GKA HUMAN 2021 VIRTUAL | APRIL 19-24, 2021

Niki Tsironis
Institute of Historical Research – National Hellenic Research Foundation, Associate in Byzantine Studies, CHS-Harvard

Yiannis Petropoulos
Professor of Ancient Greek Literature, Democritus University of Thrace, Director Emeritus of CHS Harvard, Greece

Maria Leontsini
Senior Researcher, Institute of Historical Research – National Hellenic Research Foundation

George T. Calofonos
Byzantine Historian, Research Associate of the Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium Project, Institute of Historical Research – National Hellenic Research Foundation

Maria Sardi
Historian of Islamic Art, Research Associate of the Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium Project, Institute of Historical Research – National Hellenic Research Foundation

Katia Savrami
Associate Professor in Choreology, Theatre Studies Department, University of Patras

Academic Secretary: Natalia Gkolfinopoulou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Project Management: Maria Sardi – Ainos Cultural Society

Charis Messis holds a PhD in Byzantine Studies from Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and a habilitation from the Sorbonne University. He currently teaches Byzantine literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His research interests concern Byzantine history and literature, especially the history of gender, along with other social and anthropological aspects of the Byzantine world. He is the author and co-editor of several books and articles on such topics. More specifically, he wrote a monograph on Byzantium eunuchs (Les eunuques à Byzance, entre réalité et imaginaire, Paris 2014) and several articles on gender issues.

Mihail Mitrea is researcher in Byzantine philology at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy and lecturer in Byzantine studies at the Babeș-Bolyai University. Prior to this, he was a Marie Skłodowska Curie Research Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Newcastle University with a project titled “Sacred Landscapes in Late Byzantium”. His research interests include late-Byzantine literature, hagiography, epistolography, Byzantine manuscript studies and textual criticism.

Margaret Mullett is a former Director of Byzantine Studies at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection at Harvard University. She has written on literacy, patronage, genre, gender and friendship in Byzantine society. As Professor of Byzantine Studies at Queen’s University Belfast she was Director of the Institute of Byzantine Studies, the AHRC Centre for Byzantine Cultural History and the British Academy’s ‘Evergetis Project’ (an international and interdisciplinary project on middle Byzantine monasticism). Since retiring from Dumbarton Oaks she has been Visiting Professor of Byzantine History at Vienna and Visiting Professor of Byzantine Greek at Uppsala. She is now Honorary Professor at Edinburgh and is co-editor of the Routledge series Studies in Byzantine Cultural History. She is working on tents, narrative and emotion as well as on the Christos Paschon.

Fr Damaskinos Olkinuora is a University Teacher of Systematic Theology and Patristics at the University of Eastern Finland and belongs to the monastic community of the Holy Monastery of Xenophontos (Mt. Athos, Greece). He received his PhD in Systematic Theology and Patristics at the University of Eastern Finland in 2015; his doctoral dissertation, titled Byzantine Hymnography for the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos: An Intermedial Approach, was awarded the best doctoral dissertation of the Philosophical Faculty of the same university. Fr Damaskinos’ interests include Byzantine hymnography and homiletics and Mariology. He is particularly known for the use of interdisciplinary methodology.

Eirini Panou is an Adjunct Faculty Member at the Open University of Cyprus teaching Byzantine art. She studied Art and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and earned her PhD in Byzantine Studies from the University of Birmingham (2012). She completed her post-doctoral research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) in 2015. She has produced articles on the cult of saints in Byzantium, on art, on female patronage, on the Protevagelion of James, on Byzantine history, and has written the book The Cult of St Anne in Byzantium. She is currently preparing her monograph: The Process of Dying in Byzantium (Routledge)

Lutz Rickelt has been the Curator of the Museum of Icons in Recklinghausen (Germany) since 2018. He studied Byzantine Studies, Christian Archaeology and Ancient History at the Westfälische Wilhelms-University of Münster/Germany where he completed his PhD in December 2016 (Ruler’s Repentance. Crime and punishment of Byzantine Emperors). His recent field of research interest is the place of orthodox Icons in Cultural History, especially Donor Icons.

