Petre Guran's main research interests lie in the field of religious anthropology applied to Byzantine society and culture. More precisely, he is interested in the web of mutual influences that linked theological thought to the structures of society and political power in the Byzantine world. He has studied and taught in Romania (Lecturer in the Seminar of Political Anthropology, University of Bucharest); France (Lecturer and Managing Director for the academic program "First College of European Citizenship: Monasteries and European Identity," organised by the Council of Europe, and supervisor of the group of Romanian students; research mission at the Centre for Byzantine Studies of the Collège de France for the research team on Constantine Porphyrogenitus De ceremoniis); and Germany (Lecturer on early Byzantine Hagiography and the concept of sainthood, sanctus versus sacer, at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich). He defended his dissertation on Royal Sanctity and Universal Power in the Orthodox Commonwealth at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2003). During the period 1995-2004, he was research fellow at the Institute for South-East European Studies of the Romanian Academy of Sciences, Bucharest.  [Last Updated 2005]