Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002); he obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early middle ages. He is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Studies in the Department of History at Bilkent University, where is currently working on his third monograph entitled Is there any urban life after Late Antiquity? The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade (610-1204) (Palgrave- Pivot Series, forthcoming 2021) and on the Routledge Companion to the Byzantine City (a volume co-edited with Nikolas Bakirtzis).

Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the early Medieval and Byzantine Mediterranean, as well as two monographs: Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009) and Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. An Island in Transition (Routledge, 2017). He co-authored (with Özlem Caykent) the edited volumes Islands of Eastern Mediterranean. A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2014) and People and Goods on the Move. Merchants, Networks and Communication Routes in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean (IMK, 2016).  

He was also twice awarded the Dumbarton Oaks Summer Fellowship (2011 and 2016) as well as the prestigious Stanley Seeger Fellowship of the Hellenic Studies Center at Princeton University (2012), the Newton Mobility Grant (2018) and DEA- Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (2021). He is also the co-organizer of the Byzantium in Ankara-Seminar Series (www.byzantiumatankara.com), Associate Scholar of the Mediterranean Seminar (http://www.mediterraneanseminar.org/), member of the Princeton University FLAME-Framing the early Medieval Coinage project (http://coinage.princeton.edu/ ) and former Visiting professor in Byzantine Art History at the University of Venice.