Emmanouil Varvounis - Biography#
Emmanouil G. Varvounis (Samos Isdland, 1966) is Professor of Folklore at the Department of Humanities of the Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH).
He studied History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1983–1988) and Theology at the same University (1988–1993). He received his PhD in Folklore from the Department of Primary Education, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (1990). He conducted postdoctoral research at the Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) (1995–1996).
He has served as Chair of the Department of History and Ethnology at DUTH (2016–2020) and as Dean of the School of Classical and Humanities Studies (2021–2025). Since 2015, he has been Director of the Laboratory of Folklore and Social Anthropology at DUTH. He is Director of the MA Programme Cultural Studies: Modern Hellenism and Balkans (2024–2027) and co-founder of the inter-institutional MA Programme Folklore, Folkloristics and Cultural Management (Universities of Thrace, Athens and the Aegean).
He is Director of the Center for Ecclesiastical, Historical and Cultural Studies (since 2017), has served on the Board of Directors of the Ethnological Museum of Macedonia–Thrace (2021–2022), and is General Secretary of the Hellenic Folklore Society (since 2023). He is also a member of the National Council for Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture (2024–2027).
Within the framework of European and international cooperation, he has coordinated and participated in research networks, bilateral and multilateral academic collaborations, and international conferences in Greece and South-Eastern Europe, contributing to comparative and cross-cultural approaches in folklore and social anthropology.
His research focuses on folklore, religious culture, and social and cultural change in Greece and the Balkans, with particular emphasis on minority populations, especially the Pomaks of Thrace.
His scholarly output includes selectively: 145 authored books and monographs, 118 peer-reviewed academic papers, and the editing of 3 collective scholarly volumes. 1,880 represents the total body of scholarly contributions across all publication formats. His research has been supported through funded projects by Greek public bodies, universities, and cultural institutions, as well as through European and international academic cooperation frameworks. He has published in numerous international peer-reviewed journals in Europe and the United States, including Folk Life, Byzantion, Proverbium, Balcanica, Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences, American International Journal of Social Science, and journals of major European academies
For his scholarly work, he has received eighteen academic awards and honorary distinctions in Greece and abroad. His books and studies have been translated into fifteen languages, and he has been invited to teach and lecture in nineteen countries.
