Biography

Fotini Kondyli is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology. Her research centers on Byzantine and Frankish material culture, the construction of Byzantine spaces, communal identity, household archaeology and Byzantine non-elites. She also works on cultural, economic and political networks in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Byzantine period (13th- 15th c.). She is presently writing her first monograph on the material culture of Late Byzantine rural societies, focusing on the socio-economic and spatial organization of non-elite groups, and the impact of global demographic and economic phenomena, such as the Black Death, on local communities. Her work combines archaeology, archival research, spatial analysis, and the digital humanities. Her most recent publication is Sylvester Syropoulos on Politics and Culture in the Fifteenth-Century Mediterranean, with V. Andriopoulou et al. (Ashgate Publishing, Aldershot 2014).

As an active field archaeologist, Kondyli has worked in numerous archaeological sites in Greece, Albania, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Germany. She is currently doing fieldwork at Athens and Thebes as part of her new research project on the negotiation of identities in Byzantine cities. Bringing together legacy data from old excavations and newly excavated sites, Kondyli works on reconstructing parts of Athens and Thebes' spatial layout and architecture in the Middle and Late Byzantine/Frankish periods. She particularly focuses on the study of neighborhoods, as key loci of social interaction and identity formation.

Kondyli has held fellowships at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Junior Fellow 2008-2009) and at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Old World at Brown University (2012-2014). She is currently the recipient of the American Institute for Archaeology Colburn Fellowship (2014-2015). At UVA, Kondyli teaches courses on Late Antique and Byzantine art and material culture, as well as on cross-cultural artistic and economic interaction in the Medieval Mediterranean.