Konstantin’s field is history of the Greek world, including the versatile interactions between Greeks and their non-Greek neighbours in Europe, Asia, and Africa. His research interests relate to the historical geography and cultural ecology as a background for an advanced explanation of political, military, socio-economical and cultural phenomena within the Mediterranean world. Here belong the formation of and correlation between polis and monarchic institutions, Greek colonization, Greek warfare and diplomacy from Mycenaean times to the very end of the Hellenistic period, Roman expansion into the eastern Mediterranean, ancient archives including libraries and maps, as well as mystery cults and ancient visualization of religious concepts and narratives. Konstantin taught Ancient History at St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia for many years. He was also a teaching and research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) at Martin Luther University of Halle and Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg where he worked on the completion of his monographs on several key Hellenistic authors such as Strabo and Pseudo-Scymnus. Currently he teaches Ancient History, Civilizations and Religion in Canada. His teaching and research is based on a variety of ancient sources such as literary texts, epigraphic and archaeological materials, including religious and burial architecture, wall-paintings, and masterpieces of toreutics.

Over recent years, Konstantin has focused on exploring three major topics:

- Origin of Greek historiography and its anthropological and geographical backdrop in Hecataeus and Herodotus

- The spillover effects of the Early Hellenistic political processes and crucial military events for restructuring the traditional ethnic and cultural space of Greece, non-Greek Europe and the Near and Middle East

- Cultural diversity within and contributions of ethnic minorities to Classical civilization.

„Earth and Water: On the Ethnological and Geographical Fabric of History in Herodotus“

This research project owes special thanks to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation whose generous support makes it possible to be carried out in close collaboration with Prof. Dr. Klaus Geus and all the colleagues from the Arbeitsbereich für Historische Geographie des antiken Mittelmeerraumes who are being involved in researching historical geographical issues including space perception in Herodotus.

The aim of this project is to provide some insights into the process of data-gathering in Hecataeus and Herodotus which has resulted in typologically similar geographical and ethnographical logoi. Searching in depth for the true originators of these specific narratives as wells as for the genuine narrative components, modules, and self-contained units delivered by ‘local experts’ to the two extensive travellers, the author introduced the term “bifocal perspective” of the Periegesis Ges/Ges Periodos in order to explain the balance between both the coastline and the inland perspective based on explicit ancient accounts. He concentrates particularly on two types of inland-perspective narratives, the periegesis-style logos and periodos-style logos, which have resulted from the inevitable overlap of information between the logographic work of Hecataeus and its illustration, the perfected map of the world. In order to distinguish between the two narratives, the project pays more attention to the specific way the rivers have been described and their condition of being mappable. It turns out that delineations of rivers from source to mouth are capable to be put on a map and they may have belonged to periodos-style logoi, whereas the rivers in periegesis-style logoi served solely for anonymous crossing points on the way of local guides. Instructive parallels drown from Xenophon’s Anabasis build up the vivid picture of the periegesis in the making, on daily basis, and corroborate the author’s thesis that ready-made ethno-geographical logoi and information modules traditionally created from inland perspective shaped the work of the pioneering prose-writers. The author employs the results of his analysis on several completely independent and widely differing Herodotean narratives  concerning Scythia, Egypt, Libya, Thrace, Asia Minor, and the Middle East with the Caspian region. One of the objectives of this project would be the first attempt at a detailed reconstruction of some sections from the famous Hecataeus’ map, its history of proliferation and how it may have been lost to time.

Books

2008. History and Civilizations (Ancient World). Grade 7 (Bulg.; co-author and team leader: Winner in the National Competition 2008 for a new textbook in History, conducted by the Ministry of Education and Sciences of Republic of Bulgaria), Sofia 2008, 22011, 191 pp.

2007. Pseudo-Skymnos or Semos of Delos. Studies on Accounts of Greek Writers about the Western Pontus Euxine, (Bulgarian edition with a summary in English). University Press Sofia, 2007, 265 pp.

2004. Pseudo-Skymnos (Semos von Delos?) (= Palingenesia. Schriftenreihe für Klassische Altertums­wissen­schaften Bd. 82). Stuttgart 2004, Franz Steiner Publishing House Stuttgart. 268 pp.

2003.  Die Thraker südlich vom Balkan in den Geographika Strabos. Quel­len­kritische Unter­suchungen (= Palingenesia. Schriftenreihe für Klassische Altertums­wissen­schaften Bd. 81). Wiesbaden 2003, Franz Steiner Publishing House Stuttgart. 399 pp.

2003. Rulers of Ancient Europe (English and Bulgarian version). Sofia, 2003, Publ. Comp. KIBEA. 120 pp. Rev. M. Slavova, About the Ancient Rulers. In: Newspaper for Literature 41/ 17. Dec. 2003, p. 4 Rev. M. Tacheva, Rulers of Ancient Europe. In: Culture 4/ 30. Jan. 2004, p. 7.

Greek translation Publ. Comp. Fytraki, 2007, 155 pp.

2000. Thracian Antiquity. Historical Essays. (Bulg.) Sofia, 2000, 331 pp.

Selected Articles

2012. The “Sacred Counsel”: On Some Features of the Periegesis, Periodos, and Their Originators. Mapping the Oikumene. M. Rathmann & K. Geus (eds.), Berlin (de Gruyter), 1-34 (forthcoming).

2012. Abrupolis (I), King of the Sapaeans, in: Amici Populi Romani (APR 04), ed. by Altay Coskun, Waterloo, On. 2010. URL: http://www.apr.uwaterloo.ca.

2012. Sitas, King of the Dentheletes, in: Amici Populi Romani (APR 04), ed. by Altay Coskun, Waterloo, On. 2010. URL: http://www.apr.uwaterloo.ca.

2008. The Secret of the Tomb (Bulg.). In: Enlightener. The Bulgarian Journal of History and Archaeology. April – June 2008, 4-12.

2007. Diplomacy in the time of plague. In: International Academic Seminar Jubilaeus VI, 21. - 22. 05. 2004 University of Sofia. Sofia 2007, 103-115.

2006. Von Tymnes bis Suda: Muster zur Schilderung des nord-westlichen Pontosraumes innerhalb der antiken und postantiken Überlieferung. In: Pontos Euxeinos. Beiträge zur Archäologie und Geschichte des antiken Schwarzmeer- und Balkanraumes. Prof. Dr. Manfred Oppermann zum 65. Geburtstag (= ZAKS 10), Langenweißbach, 2006, 433-446.

2002. The First Inscription in Linear B from Inland Thrace (Drama-Kairaka). In: Jubilaeus V. Collection dedicated to Professor Margarita Tacheva, Sofia, 2002, 32-60.

2000. The Image Language in Monuments of Thracian Culture (Bulg.). In: Past 2, 2000, 5-24

2000. Identification archéologique et historique de l’emporion de Pistiros en Thrace. In: BCH 123/1, 2000, 319-329.