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Stratis Papaioannou joined the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Exeter College in April 2026. Educated at the University of Athens (BA, 1995) and the University of Vienna (PhD, 2000), he has held teaching positions at the Catholic University of America (2000–2005), Brown University (2006–2020; where he served as Professor of Classics as well as terms as Director of Medieval and Modern Greek Studies), and at the University of Crete (2018–2023), as well as, more recently, a senior research appointment at the National Hellenic Research Foundation (Athens). He has been awarded several fellowships, including the Elizabeth A. Whitehead Professorship at The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (2014–2015) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2018). He is currently a Senior Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks and a member of Retracing Connections, an international project exploring the circulation of narratives between Greek, Arabic, Georgian, and Old Slavonic. 

Research and Teaching  

His work is dedicated to a diachronic study of the Greek literary tradition, extending from the fourth into the fourteenth century and into the post-Byzantine period. Throughout this chronological arc, he seeks to combine the technical rigors of philology with broader insights from cultural and anthropological inquiry. He approaches the vast corpus of late antique, medieval, and early modern Greek literary production as a dynamic transformation of Greco-Roman and early Christian traditions within the nexus of changing cultural worlds.

Central to his research is a career-long engagement with the 11th-century polymath Michael Psellos, whose corpus serves as a gateway to the study of rhetoric, literary theory, self-representation, gender, and fiction. Beyond elite circles, his research also delves into the “storyworlds” of middle- and lower-register Greek, particularly religious prose narratives and sacred song.

Selected Publications 

Books 

  • Euthymios the Iberian, Theodore of Edessa (together with Charis Messis; Uppsala University, 2026) 

    Volume I. Introduction 

    Volume II. Theodore’s Life: Critical Edition of Versions α and β, with Annotated Translation of β. 

  • Saints at the Limits: Seven Byzantine Popular Legends (Harvard University Press, 2023). 
  • The Oxford Handbook of Byzantine Literature (Oxford University Press, 2021). Discussion in: What do we mean by “Byzantine literature”?, with Stratis Papaioannou 
  • Μιχαὴλ Ψελλός. Ἡ ρητορικὴ καὶ ὁ λογοτέχνης στὸ Βυζάντιο (Πανεπιστημιακές Εκδόσεις Κρήτης, 2021). 
  • Michael Psellos: Epistulae, 2 vols. (Critical edition; De Gruyter, 2019). 
  • Christian Novels from the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes (Harvard University Press, 2017). 

Recent Articles 

  • “The Synaxarion of Constantinople as Historiography: The Case of the M* Recension.” In L. Neville and J. Beneker (eds), Ancient Histories and History Writing in New Rome: Traditions, Innovations, and Uses (Dumbarton Oaks Studies, forthcoming). 
  • "Portraits of the Reader in the Middle Byzantine Period.” In C. Virág and N. Gaul (eds.), Reinventing Antiquity in Middle Period China and Byzantium: Ritual, Learning and Visual Culture(Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). 
  • “Gender (and Sexuality) in Byzantine Literature.” In M. Meyer and Ch. Messis (eds.),The Routledge Handbook of Gender and Sexuality in Byzantium (Routledge, 2024) 346–76. 
  • “The History of the Kontakion Revisited—and a Plea for the Study of Byzantine Sacred Song after the Year 1000.” In M.–L. Goiana and K. Kubina (eds.), Cult, Devotion, and Aesthetics in Later Byzantine Poetry (Brepols, 2024) 29–57. 
  • “The Philosopher’s Tongue: Synaxaria between History and Literature. With an Excursus on the Recension M of the Synaxarion of Constantinople and an Edition of BHG 2371n.” In A. Lampadaridi, V. Déroche, and C. Høgel (eds.), L’histoire comme elle se présentait dans l’hagiographie byzantine et médiévale/ Byzantine and Medieval History as Represented in Hagiography (Uppsala University, 2022), 151–97; available also online, at: https://hal.science/hal-03329585/file/SBU_21.pdf