page_title: Angeliki Laiou
section_title: Academic career
hierarchical_section_title: Angeliki Laiou / Academic career
caption_attribution_description: English: 1992 Byzantine Studies Symposium Group at Dumbarton Oaks. Back row (standing) from left to right: Henry Maguire, Ioli Kalavrezou, Gilbert Dagron, Marie-Theres Fogen, J.H.A. Lokin, Angeliki E. Laiou, Dr. Paul Magdalino, Ruth Macrides, George T. Dennis Front row (seated) from left to right: Anna Kartsonis, Aleksandr Kazhdan, Dieter Simon, Kathleen Anne Corrigan, Ioannes M. Konidares, Helen Saradi-Mendelovici
context_page_description: Angeliki Laiou was a Greek-American Byzantinist and politician. She taught at the University of Louisiana, Harvard University, Brandeis University, and Rutgers University. She was Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine Studies at Harvard from 1981 until her death. From 2000 to 2002, she was also a member of the Hellenic Parliament for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement: she served as Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs for six months in 2000.
context_section_description: In 1962, she went to lecture at the University of Louisiana, before returning to Harvard, where she stayed from 1966 to 1972, first as instructor and then as assistant professor. She then moved to Brandeis, where she remained until 1981, becoming distinguished professor. During this period, she also taught at Rutgers College of Rutgers University. In 1981, she returned to Harvard to occupy the prestigious Dumbarton Oaks Professorship of Byzantine Studies, a post she held until her death. In 1985–88, she served as the head of Harvard's History Department and from 1989 until 1998 she headed the distinguished Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, DC — the first woman to do so.
  With her Laiou pioneered the study of Byzantine and wider medieval society, and especially the role of women. Her article on The role of women in Byzantine society, published in the Jahrbuch der österreichischen Byzantinistik in 1981, "opened a new field for scholars of Byzantium". Her works on Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire (1977) and Mariage, Amour et Parenté à Byzance Aux XIe-XIIIe Siècles (1992) were among the first studies in their field. During her last years, she presided over the compilation of the three-volume Economic History of Byzantium (2002), a definitive work in this until then rather neglected field, followed up a few years later by The Byzantine Economy (2007), her last book.
  In her native Greece, she was honoured by being inducted into the Academy of Athens in 1998, only the second woman after the writer Galateia Saranti, and by being decorated with the Commander class of the Order of Honour. Laiou was also a corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, a member of the Medieval Academy of America and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an honorary professor at Nankai University.
caption: Laiou in 1992
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