Eleanor Naxidou

Eleanor Naxidou is a native of Xanthi, in Thrace.  She has been a regular member of the teaching and research staff of the Department of History and Ethnology of the Democritus University since 2008 and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Modern and Contemporary History of South-Eastern Europe.  She received a degree in History from the Department of History and Archaeology of the Philosophical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where she subsequently received a Master’s Degree in History and then was awarded a doctorate on the subject of The Church and National Ideology:  From the Archibishopric of Ochrid to the Foundation of the Autocephalous ‘Macedonian Church
From 1992 to 2008, she taught at secondary level, before joining the Department as a regular member.  She has also taught a course entitled South-Eastern European Studies for the MA programme of the Law School of the Democritus University of Thrace.
She is a member of various learned societies concerned with the study of modern Balkan history and she has published widely on national identity in the Balkans and Bulgarian intellectual and political life in the 19th and early 20th c. 
Her research interests focus on the modern history of the south-east Balkans, Balkan nationalism, the growth of nationalist movements in the area, relations between the Church and national ideology, minorities in the Balkans, Bulgarian historiography, medieval Balkan history.