Dimitris Krallis, a historian of Byzantium who teaches at Simon Fraser University and until recently directed the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies, works on the social and political history of the medieval Roman (Byzantine) state, especially satire, criticism and aspects of the culture usually ignored by both Enlightenment and conservative Orthodox narratives. His recent Greek-language book on Byzantine fiction and the “Greek imaginary” uses Byzantium not as a conservative symbol, but as a tool for imagining a more open, inclusive Greece.

He is now beginning a deeply personal project: studying the newly discovered archive of his grandfather (c.1833–1940), a rich source of letters, business papers, postcards and everyday documents that reveal how seemingly “small” places like Molivos, on Lesvos, were tightly connected to wider late Ottoman and global networks.

At the Benaki Museum he focuses on a reception room from a Kozani mansion as a gateway into that world: merchant houses, travelling artisans and a shared decorative “language” spanning the Balkans and Anatolia. He links this to today’s Greece, arguing that such histories of connectivity, hybridity and openness can inspire a contemporary, confidently multicultural Greek culture.