Living Scholars of Greek & Byzantine Epigraphy

Greek epigraphy (Archaic–Roman)

• Angelos Chaniotis Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton — Professor of Ancient History & Classics Hellenistic-to-late-antique Greek epigraphy; social and religious history, emotions, memory. Contact editor of the SEG. Profile·Publications·SEG
• John Ma Columbia University — Professor of Classics & History Hellenistic history and epigraphy; honorific statues, civic culture. Recent book: Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State (2024). Profile·Books (PUP)
• Nikolaos Papazarkadas UC Berkeley — Assoc. Professor, Nicholas C. Petris Chair of Greek Studies Greek epigraphy of Athens, Boeotia, the Cyclades; senior editor of the SEG and co-editor of the new Attic corpus IG II³. Profile·Publications
• Klaus Hallof Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences — Director, Inscriptiones Graecae Heads the great Berlin corpus (IG); editor of many island and regional volumes (Samos, Kos, etc.). Profile·Publications·IG project

Attic inscriptions & digital translation

• Stephen Lambert (emeritus, active) Cardiff University — Emeritus Professor Founder/editor of Attic Inscriptions Online; Athenian laws and decrees, the Attic demes. Profile·Publications·AIO project
• Angelos P. Matthaiou Greek Epigraphic Society (Athens) — Secretary General Attic and Aegean inscriptions; editor-in-chief of Horos and director of the digital journal Grammateion. Society·Horos journal

Asia Minor

• Peter Thonemann Wadham College, University of Oxford — Professor of Ancient History, FBA History and epigraphy of Anatolia; editor of the online corpus MAMA XI (Phrygia & Lykaonia). Profile·MAMA XI·British Academy

Near East & the Levant

• Julien Aliquot CNRS / HiSoMA, Lyon — Directeur de recherche Greek and Latin epigraphy of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan; leads the IGLS programme and fieldwork in Jordan. Profile·CNRS·IGLS
• Jonathan J. Price Tel Aviv University — Lessing Professor of Ancient History Greek/Jewish epigraphy and historiography; editor for the multilingual corpus CIIP (Israel/Palestine). Profile·Publications

Late antique & Byzantine

• Andreas Rhoby Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna — Head, Dept. of Byzantine Research (Inst. for Medieval Research) Byzantine epigraphy and verse inscriptions (Byzantinische Epigramme); co-editor of Studies in Byzantine Epigraphy and of the forthcoming Handbook of Byzantine Epigraphy. Profile / project·Publications
• Ida Toth University of Oxford (Wolfson College) — Lecturer in Byzantine Epigraphy Byzantine writing culture and inscriptions; chairs the International Commission for Byzantine Epigraphy; co-editor of Studies in Byzantine Epigraphy. Profile·Publications·SBE series
• Charlotte Roueché (emerita, active) King's College London — Professor Emerita of Digital Hellenic Studies Late Roman & Byzantine inscriptions of Aphrodisias (ALA / IAph); a pioneer of digital epigraphic editions. Profile / publications·Aphrodisias project
• Denis Feissel (emeritus, active) EPHE / Collège de France, Paris — Directeur d'études émérite (Byzantine history) The leading authority on late-antique/Byzantine Greek epigraphy; author of the Chroniques d'épigraphie byzantine, heir to Louis Robert. On the Chroniques·SBE editorial board
• Cilliers Breytenbach (emeritus, active) Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin — Professor Emeritus (New Testament & Ancient Studies) Early Christian Greek inscriptions of Asia Minor and Greece; project leader of Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae (ICG). Profile·Publications·ICG

Sigillography & numismatics

• Jean-Claude Cheynet (emeritus, active) Sorbonne Université, Paris — Professor Emeritus (UMR Orient & Méditerranée) Doyen of Byzantine sigillography; co-editor of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography; his 2008 Istanbul lecture launched SigiDoc. Research unit·SBS series
• Cécile Morrisson (emerita, active) CNRS, Paris — Directrice de recherche émérite; Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres; Advisor for Byzantine Numismatics, Dumbarton Oaks The leading historian of Byzantine coinage and money; former head of coins at the BnF. CV (HAL)·Dumbarton Oaks
• Claudia Sode University of Cologne — Dept. of Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies Byzantine sigillography and digital humanities; PI of DigiByzSeal and DiBS; co-editor of Studies in Byzantine Sigillography. Dept.·DigiByzSeal

