Stamatoyiannopoulou Maria

Maria Stamatoyiannopoulou received her University Degree in Public Law and Poltical Sciences from the University of Athens and her Ph.D in History from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her PhD research focused on the rise and decline of the export artisanal production of a Thessalian community in the late 18th and early 19th century. During two years she worked in the Research Center for Greek Society of the Greek Academy. Her research object was the seasonal movements of the rural families in Peloponese (19th century). From 1987 she is teaching at the Departement of Social Anthropology and History at the University of the Aegean. She has participated in the historical documentation of local archival collections of Mytilene. Her research interests concern the historical construction of kinship and family structures in the Ottoman Empire during the 19th and early 20th century and the organization of kinship networks, the emergence of new commercial groups in the same area during the same period, the rise of a literate community and its role in the construction of identities. Her recent research concern the epistolary practices through private records of commercial families of Mytilene, the construcion of the “self”, the relationship between kinship and commmercial networks as part of this process and the ways these groups represent their relationship with their birthplace and the places of their commercial activity. Actually, she is member of a research team (including historians and political scientists) on public sociality, funded by the European Union.