Angeliki Laiou, Professor of Byzantine History [1941-2008]
Angeliki Laiou with Trustee Dinner Honoree Peter Brown in 2007
A great Byzantine historian who had been associated with the Gennadius Library for many years, Angeliki E. Laiou died of cancer in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 11, 2008. An indefatigable scholar of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire, she was a pioneering woman in the international academic world and in the Greek government. Born in Athens in 1941, Laiou started her studies in Athens under Professor Dionysios Zakythenos and obtained her B.A. at Brandeis University. She completed her Ph.D. at Harvard under the great specialist of the Crusades, Robert Lee Wolff, in 1966. After holding various positions in American universities (Harvard, Brandeis, and Rutgers), in 1981 she became Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History at Harvard, where she also became the first woman to become chairman of the history department. From 1989 to 1998 she was Director of Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. She also taught at the Collège de France, the Sorbonne, and the Max-Planck Institute. A true cosmopolitan combining European elegance with academic rigor, Professor Laiou was a powerful public presence with a sharp intellect and a clear mind. In 1978-79 Angeliki Laiou served as Samuel H. Kress Professor of Hellenic Studies at the American School, in charge of the Gennadius Library. During her tenure at the Library she was involved with the School’s academic program and organized a colloquium on “Trade and Art in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Thirteenth Century.” Professor Laiou was a fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1998, she was the second woman to be named a permanent member of the Academy of Athens since the organization was founded, and was decorated as a commander of the order of honor of the Hellenic Republic. She also was a member of Academia Europea and the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2000 she was elected to the Greek Parliament and briefly served as Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Greece. Her research and publications (fourteen authored and edited books) on the crusades, on peasant society, on the role of women in Byzantium, and on marriage and the law broke new ground in Byzantine history and inspired numerous historians who hold teaching positions in universities all over the world. Professor Laiou was an effective teacher and a dedicated mentor always eager to follow the progress of her students. A powerful presence in the classroom and in public, she was also an efficient administrator, a brilliant organizer of symposia, and a great force at ensuring support for major projects such as The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991), edited by Alexander Kazhdan, and the three-volume Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh Through the Fifteenth Century, published in English in 2002 and in Greek in 2007. For this monumental work she assembled a team of great scholars and wrote eight chapters herself. In 2007 she published a shorter synthesis with Cécile Morrisson in The Byzantine Economy. She is survived by her son, Vassili. She is survived by her son, Vassili. The Gennadius Library will hold a conference in memory of Angeliki Laiou titled “Migration, Gender, and the Economy in Byzantium” in Cotsen Hall on October 23, 2009.