Maria Sardi holds a BA in History of Art and Archaeology from the University of Athens and an MA and PhD in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS, University of London. She has worked as curatorial team member and guidebook contributor for the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art and has also contributed to the electronic database of the museum’s Byzantine, Coptic, Islamic and Chinese collection. She has taught History of Islamic Art at the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art at SOAS, London and in the Athens School of Fine Arts (2016-2020). She has organised the interdisciplinary colloquium ‘Lux in Tenebris. Artificial Lighting from Antiquity to the Present’ at the Benaki Museum (2012). She is currently a Research Associate of the project ‘Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’, Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, in collaboration with CHS-Harvard, Washington, D.C.

Katia Savrami, choreologist and choreographer, holds an MA and PhD from the Laban Centre, City University London. She is Associate Professor at the Department of Theatre Studies, University of Patras, Greece, and Director of the department’s laboratory ‘Theatre Laboratory of Drama and Speech’ since 2020. She has worked at the State School of Dance and the Professional Ballet School of National Opera in Athens, Greece, and as visiting professor at the University of Surrey and Michigan State University, USA. She is an editor and author of numerous books and articles, in Greek and English, and a member of the International Editorial Board of Research in Dance Education Journal, published by Taylor and Francis Group, UK. She is also the editor in chief of Choros International Dance Journal, published with the support of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation.

Dionisios Skliris holds a PhD from the University of Paris IV- Sorbonne. His thesis is entitled ‘The term tropos (mode) in the thought of Maximus the Confessor’. He is currently a Teaching Fellow at the Theological Department of the Theological Faculty of the University of Athens. His works include: On the Road to Being: Saint Maximus the Confessor’s Syn-odical Ontology, (Alhambra, California: Sebastian Press, 2018) and Logos- Mode-Telos: A study in the thought of Saint Maximus the Confessor (Athens: Indiktos & Alhambra, California: Sebastian Press, 2018, in Greek). He is also the editor of the volume Slavoj Žižek and Christianity (Abingdon, Oxon & New York: Routledge, 2018).

Stavroula Solomou is a Byzantinist. She obtained her Master’s Degree in Byzantine Philology in 2009 and completed her PhD in 2016 (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens); her dissertation entitled: The political role of the great families in the Palaiologan period: The persons and the texts (1258-1453). Since 2018 she has joined the research project ‘Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium’, Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation. She also collaborates on the research project ‘Byzantine literary sources for the history and civilization of Arabs and Arabia’, IHR/NHRF. She has participated in Greek and international conferences and has published several articles in academic journals.

Foteini Spingou is a Research Fellow in Byzantine Intellectual/Cultural History at the University of Edinburgh. Before joining Edinburgh University, Dr Spingou conducted research for the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, the Classics Faculty of Oxford University, the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies (University of Toronto), and the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Harvard University). She specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Byzantium. Her areas of research include the history of collections and collecting, visual and textual aesthetics, manuscript culture from the late antiquity to the early modern times, and the construction of identity in imperial societies.

Kostas Theologou is Associate Professor in History and Philosophy of Culture at the National Technical University of Athens and Head of the Humanities Department of this Faculty. He is teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses in History, Philosophy and Sociology focusing on Urban Culture and Technology. He has also been teaching Social Geography at the Hellenic Open University since 2009 and is moderator of the module on Social Theory and Modernity since 2020. He has professional experience in Print Media, Theatre, Cinematography, Radio and Television. He collaborates with the National University of Athens in post-graduate course programs (Department of Philosophy and History of Science and Department of Philosophy) and the School of Architects of the NTUA (‘Space and Culture’). He has published on various aspects of his wide research field and his most recent publications in Greek include the novella Vidal’s Crypt (Kedros, 2020).

Marka Tomić is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Byzantine Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Belgrade). Before joining the Institute for Byzantine Studies, Tomić was a Research Fellow at the Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (2011-2019). She received her PhD from the University of Belgrade (Serbia, 2017) with a specialization in Byzantine and Serbian Medieval Art. Marka Tomić wrote a monograph about the painted decoration of the Church of St Demetrios at Marko’s Monastery near Skopje (The Frescoes of Marko’s Monastery, Belgrade 2019).

