Eleni Tounta was born in Athens in 1973. She studied classical philology at the University of Athens
(1991-1995). In 1997 she received her master’s degree in history of religions at the University of
Liège (scholarship by Onassis Foundation, 1996-1997). She obtained her doctorate in medieval
history in 2006 at the University of Athens. In 2006-2007 she was research assistant for medieval
history at the University of Heidelberg. At present she is assistant professor in medieval history at the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Her research and publications focus on the German kingdom, the French kingdom, and the Kingdom
of Sicily, mainly from the 11th to the 15th century. Her research interests include a. the history of
medieval political thought, b. medieval historiography, c. the relations between medieval West and
the Byzantine empire, d. the production of otherness, e. the medieval symbolic communication, f.
hagiographical discourses and the construction of communities, g. crusade ideology, h. travel,
humanism, and the formation of early ethnographic discourses, i. colonialism in the eastern
Mediterranean.

Her articles have been published in international journals and collective volumes. Her publications
include the monographs Stories of saints. Communities, space, and memory in medieval Southern
Italy (end of the 9th-beginning of the 13th c.) (Athens, 2021) [in Greek], and Medieval Mirr of
Power: Historians and Narratives in Norman Southern Italy (Athens, 2012) [in Greek].

She is a member of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean, the Hellenic Historical Society, and the Association of Greek Historians.