Subject Specialty
- Byzantine Studies
Professional Biography
As director of Byzantine Studies, Nikos D. Kontogiannis oversees a fellowship program, research awards, predoctoral residency program, lecture series, publications program, summer internships, and an annual symposium, in addition to workshops and colloquia. He joined Dumbarton Oaks in 2021.
Kontogiannis has studied archaeology and history of art in the Universities of Athens and Birmingham. He has worked as a secretary in the Gennadius Library, as a guide-interpreter in Paris, as a Byzantine archaeologist at the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, and as a lecturer at the University of Peloponnese. He has participated in, managed, organized, or directed several excavations, restoration projects, cultural heritage sites, congresses and workshops, museums, and exhibitions. In 2016, he joined the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Koç University, Istanbul, as assistant professor of Byzantine archaeology and history of art, while also undertaking various administrative, academic, and scientific tasks. Over the years he has held a number of grants and fellowships.
His interests lie in the fields of military and domestic architecture, material and visual culture, and industrial and commercial networks in the eastern Mediterranean. His recent work includes the editing of two volumes—Space and Communities in Byzantine Anatolia: Papers of the Fifth International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Studies Symposium (Koç University Press, 2021), with Tolga B. Uyar; and Glazed Wares as Cultural Agents in the Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman Lands (Koç University Press, 2021), with F. Yenişehirlioğlu and B. Böhlendorf-Arslan—and the publication of two books: Venetian and Ottoman Heritage in the Aegean: The Bailo House in Chalcis (Brepols, 2020), with S.S. Skartsis; and Protecting the Roman Empire of the East: A History of Byzantine Fortifications (forthcoming). His current projects focus on the study of two extensive late Byzantine hoards at the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Contact Nikos D. Kontogiannis