I am a Byzantine Art Historian and Archaeologist with particular interests in Byzantine Cappadocia and Byzantine monasticism. I earned my MA in Art History and Archaeology in 2019 at the Sorbonne in Paris, France and my PhD in Byzantine Art History and Archaeology in 2025 from the same institution. Before that, I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History with minors in Orthodox Christian Studies and French from Fordham University.
PhD, Sorbonne Université (2025)
MA, Sorbonne Université (2019)
BA, Fordham University, Rose Hill (2015)
I completed my doctoral dissertation, El Nazar Kilise: Étude d’un site mésobyzantin en Cappadoce, at the Sorbonne in the Art History & Archaeology and History departments. Working within these two departments, I was able to bridge disciplines and focus much of my attention on interdisciplinary methodological questions. Interdisciplinarity has been a main characteristic of my research since completing the Fordham College Honors Program Cursus, a multidisciplinary, “Great Books” curriculum that encouraged students to look at historical periods through various disciplinary lenses.
My research has mainly centered around Byzantine Cappadocia, a region in modern-day Turkey known for its otherworldly rock formations in which ancient and medieval people carved residential, religious, and other types of architecture. Many of the rock-cut monuments are decorated with sculpture and especially monumental wall paintings. My dissertation focused on one Cappadocian site in particular, El Nazar, which comprises a central cruciform church, decorated with 9th and 10th-century frescos, and about a dozen other rock-cut edifices situated around the church. My dissertation is the first monographic study devoted to the monument, and it incorporates the first systematic documentation of the other rock-cut edifices on the site.
In addition to my research in Cappadocia, I am actively working on various other research projects concentrated mostly on aspects of Byzantine monasticism and Byzantine time-telling that incorporate textual and material sources as well as quantitative and digital methodologies.
AMS 3510 : Byzantine and Islamic Art and Archaeology
AMS 3650/REL_STU 3650 : Paganism and Christianity
2025, ICBS Grants for Younger Scholars (640 EUR): Funding for participation in the 2026 International Congress of Byzantine Studies in Vienna. Granted by the Association internationale des études byzantines (AIEB).
2022, OPUS Research Grant (3,000 EUR): Funding for exploratory research projects from the Observatoire des patrimoines de l’Alliance Sorbonne Université (OPUS). Used for the project El Nazar : Documentation 3D (END3D), a 3D documentation initiative for a Byzantine rock-cut site in Cappadocia.
2021, Mary Jaharis Center Dissertation Grant (3,000 USD): Scholarship for advanced graduate students working on PhD dissertations in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. Used to help finance the 3D documentation of the rock-cut edifices around the site of El Nazar in Cappadocia.
2021, A.G. Leventis Foundation Scholarship: Full scholarship for the participation in the Medieval Greek Summer Session of the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
2019, BSC Graduate Student Prize : Prize for the best papers presented by graduate students at the annual Byzantine Studies Conference organized by the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA). For a paper entitled, “The Invisible Icon At El Nazar Kilise, a Tenth-Century Church in Cappadocia".
“Narratological Devices in Cappadocian Wall Paintings: The case of the infancy cycle at the El Nazar Kilise”, Scandinavian Journal of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, volume 9/10, 2024, p. 9–48.
“Who Wakes the Waker: The monastic relationship to time in Byzantium (7th-12th centuries)”, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, (Accepted).
“The Enclosed Saint and His Column : A New Archaeological Approach to Stylitism in Cappadocia”, in C. Papavarnavas (ed.), Spaces Make Saints : Experiencing Confinement in Byzantine Hagiography, Berlin: De Gruyter, Millennium Series (Accepted).
“Digging Deeper : The re-use and redecoration of rock-cut churches in Cappadocia”, in V. Allen, A. Brémont, and S. Connor (ed.), Reading reuse. Image recycling in Egypt and beyond, Cairo: Institut français des études orientales (Accepted).