Aegean scripts, vases & curse tablets

• Maurizio Del Freo CNR — Institute of Heritage Science (ISPC), Rome — Research Director Aegean and Cypriot Bronze-Age scripts (Linear B/A, Cretan hieroglyphic); co-creator of the LiBER Linear B database. Profile·Publications·LiBER
• Federico Aurora University of Oslo Library — Research Librarian / Mycenaean philology Creator and editor of DAMOS, the annotated corpus of all published Linear B (Mycenaean Greek) texts. Profile·Publications·DAMOS
• Rudolf Wachter (emeritus, active) Universities of Basel & Lausanne — historical linguistics & epigraphy Greek & Latin historical linguistics, the history of the alphabet, and Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions (OUP, 2001). Profile / publications·Vase inscriptions (OUP)
• Werner Riess University of Hamburg — Professor of Ancient History Greek magic and law; leads TheDefix, the open database of ancient curse tablets (defixiones/katadesmoi). Profile·TheDefix

Digital methods & public humanities

• Gabriel Bodard School of Advanced Study, University of London — Reader in Digital Classics (ICS) Lead author of the EpiDoc guidelines; director of the EFES publication platform; digital epigraphy training worldwide. Profile·EpiDoc·Publications
• Jonathan Prag Merton College, University of Oxford — Professor of Ancient History Editor of I.Sicily; PI of the ERC-funded CROSSREADS project (linguistics, palaeography, archaeometry, AI in epigraphy). Profile·I.Sicily·CROSSREADS grant
• Sarah E. Bond University of Iowa — Associate Professor of History Late-antique epigraphy, law, and digital/public humanities; author of the widely-used Epigraphy Enchiridion reading list and a prolific public writer. Profile·Blog / CV·Epigraphy Enchiridion

Based in Greece

Grouped by base rather than subfield — the museum, universities, research foundation, and learned society that anchor epigraphy inside Greece. (Several scholars above — Chaniotis, Papazarkadas, Matthaiou — are Greek by training or affiliation too.)

• Athanasios Themos Epigraphic Museum, Athens — Director Directs the world's largest inscription collection (~14,000 stones); Attic epigraphy; teaches in Athens epigraphy programmes. Epigraphic Museum·HERC (teaching)
• Sophia Aneziri National & Kapodistrian University of Athens — Professor of Ancient History & Greek Epigraphy Hellenistic history, associations, and endowments; author of an epigraphic anthology widely used in teaching. Recent: Perpetual Endowments in the Classical and Hellenistic World (2023). Profile·Publications
• Selene E. Psoma National & Kapodistrian University of Athens — Professor of Ancient History Greek numismatics and epigraphy (coin legends, monetary history, northern Greece); trained at the Sorbonne/EPHE. Profile·Publications
• Pantelis M. Nigdelis Aristotle University of Thessaloniki — Professor of Ancient History Epigraphy and history of ancient Macedonia (Thessaloniki inscriptions), Greek cities under Rome, prosopography. Profile / publications
• Sophia Zoumbaki National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens — Research Director (Institute of Historical Research) Roman Greece: epigraphy, prosopography, and onomastics of the Peloponnese and Cyclades (the Roman Peloponnese series). Profile / publications·NHRF institute
• Andronike Makres Greek Epigraphic Society (board) & Hellenic Education & Research Center (co-founder), Athens Athenian epigraphy; a leading teacher of the subject (the Paros summer school) and a mover behind Greek Inscriptions Online. HERC profile·Greek Epigraphic Society

Based in Turkey

Anatolia holds an enormous share of the Greek inscriptional record; the hub is the Department of Ancient Languages & Cultures at Akdeniz University (Antalya), publisher of the open-access journal Gephyra (alongside Epigraphica Anatolica, Cologne/Habelt).

• Mustafa Adak Akdeniz University, Antalya — Professor of Ancient Languages & Cultures Greek & Latin epigraphy and historical geography of Asia Minor (Pamphylia, Lycia); a driving force behind Gephyra. Recent: Teos and Abdera (OUP, with P. Thonemann). Profile·Publications·Gephyra
• Fatih Onur Akdeniz University, Antalya — Professor of Ancient Languages & Cultures Greek epigraphy and historical geography of Lycia; ancient roads and routes; administrative and legal texts. Profile·Publications
• Nalan Eda Akyürek Şahin Akdeniz University, Antalya — Professor of Ancient Languages & Cultures Anatolian Greek epigraphy — votive and funerary inscriptions, cults, and the publication of museum collections (Bursa, Afyon, Kütahya). Profile·Publications
• Cumhur Tanrıver Ege University, İzmir — Professor of Ancient Languages & Cultures Greek & Latin inscriptions of western Anatolia (Lydia, Phrygia, Mysia); epigraphist of the Smyrna excavations and co-author of the Smyrna basilica graffiti. Profile / publications
• Ergün Laflı Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir — Professor of Classical Archaeology Archaeology and epigraphy of western Anatolia into the Early Byzantine period; founding director of the Centre for the Archaeology of Western Anatolia (EKVAM). Profile·Publications

Cyprus & the Cypriot scripts

Scholars of Cypriot material (some based in France) — including the distinctive Cypriot syllabary that wrote Greek on the island for centuries.

