Born in Athens in 1959. Graduated in 1982 from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat (Munich) with an M.A. in Byzantine Studies, History of Byzantine Art and Musicology. Earned a M.A. in Classical Philology (1986) and a Ph.D. in Byzantine Philology (1990) from Harvard University. From 1985 to 1989 he taught as instructor of Byzantine and Modern Greek at Harvard University. In March 1992 he was appointed Assistant Professor at University of Cyprus. Since March 2001 he is Professor of Byzantine Philology. He is the President of the Byzantinist Society of Cyprus, as well as a corresponding member of the German Society of Byzantine Studies, the British Association of Byzantine Studies and the Istituto Lombardo Academia die Lettere e Scienze (Milan). He has been a visiting professor at the Freie Universitaet Berlin (1998), the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1999), and Stanford University (2009), as well as a distinguished visiting scholar at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Center, Washington DC (2012).

Edition of Byzantine learned and vernacular texts Narratology with emphasis on Byzantine Romance Theory of rhetoric and genre Representation of death in Byzantine literature Culture and History of Ideas in Byzantium History of Byzantine literature Contemporary Crime Fiction