About our staff

Research Fellow in Byzantine Intellectual/Cultural History

Foteini Spingou specialises in the cultural and intellectual history of the medieval Mediterranean world (and Byzantium in particular). Her research focuses on the period from the ninth to the first half of the fourteenth centuries. Her areas of research and teaching include the history of collections and collecting,  visual and textual aesthetics, manuscript culture from the late antique east to the early modern times, and the construction of identity in imperial societies and cultures. 

Born in Nice, France, and raised in Athens, Greece, Dr Spingou earned her first degree in Greek Philology from the University of Athens (2007). She subsequently received a MPhil (History/Wolfson, 2010) and a DPhil (MML/Keble, 2013) from the University of Oxford. Before joining Edinburgh University, Dr Spingou conducted research for the Department of Art and Archaeology of Princeton University, the Classics Faculty of Oxford University, the Pontifical Institute for Mediaeval Studies (University of Toronto), and the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection (Harvard University). Her research has received recognition from a number of sources, including the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, the A. S. Onassis Foundation, the A.G. Leventis Foundation, and the Nikos & Lydia Tricha Foundation for Education and European Culture. Dr Spingou has taught at a number of institutions, including the University of Oxford and the Open Universities in Greece and Cyprus.

Secretrary of the Classical Association of Scotland (Edinburgh and South East)

Member of the Editorial Team of  the Journal of Modern Hellenism

Research visitor, Classics Faculty, Oxford

PAIXUE profile

Pure profile

Academia.edu profile 

Wakelet on Byzantine Text on Art and Aesthetics (online resource)

Summary of research interests

• Europe
• Mediterranean

• Ancient Civilisations
• Comparative & Global History
• Culture
• Ideas
• Imperialism
• Landscapes & Monuments
• Language & Literature

• Medieval
• Medieval & Renaissance
• Early Modern

Spingou’s first book, Poetry for the Komnenoi: Syllogae B, C of the Anthologia Marciana for Oxford University Press (in preparation) presents for the first time a vast anthology of unattributed poetry from the twelfth century. The poems Anthologia Marciana date from the twelfth century and they are to be found in a single manuscript in Venice. The texts offer new insights to the intellectual and political history of the Medieval Europe, West Asia and North Africa, as they reveal otherwise unattested events, patrons, and social behaviours. The book reveals the use of poetry as a commodity in Byzantium and presents texts that in their majority were to be inscribed on objects or performed in a particular occasion and then to disgarded

The volume Textual and Visual Culture in Later Byzantium (c.1081– c.1350) for Cambridge University Press (in print) explores the full range of  the connotations of the Byzantine aesthetics in the Medieval world. The volume includes 180 medieval sources in nine medieval languages that refer to the Byzantine visual culture. Each source is presented in its original language preceeded by a short introduction and an annotated English translation. The content list in full can be found here.

Dr Spingou has also published on a wide range of topics, including poetry, dialogues, epistolography, political theology in Byzantium, the interplay between religious rituals and literature, as well as medieval mathematics. 

See Dr Spingou's profile in PAIXUE

Classicizing learning in Medieval imperial systems: Cross-cultural approaches to Byzantine "Paideia" and Tang/Song Xue 學(PAIXUE). (2017–2022)

Greek Palaeography (GREE10032)

Beauty and the Greeks (CLTR10025)