Vassiliki Penna, Professor

Vassiliki (Vasso) Penna is Professor of Byzantine History, Byzantine Numismatics and Sigillography at the Department of History, Archaeology and Cultural Resources Management, University of the Peloponnese. She studied Archaeology and History of Art at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and she received her D.Phil. from the University of Oxford / Faculty of Modern History, Department of Medieval History.

For twenty three years she has served in the Hellenic Ministry of Culture / Greek Archaeological Service in various Ephorates of Byzantine Antiquities and in the Numismatic Museum at Athens, where in 1994 she was appointed Deputy Director. During her service in the Archaeological Service she participated in excavations, reconstructions, museological assignments, as well as in research programmes and in the organization of scientific conferences. She has taught Byzantine History and Art (1998-2006) in acknowledged exchange programmes in public universities in the United States (Penn State University, AHA, UCLA) and Byzantine Numismatics in seminars organized by the National Hellenic Research Foundation / Institute of Byzantine Research (1991-2005, 2011-2014). She has also cooperated with the Hellenic Open University (2000-2005).

Her research and tutorial activities focus on the economic and numismatic history of Byzantium, on historical geography and local history, particularly employing numismatic and sigillographic evidence, as well as on Byzantine prosopography, society and institutions. She is also interested in the economic and numismatic history of ancient Greece and in the history of money through the ages. She has organized exhibitions in Greece (Benaki Museum, Tellogleion) and abroad (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC – Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna – Fondation Martin Bodmer, Geneva – Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow), aiming at the promotion of numismatics and of monetary history as products of cultural heritage.

She has been Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s College, London, for three academic years (2009-2013); she was invited at Dumbarton Oaks to organize, together with Dr Eric McGeer, the Byzantine Coins and Seals Summer Program 2015 and assume the teaching of numismatics. 

She has published three monographs and sixty - five papers in Greek and international scientific journals, while she has also edited five collective volumes i.e. Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum. Greece 7. The KIKPE Collection of Bronze Coins, Vol. I, Athens 2012: Academy of Athens (292 pages). She has taken part in many scientific conferences in Greece and abroad and she has also given a great number of lectures and seminars under the auspices of various scientific and cultural institutions in Greece and abroad.

Contact:  vpenna@uop.gr vpenna3@gmail.com