archaeology. His research is focused on topics about Roman sculpture and Roman Greece and the importance of Greek sanctuaries. Within the framework of the “Amykles Research Project” coordinated by the Benaki Museum he is leading the excavations conducted at Amykles near Sparta since 2005. At present he is also member of the scientific committee of the Athens “Roman Seminar.”

Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002); he obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early middle ages. He is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Eastern Mediterranean University, Cyprus.  He is the author of Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009). His research interests are in the area of Byzantine and early Islamic history and archaeology and early medieval settlement in the Eastern Mediterranean. He is also the co-organizer of the Conference of the Mediterranean Worlds (www.medworlds.org), Teaching Fellow of the School of Advanced Studies of the University of Salerno, and Associate Scholar of the Mediterranean Seminar (http://humweb.ucsc.edu/mediterraneanseminar/).

Visiting Fellows 2011-2012
Visiting Fellows 2010-2011
Visiting Fellows 2009-2010
Visiting Fellows 2008-2009
Visiting Fellows 2007-2008
Visiting Fellows 2006-2007
Visiting Fellows 2005-2006
Visiting Fellows 2004-2005
Visiting Fellows 2003-2004
Visiting Fellows 2002-2003
Visiting Fellows 2001-2002
Visiting Fellows 2000-2001