Sotiris Balatsoukas, Associate Professor, University of Thessaly

Dr. Sotirios Balatsoukas was born in Trikala, Thessaly. He graduated with highest distinction from the 4th General Lyceum of Trikala. After his university studies in Ioannina and Thessaloniki, in 1992 he received a scholarship for studies in France at the Université des Sciences Humaines in Strasbourg. In 1996 he received his PhD at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, with a doctoral dissertation entitled The Saints and the Natural Environment, an original and timely study that has been published four times; the fourth edition is prefaced by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.

For many years he has taught in Higher Education, and for thirty years he has been systematically engaged in the science of Hagiology, focusing on the study of sources and manuscripts from Mount Athos, Meteora, and other significant scholarly centers. He has a rich body of academic work, including twenty independent volumes and many publications in Greek and international scholarly journals. One of his most important works is the original ten-volume series Byzantine Hagiological Texts, translated and commented upon in Modern Greek.

He has participated in numerous conferences and delivered lectures in Greece and abroad. For a decade he served as Director of the Private Office of the late Archbishop of Athens and All Greece Christodoulos, and also during the early years of Archbishop Ieronymos II’s archiepiscopate. From 2018 to the present, he serves without remuneration as Director of the Private Office and Scientific Advisor to the Metropolitan of Larisa and Tyrnavos, Ieronymos. In 2023 he was awarded the honorary office of “Archon Protonotarios” of the Ecumenical Patriarchate by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. From 3 July 2024 he has been a faculty member of the School of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Thessaly.

He is a professor of Hagiology at the Higher Ecclesiastical Academy of Athens.