17 Dec

Posted at 10:48h in Announcements

Our colleague and the friend of the programme Markéta Kulhánková (Czech Academy of Sciences/Masaryk University Brno) has been awarded the 2025 book prize for Outstanding Research Results by Masaryk University Brno. The award was granted for her most recent book Cease Writing of Achilles: A Narratological Commentary on the Byzantine Heroic Poem Digenis Akritis. 

This volume offers a narratological commentary on Digenis Akritis, a Byzantine heroic poem that blends epic and romance. How does the narrator shape the story? What roles do characters, space, and time play in creating meaning? In a detailed introduction followed by a linear commentary, Markéta Kulhánková answers these questions through a close reading of the poem’s structure and techniques. She also examines how Digenis Akritis engages with earlier traditions through imitation and transtextuality, while presenting a unique frontier hero. Offering clear, accessible tools for understanding Byzantine narrative, the book is an essential resource for students and scholars alike. It invites readers to view Digenis Akritis as both a product of its time and a timeless tale.

The book has been published in the Brill Narratological Commentaries on Ancient Texts series, where it will soon be joined by our programme’s narratological commentary on The Life of Saint Theodore of Edessa. We extend our warmest congratulations to Marketa! We wish her many more brilliant academic achievements and look forward to working with her in the future!  

27 May

Posted at 11:48h in Announcements

We are proud to share the good news that our colleagues and RC member in charge of the Book, Writing, and Performance Cultures team, Stratis Papaioannou, will be joining the faculty of Oxford University next spring.

Stratis obtained his BA from the University of Athens and his PhD from Vienna University. He is currently Director of Research at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens) and Senior Fellow in Byzantine Studies, Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard). He has been appointed to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Bywater and Sotheby Professorship of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages with effect from 1 April 2026. He will be a fellow of Exeter.

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07 May

Posted at 11:38h in Announcements

A new, double issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies is out of press, under the editorial hand of Vassilios Sabatakakis and Christian Høgel. The topics range from Cappadocian visual narratives to female voices in re-writings of the Alexander Romance and the history of studying Byzantium in modern Greece. All articles are fully open access and available online.

08 Nov

Posted at 12:03h in Announcements

A new collected volume Cult, Devotion, and Aesthetics in Later Byzantine Poetry, co-edited by Maria-Lucia Goiana and Krystina Kubina for Brepols and exploring the aesthetics of the late Byzantine poetry in the context of religious practice and devotion, features two chapters by Retracing Connections programme members.

Stratis Papaioannou examines the history of the poetic form of kontakion after the turn of millennium, challenging the traditional narrative that kontakion gave way to the kanon in the later Byzantine period. Instead, Papaioannou finds ‘much aesthetic and ritual creativity and innovation’ in relation to the Byzantine kontakion after the year 1000.  

Dimitrios Skrekas presents the life and hymnographic activity of Neophytos, a fourteenth-century Bishop of Grevenou in Macedonia and a neglected poet. Focusing on his kanon ‘Οn the Cycles of Sun and Moon’, Skrekas underlines the importance of his oeuvre for understanding both the style and poetics of the time, as well as its turbulant historical context.

04 Nov

Posted at 12:57h in Announcements

A recent volume Storyworlds in Short Narratives: Approaches to Late Antique and Early Byzantine Tales, edited by Stavroula Constantinou and Andria Andreou in Brill’s Series on the Early Middle Ages, features two open-access chapters by our principle investigators and programme members, Ingela Nilsson and Christian Høgel. The volume offers offers a systematic approach to the early Greek tale, bringing together innovative theoretical approaches to storytelling and rarely discussed ancient Greek and early Byzantine tales. 

Both Retracing Connections contributions focus on the genre of paradoxography.  In “Telling a thauma in Hagiography and Paradoxography,” Christian Høgel analyses the similarities and differences in the use of miraculous tales in two of the most popular forms of literary production in Greek literature in general.  

Ingela Nilsson’s contribution, featured in Brill’s Kudos, uses “postclassical narratological ideas of literary worlds as mental models and possible worlds” to decipher the function of paradoxography. “To Render Unbelievable Tales Believable: The Storyworlds of Paradoxography” explores the storyworlds of desire in Late Antiquity and points to the immense “power of discourse to construct realities,” past and present.