Luca Zavagno graduated from the University of Venice (2002); he obtained his Ph.D. (2007) at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on the society, economics and politics of Byzantine cities in the early Middle Ages. He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of History and the Department of Archaeology at Bilkent University. Dr. Zavagno is the author of many articles on the early Medieval Mediterranean, as well as three monographs: Cities in Transition: Urbanism in Byzantium Between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (British Archaeological Reports-International Series, 2009), Cyprus between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. An Island in Transition (Routledge, 2017), and The Byzantine City from Heraclius to the Fourth Crusade, 610-1204: Urban Life after Antiquity (Palgrave- Byzantine Studies Series, 2021). He has published the Routledge Companion to the Byzantine City (co-edited with Nikolas Bakirtzis, 2024) and he has recently completed his fourth monograph entitled The Byzantine Insular Worlds between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, c.a. 600–c.a. 900, (ARC Medieval Press, 2025). He also co-authored (with Özlem Caykent) the edited volume Islands of Eastern Mediterranean. A History of Cross Cultural Encounters (I.B. Tauris, 2014).