• Maria Iacovou (emerita, active) University of Cyprus, Nicosia — Professor Emerita of Prehistoric & Protohistoric Archaeology The Iron-Age context of the Cypriot syllabary and its role as a marker of the island's Greek-speaking kingdoms; directs excavations at Palaepaphos. Profile / publications
• Anna Cannavò CNRS / HiSoMA, Lyon — Researcher (former member, École française d'Athènes) Cypriot epigraphy and history (contributor to IG XV, the Cypriote syllabic corpus); directs the Amathus mission. Profile·Kyprios Character
• Markus Egetmeyer Sorbonne Université, Paris — historical linguistics (Greek) The leading authority on the Cypriot syllabary and the Cypriot Greek dialect; author of Le dialecte grec ancien de Chypre (grammar + inscription repertoire). Le dialecte grec ancien de Chypre

Bulgaria (ancient Thrace)

• Nicolay Sharankov Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" — Assistant Professor, Dept. of Classical Philology The leading epigrapher of Roman Thrace/Bulgaria (Greek & Latin); a driving force behind the Telamon digital corpus. Profile·Publications·Telamon
• Mirena Slavova Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" — Professor of Ancient Greek; Chair of Classics Greek epigraphy and the historical phonology of the inscriptions of Bulgaria; Thracian onomastics; co-leads Telamon. Profile·Publications

Israel

In-country scholars of the Greek & multilingual epigraphy of Israel/Palestine; see also Jonathan Price (above) and the wider CIIP team (H. Cotton, B. Isaac, W. Eck, W. Ameling).

• Leah Di Segni Hebrew University of Jerusalem — Institute of Archaeology The foremost authority on the Greek inscriptions of Roman & Byzantine Palestine; editor of CIIP Vol. I (Jerusalem) and co-author of the Onomasticon of Iudaea-Palaestina. Profile / publications
• Avner Ecker Bar-Ilan University — epigraphy & archaeology of the Roman Near East Greek & Latin inscriptions of Roman Judaea and questions of urbanisation; co-editor of the CIIP. Profile·Publications

The Levant — Syria, Lebanon & Jordan

Greek & Latin epigraphy of the Near East is largely carried by the French IGLS programme (CNRS / Ifpo, Beirut) in partnership with regional scholars — the Jordan corpus is a Lyon–Yarmouk collaboration. See also Julien Aliquot (above).

• Nabil Bader Yarmouk University, Irbid (Jordan) — Professor of Epigraphy & Classical History; Dean, Faculty of Archaeology & Anthropology; head of the Department of Epigraphy (قسم النقوش) The leading Jordanian epigrapher of the Greek & Latin inscriptions of Jordan (Ajloun, the northern Decapolis, Capitolias/Bayt Ras), often read alongside the region's Nabataean and Semitic texts; co-editor of Inscriptions de la Jordanie (IGLS XXI). Recent: "New Data on the Epigraphy of the Northern Decapolis" (with J.-B. Yon), SHAJ 13 (2019). Profile / publications·IGLS Jordanie·Yarmouk Dept. of Epigraphy (Arabic)
• Jean-Baptiste Yon CNRS / Ifpo (Beirut) & HiSoMA, Lyon — Senior Researcher; Deputy Director of HiSoMA Palmyrene and Near Eastern epigraphy and onomastics; the IGLS Palmyra fascicles; directs the archaeological mission of Tyre. Profile·Ifpo
• Maurice Sartre (emeritus, active) Université de Tours — Emeritus Professor; associate researcher, Ifpo A leading historian and epigrapher of the Hellenised Roman Near East (Bostra, the Hauran, Arabia); co-author of many IGLS volumes with Annie Sartre-Fauriat. Publications·IGLS
• Pierre-Louis Gatier CNRS / HiSoMA, Lyon — Greek & Latin epigraphy of the Near East Editor of Inscriptions de la Jordanie (IGLS XXI); Greek & Latin epigraphy of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. IGLS project