Nicolette Trahoulia is an art historian educated at the University of California, Los Angeles (BA) and Harvard (PhD). She has published on Byzantine painted panels, illustrated manuscripts, and metalwork from the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Some of her interests include the interface between oral performance and illustrated books, the culture of the Byzantine palace, the role of art as religious and political commentary, and gender studies. A major focus of her work has been the Byzantine Alexander Romance and its illustrations. She is a former Fulbright research scholar, and currently a professor of Art History at Deree College – The American College of Greece.

Niki Tsironis works as a Byzantinist at the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation since 2000. She is an associate in Byzantine Studies at the Centre for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University (Washington, D.C.) and an adjunct professor of Byzantine Studies at the Stavros Niarchos Centre for Hellenic Studies of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver CA. She has received her BA, MA and PhD from King’s College London and her thesis focused on the Lament of the Virgin from Romanos the Melode to George of Nicomedia. She has initiated and is responsible for the research projects: “The Book in Byzantium. Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Bookbinding”, (IHR-NHRF 2002-present and, in collaboration with the Byzantine Museum, Athens, 2005-2010), “The Virgin beyond Borders” (in collaboration with SNF-CHS, SFU and the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research for a forthcoming conference) and “Performance in Late Antiquity and Byzantium” (IHR-NHRF in collaboration with CHS-Harvard, Washington, D.C.). She has published extensively on the Mother of God and the Book in Byzantium (The Book in Byzantium. Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Bookbinding, Athens 2008; Actes du VIe Colloque International de Paléographie Grecque, 3 vols, Athens 2008; From Codex to Digital Documentation, Athens 2020; Le livre: Texte, Image, Objet, Paris 2021). She is currently working on the project “Psychological Perspectives of Emotion and the Senses in Byzantium”. She is a founding member of the Patristic and Byzantine Society of the University of Oxford (1993-1998) and Ainos Cultural Society (1999-present) and also active in the dissemination of historical knowledge.

Joanita Vroom is Professor in Archaeology of Medieval and Early Modern Eurasia at the University of Leiden, specializing in the material culture of the 7th to 19th centuries. She takes a special interest in the social-economic (production and distribution) and cultural aspects (consumption, cuisine and dining habits) of ceramics. Using an interdisciplinary approach and a long term perspective on intra-regional and inter-regional networks, she studies many key collections of Medieval and Post-Medieval pottery from urban and rural sites in the Adriatic Sea, the Aegean, the Near East and the Persian Gulf.

Andrew Walker White is a theater artist and cultural historian, currently based in the Washington, D.C. area.  His research focuses on the Greek Performing Arts between Antiquity and the Renaissance, particularly the arts of the Byzantine Empire. His recently-published book, Performing Orthodox Ritual in Byzantium with Cambridge University Press marks the beginning of a longer project, reuniting post-Classical Hellenic culture with the history of Western Civilization. As a theatre artist his repertoire ranges from the Classics to the Avant-Garde, and he currently serves as theater critic for Broadway World, Maryland Theater Guide, and D.C. Metro Theatre Arts online.

Jeffrey Wickes is Associate Professor of early Christianity in the Department of Theological Studies at Saint Louis University. He obtained his PhD in Theology from the University of Notre Dame, specializing in the history of Christianity. His research interests include late antique Christian literature, Syriac Christianity, religion and literature. His most recent book entitled Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith was published in 2019 by the University of California Press (Christianity in Late Antiquity Series). He is also a member of several organizations, such as the North American Patristics Society and the American Academy of Religion.

Nectarios Zarras has been Senior Visiting Lecturer at the Universities of Patras and of the Aegean, Greece. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Fellow (2016-2018) at the University of Münster working on the Identity and Patronage in Byzantium and currently holds a position as Assistant Professor at the University of the Aegean. In 2013 he was awarded the ‘Maria Theochari’ Grant by the Christian Archaeological Society (Greece) for the publication of his Doctoral Thesis, The Iconographic Cycle of the Eothina Gospel Lections in Palaiologan Monumental Painting of the Balkan Peninsula (Thessaloniki, 2011) and he was Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks in the summer of the same year. His research focuses on epigraphic material (dedicatory inscriptions) and patronage from Macedonia and the islands, on excavation finds, on the Middle and Late Byzantine painting and texts in Constantinople, Greece, Cyprus and Serbia.