Academic Interests
Gender and Religion, History of Religion
My Individual Research Project with the preliminary title: “Eve between Byzantium and Islam: A Comparative Study of Transgressive Femininity in the Mediterranean Cultures Continuum,” is an interdisciplinary, comparative study of the reception history of Eve in the Byzantine Christian and Sunna Islamic exegetical traditions with reference to their common Mediterranean contexts. Through the recreation of the historical process of reception, the genealogy of the typology of transgressive femininity resulting in gender constituting ideas is examined. The perception of transgressive femininity, appropriated and reflected in the two Abrahamic traditions and their environments, suggests an interactional relationship and a complex interplay between exegesis and the Mediterranean cultures which are characterized by the pivotal values of honor and shame. The project aspires to track the lineage of the gender constituting ideas, determine the origin and the production of individual ideas, their merging into set of ideas, reproduction, reduction, and modification.
Background
I hold a bachelor’s in Eastern Orthodox Theology and a master’s in history of religions, specialized in Islam, from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. My master’s thesis was focused on the history of the first Muslim women as captured in the multifaceted work of Nabia Abbott. After the completion of my Mater’s, I received ecumenical and interreligious dialogue training from various influential institutions in Europe. Additionally, I have been studying Near Eastern Studies majoring in Arabic and Islam, at the University of Vienna.