About the department

Welcome to the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King’s College London. This first page gives an overview of who we are and what we do; for access to more detailed information, use the links to the left. 
 
 
 
The Masters in Modern Greek Studies has been revised for study from 2009-10 onwards. 

Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at King's go back to 1919, when the Koraes Chair was inaugurated. Its first holder was A.J. Toynbee (1889-1975); more recently it has been held by the distinguished Byzantinists Romilly Jenkins, Cyril Mango, and Donald Nicol. Other distinguished former members of the Department include Averil Cameron, Richard Clogg, Peter Mackridge, and the late Philip Sherrard.
 
From its beginning as a research institution with a single full-time member of staff, the Department began to expand in the 1970s, with the establishment of a full undergraduate programme in Modern Greek Language and Literature (now Modern Greek Studies) in 1974, of the MA degree in Late Antique & Byzantine Studies in 1984, and of the MA degree in Modern Greek Studies in 1990.
 
The Department is now the largest of its kind in Britain, with seven full-time members of academic staff (two of whom also teach in the Department of Classics) and about forty students. More than half of these are engaged in postgraduate study.  In March 2001 the Department, again with the Department of Classics, was awarded the top score of 24 by the Quality Assurance Agency (pdf document) in its Subject Review of teaching provision.
 
We have a long and distinguished tradition of scholarship in the fields of Modern Greek and Byzantine history, language and literature. Recent developments have expanded our activities into the fields of contemporary Sociolinguistics and of Byzantine material culture, with a particular emphasis on Cyprus, and into developing digital resources in collaboration with the Centre for Computing in the Humanities.