Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002); he obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early middle ages. He is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Studies in the Department of History at Bilkent University where is currently working on his third monography entitled Beyond the Periphery. The Byzantine Insular World between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (c.a. 600–c.a. 900) (ARC-Medieval Press).

Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the early Medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean, as well as as well as three monographs including: Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009), and Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. An Island in Transition (Routledge, 2017). He co-authored (with Özlem Caykent) the edited volumes Islands of Eastern Mediterranean. A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2014) and People and Goods on the Move. Merchants, Networks and Communication Routes in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean (IMK, 2016).  

He was also twice awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship (2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012).