Hélène Ahrweiler-Glykatzi, a descendant of a Greek family driven out from Asia Minor, actively took part in the Resistance movement and then, just after the war, enrolled in the historical section of the University of Athens and followed the courses of Greek Byzantinologist Dionyssios Zakythinos. Granted a scholarship from the French government, she continued her historical studies at the École pratique des hautes études after a brief professional experience at the Centre for Asia Minor Studies in Athens (1950-1953). In France, she pursued a research career at the National Centre for Scientific Research and a doctoral thesis published under the title “Byzance et la Mer” ([Byzantium and the Sea], 1966). This work, which was in line with studies on the administrative institutions of Byzantium, introduced her to the academic world and allowed her to be appointed to the Sorbonne in 1967. After a research stay in Dumbarton Oaks in the early 1970s, she published a new book, “L’Idéologie politique de l’Empire byzantin” ([The Political Ideology of the Byzantine Empire], 1975), where she tried to show that Greekness and Orthodoxy gradually became the basis of Byzantine ideology and served to found Greek continuity until today. The notion of continuity, extended to the European space, is also dealt with in two books published in 2000, “The Making of Europe” and “Les Européens” [The Europeans], a collection of studies that she co-directs with Maurice Aymard. This work, a true journey through time, from Antiquity to the twentieth century, is part of a transnational issue: the aim is to define multicultural Europe, which nonetheless remains “one and recognisable” in all its aspects. H. Ahrweiler-Glykatzi became the first woman president of the Sorbonne (1976-1981) then rector of the Paris Academy (1982-1989), before chairing the Centre Pompidou (1989-1991). A specialist of the Byzantine period, but equally skilled in the study of Antiquity and contemporary Greece, she contributes through her historical works to the strengthening of European consciousness. Hellenic by birth, European by conviction, she is part of a Europe seen as “one great homeland”.
