mr. D. (Daphne) Penna

Daphne Penna studied law at the University of Athens in Greece where she completed her Masters in Legal History (2003). In the year 2012 she defended and published her thesis on “The Byzantine Imperial Acts to Venice, Pisa and Genoa, 10th-12th Centuries. A Comparative Legal Study” (ed. Eleven International Publishing).

In 2022 together with Roos Meijering she published the book: "A Sourcebook on Byzantine Law. Illustrating Byzantine Law through the Sources." (ed. Brill). This is the first book in English providing a wide range of Byzantine legal sources. In six chapters, this book explains and illustrates Byzantine law through a selection of fundamental Byzantine legal sources, beginning with the sources before the time of Justinian, and extending up to AD 1453. 

Penna is currently working as assistant professor (universitair docent) in the Department of Legal History at the University of Groningen. Her interests lie in Roman and Byzantine law and especially in their influence on the European legal tradition; she has published extensively on this area (see Publications).

She has taught seminars and has given lectures on Byzantine law within Universities and Research Centres in the Netherlands and abroad, for example: University of Amsterdam UvA, Utrecht University, Radboud University Nijmegen, Leiden University, Sorbonne University, the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., Dumbarton Oaks, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Aristotle University Thessaloniki, University of Edinburgh, Institute of Medieval Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences  (see Research, Full Research Profile, Activities).