Professor Angeliki Laiou: expert on women in the Byzantine empire

Professor Angeliki E. Laiou was a distinguished historian who pioneered the study of the social and economic history of the Byzantine Empire — the medieval successor to the Roman Empire in the East.
She was born in Athens in 1941. Her family originated partly from the Greek communities of the western Black Sea coast. She began her university studies in 1958-59 at the University of Athens (where the leading Greek Byzantinist, Dionysios Zakythenos, kindled her interest in Byzantium). She then moved to the US, where she obtained her BA from Brandeis University in 1961 and PhD from Harvard in 1966 under the supervision of Robert Lee Wolff, a historian of the Latin empire of Constantinople.
Except for a stint as instructor at the University of Louisiana in 1962, Laiou’s academic career was confined to New England: instructor and then assistant professor at Harvard, 1966-72; associate professor, professor and distinguished professor at Brandeis University, 1972-81; and finally Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History, a prestigious position which she held from 1981 until her death.
As a historian Laiou had the gift of an original and associative intellect in rare combination with uncompromising analytical rigour. But her accomplishments went beyond academia. She was a strong-willed leader who broke new ground for women historians, an inspiring teacher and, briefly, a prominent figure on the political arena in her native Greece.
The first of the 14 books that she wrote or edited, Constantinople and the Latins (1972), discussed Byzantium’s foreign policy in the critical decades of the late 13th and the early 14th centuries. The book’s focus on diplomatic relations with predatory Western powers — Venice, Genoa and the Angevin kingdom of Naples — shaped Laiou’s future interest in trade networks in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean and the Byzantine economy at large.
Interestingly, this particular study also foreshadowed Laiou’s own role as a diplomat in the service of the Hellenic Republic. Her sense of social justice coupled with her coming of age in the 1960s led her to turn her analytical eye on marginal social groups ignored by historians of Byzantium. The result was a massive series of pioneering books and articles. A monograph, Peasant Society in the Late Byzantine Empire (1977), was among the first studies on Byzantine demography. An article on Byzantine women published in 1981 opened a new field for scholars of Byzantium. Laiou returned to women’s studies several times, including her monograph Mariage, amour et parenté à Byzance (1992).
The scholarly achievement of which she was especially proud late in her life was the three-volume Economic History of Byzantium (2002), a landmark study which she initiated, edited and contributed several chapters to. A shorter synthesis (2007) was co-written by the French numismatist and historian Cécile Morrisson.
Laiou was among the first female academics in the US and Greece to attain high posts and honours previously closed to women. In 1985 she became the first woman chair of the Harvard history department and in 1989 she was the first woman director of Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard’s research outpost in Washington devoted to the study of Byzantine civilisation as well as pre-Columbian, garden and landscape studies. She was one of a handful of women to be elected permanent member of the Academy of Athens in 1998.
Her nine years as Dumbarton Oaks director (1989-98) were marked by several important publications, including the monumental Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991) edited by Alexander Kazhdan. A tireless organiser of conferences at Dumbarton Oaks, and later at the Academy of Athens, Laiou was able to draw together the leading minds in the field and to swiftly edit the resulting volumes with an ever-critical mind.
A true cosmopolitan, fluent in several languages, she had the stamina to enjoy her peripatetic life. For years she divided her week between Washington and Boston; she felt at home in Paris, and she spent part of every year in Greece, including visits to Athens to attend meetings at the academy.
Laiou always maintained close ties with Greece, not the least through the translation of her books into Greek and her acquaintance with leading personalities in Greek academic and political life. Her international recognition and acute political instinct did not go unnoticed in Greece. In 2000 she was elected member of parliament for the Panhellenic Socialist Party (Pasok) and served as Deputy Secretary of Foreign Affairs from May to November 2000. In the end she found politics less stimulating than her academic pursuits, while the opportunities for bringing about real change proved minimal. In the autumn of 2001 she returned to full-time duty at Harvard.
Her teaching at Harvard included a popular undergraduate core course on the Crusades and seminars on Byzantine and Balkan history. A talented public speaker with an impressive stage presence, she lectured passionately and with a sense of mission. Her graduate students knew her as a demanding mentor who introduced in seminars close and meticulous reading of Byzantine documents — in her own words, “the clearing of the ground” for the kind of conclusions she was able to draw in her books and articles.
Laiou’s public persona was always imposing, an impression reinforced by her elegant style, which remained unmistakably Athenian. She regularly intervened at conferences to correct an error or misinterpretation. At the same time she was diplomatic when the circumstances required it. Behind her public persona she was an affectionate and warm mentor, colleague and friend who will be remembered for her love of life, sense of humour and irony, and unflinching loyalty.
Laiou’s other honours included appointment as Commander of the Order of Honour of the Hellenic Republic; she was corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Institut de France, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a foreign member of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences and honorary professor, Nankai University, China.
She is survived by her son.

Professor Angeliki Laiou, historian, was born on April 6, 1941. She died of cancer on December 11, 2008, aged 67/

From The Times
December 17, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5354309.ece