Seeger Center Newsletter

June 2026

A Message from the Director

Greetings from the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies!

Late spring is a time of celebrations and transitions, of well wishes for our graduates and a shift from teaching and research on campus to summer programs at the Princeton Athens Center. We share highlights from the spring 2026 semester below. These include a roundup of research by our 2025-26 postdoctoral fellows, a spotlight on the Class of 2026, and interviews with members of our academic community about their new books.

As always, we welcome the visiting research fellows who have joined the Center. Our summer 2026 cohort includes Vasileios Balaskas (University of Málaga, Spain), Gabriele Castiglia (Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Italy), Athanasios Semoglou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece), and Nektarios Zarras (University of the Aegean, Greece).

For all the latest updates, news and events, we invite you to visit our website, hellenic.princeton.edu, and connect with us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Dimitri Gondicas

Director, Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

Greek learning, Arabic afterlives, and 'meta' modern Greece: research spotlight on the Center's postdoctoral fellows, 2025-26

From left: Postdoctoral fellows Samet Budak, Stefano Di Pietrantonio

and Claudio Russello. Photo by Sameer A. Khan/Fotobuddy.

The Seeger Center’s 2025-26 postdoctoral fellows share research interests in literature, history, and translation — and bring combined working knowledge of a dozen languages to their current projects.

Historian Samet Budak is a Hannah Seeger Davis Postdoctoral Fellow; philologist Stefano Di Pietrantonio and literary and cultural analysis scholar Claudio Russello have been appointed as Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Fellows.

Since their arrival last fall, they have conducted research in the Hellenic collections at Princeton University Library, sharing their work in talks at Scheide Caldwell House. They spent January in residence at the Princeton Athens Center, participating in the Center’s research communities and visiting libraries in Greece. The cohort returned to campus last spring for research, study and collaboration.

2025-26 postdoctoral fellows article

Congratulations, Class of 2026!

From left: Nadia Makuc, Olivia Lechner, Associate Professor of History and Hellenic Studies Jack Tannous, Joe Silva, Daniel Kaiser, and Jack Geld. Photo by Chris Twiname.

Warmest congratulations to the Class of 2026!

The Seeger Center awarded minors in Hellenic Studies to four members of the Class of 2026: Nadia Makuc (classics), Olivia Lechner (politics), Joe Silva (history), and Daniel Kaiser (history). Jack Geld (classics) received the 2026 Hellenic Studies Senior Thesis Prize.

Lucia Waldschuetz, who earned a Ph.D. in history, was awarded a Graduate Certificate in Hellenic Studies from the Center. Her dissertation was titled “Bound by Obligation: Surety and Dependence on the Landed Estates of Late Antique Egypt.”

Two other doctoral students who received support from the Center earned their Ph.D.s this year. Andreas Kounis-Melas (chemical and biological engineering), and William Pedrick (art and archaeology).

Class of 2026 article

Director's Bookshelf

In our Director’s Bookshelf series, Dimitri Gondicas speaks with authors from the Center’s academic community about their new books and the research they conducted at Princeton.

Click below for interviews with Katia Arfara, Nathan Arrington, Nikolas Bakirtzis, Charlie Barber, John Christian Davis and Luca Zavagno.

Katia Arfara interview

Nathan Arrington interview

Nikolas Bakirtzis interview

Charlie Barber interview

John Christian Davis interview

Luca Zavagno interview

History in hand: numismatics training sparks Hellenic Studies graduate students’ research

Graduate students Julia Paré (classics) and Massimiliano Dalmasso (history) examine a gold coin at the Hellenic Studies Graduate Reading Group. Photo by Catherine Curan.

On a blustery March afternoon, half a dozen Hellenic Studies graduate students met on campus to visit Greek lands after the Fourth Crusade.

Princeton University Library’s extensive collection of historic coins — including Hellenic material acquired with support from the Stanley J. Seeger Hellenic Fund — provided the portal to these distant places and long-ago days. The students were attending a session of the Hellenic Studies Graduate Reading Group held in Special Collections at Firestone Library. Alan Stahl, curator of numismatics, and Elena Baldi, Byzantine numismatics cataloger and Linked-Open-Data coordinator, served as expert guides for the students. Close examination of rare medieval coins enhanced their training in numismatic skills and methods.

Graduate student numismatics training article

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