Faculty and staff

Aleksandar has been teaching pre-modern Mediterranean history at UFV since 2018. 

Aleks' research focuses on the Eastern Roman Empire (395–1453) – also known as Byzantium – which thrived in the Medieval Mediterranean. In his monograph Michael Palaiologos and the Publics of the Byzantine Empire in Exile, c.1223–1259, Aleks explores the role individual and collective agency played in the formation of the public sphere in the thirteenth-century exilic Roman state in Asia Minor. Aleks' current research project examines the social, cultural, and economic connections between urban and rural settlements in the early thirteenth-century Epiros by looking at the engagement of the provincial populace from all walks of life with the imperial bureaucratic practices. 

Aleks' research interests are reflected in his teaching style. An essential component of Aleks' teaching revolves around the notion that history develops in a nonlinear way. That is, his approach to teaching pre-modern history replaces the well-ingrained notion of the linear development of the Western civilization – where Ancient Greek democracy and Plato lead exclusively and directly to European Enlightenment and NATO – with the framework of constant exchange of knowledge in the wider Mediterranean and, in extension, the Eurasian world of which Europe is but a part.

• 2019 PhD History, Simon Fraser University
• 2014 MA Classics, University of Belgrade
• 2013 BA Classics, University of Belgrade

Social and cultural history of the Mediterranean and Europe in the pre-modern times.

• Thirteenth-Century Epiros
• Thirteenth-Century Byzantine Asia Minor
• Byzantine Social and Cultural History
• Late Medieval Social and Cultural History of the Mediterranean
• Crusading Culture
• Cultural Hybridity
• Greek Philology

• “Flirting with the Romans: Byzantine Popular Culture in the Romaic Ghazals of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi and Sultan Walad.” 45th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. University of Wisconsin-Madison. Madison (Wisconsin, USA). November 2019.
• “The Afterlife of Megas Domestikos Andronikos Palaiologos: Palaiologan Propaganda in Laskarid Thessaloniki.” 44th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. University of Texas. San Antonio (Texas, USA). October 2018.
• “Constructions of Distinct Identity in Lusignan Cyprus.” 25th Biennial Symposium of Modern Greek Studies Association. Stockton University. Galloway (New Jersey, USA). November 2017.
•  “Ioannes III Vatatzes’s Italian Venture: Imperial Agency in the Time of Decline.” 43rd Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. University of Minnesota. Minneapolis (Minnesota, USA). October 2017.
• “By Deeds and Not Fiction: Courting the Public with Public Infrastructure in Laskarid Asia Minor.” Collectivities, Individuals, Identity, and the Polity: Imagining the Commons in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Simon Fraser University. Vancouver (BC, Canada). February 2017. 
• “The Good, the Bad, the Ugly: De-legitimization of the Laskarid Dynasty in George Akropolites’s The History.” 42nd Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Cornell University. Ithaca (New York, USA). October 2016.
• “Imagined Communities in Middle and Late Byzantine Historiography: The Case of the Seljuk Turks.” Second Annual Western Consortium for Hellenic Studies Graduate Student Conference. Simon Fraser University. Vancouver (BC, Canada). April 2016.
• “Turks or New Persians? Seljuk Turkish Identity in Byzantine Historiography.” 41st Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Columbia, Fordham, CUNY. New York City (New York, USA). October 2015.
• “Orientalizing Byzantium: Perceptions of the Byzantine Empire in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Western European Historical Narratives.” 24th Biennial Symposium of the Modern Greek Studies Association. Georgia State University. Atlanta (Georgia, USA). October 2015.
• “Conceptions of Byzantium in the Works of Lord Byron and John Cam Hobhouse.” The 10th International Student Byron Conference. The Messolonghi Byron Society. Messolonghi (Greece). May 2015.
• “Seljuk Turks: The Contemporaneous Persians––Usage of the Classical Ethnonym Persians in George Akropolites’s History.” Inaugural Annual Western Consortium for Hellenic Studies Graduate Student Conference. University of California San. San Diego (California, USA). April 2015.
• “Praise of a Teacher or Periautology?: Theodore II Laskaris’ Self-Representation in the Encomium of George Akropolites.” 40th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference. Simon Fraser University. Vancouver (BC, Canada). November 2014.
• “Slavs in the Commonwealth of George Akropolites.” International Scientific Symposium: Macedonia and the Balkans in the Byzantine Commonwealth. Euro-Balkan University. Skopje (North Macedonia Macedonia). October 2013.

Monograph

• Michael Palaiologos and the Publics of the Byzantine Empire in Exile (c.1223–1259). Palgrave Macmillan (2022).

Journal Articles

• “Ioannes III Batatzes’s Italian Venture: Byzantine Imperial Revival in Mediterranean Diplomacy.” Issues in Anthropology and Ethnography: Thematic Issue – Anthropology and History 17.4 (2022), 1225–1236.
• “Imagining the Communities of Others: The Case of the Seljuk Turks.” Byzantina Symmeikta 28 (2018), 239–273.
• “Opis i imenovanje Turaka u Istoriji Gerogija Akropolita.” Zbornik Matice Srpske za klasične studije 15 (2013), 189–209.