Panagiotis Theodoropoulos

Hannah Seeger Davis Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2019-2020 to 2020-2021

  • Degree
    Ph.D., Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, King's College London, 2018
    Dissertation
    The Riddle of the Greek Popes: Social Change and imperial Influence in Seventh and Eighth-Century Italy
    Research Project
    Byzantine Rome and the Rise of the Papacy: The Transformation of Roman Society and the Formation of Papal Political Authority (554-774 CE)
Contact Info

Panagiotis Theodoropoulos is a post-doctoral fellow whose research focuses on the social and administrative evolution of the Byzantine Empire in the seventh and eighth centuries. He has a particular interest in the study of Byzantine Italy and the papacy in the aforementioned period. He received his B/A in Classics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2011) and M/A in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies from King’s College London (2014). He holds a PhD in Modern Greek and Byzantine Studies from King’s College London (2018) with a dissertation entitled The Riddle of the Greek Popes: Social Change and imperial Influence in Seventh and Eighth-Century Italy. He has undertaken training on Byzantine coins and seals during the 2015 Numismatics and Sigillography Summer Program at Dumbarton Oaks (Trustees for Harvard University), where he returned as a Summer-fellow in 2019 working on seals of the seventh and eighth-century civic apparatus.

About the Research Project

Byzantine Rome and the Rise of the Papacy: The Transformation of Roman Society and the Formation of Papal Political Authority (554-774 CE)

My research during my fellowship at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies concentrated in matters pertaining to collective identity and social change in the seventh century. A product of this research was the discovery that the term ‘Byzantine’ had been used by the imperial chancery in the seventh century as a designation for Eastern Romans, which challenges the traditional narrative that the term acquired this broad meaning in the sixteenth century. This study was published in the journal Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies in February 2021. An important portion of my research centered on the Eastern community in Rome and the ‘Syrian’ popes of the seventh and eighth centuries, which I presented in a workshop organized by the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies entitled: An Antioch on the Tiber: The ‘Syrian’ popes in the Liber Pontificalis and the emergence of a Syro-Palestinian identity in late seventh-century Rome. 

Previous Roles

  • Postdoctoral Research Fellow
    2019 - 2020