Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood

According to the University of Reading Classics Department, Sourvinou-Inwood's acknowledged supremacy in the area of Greek religion studies made a lasting contribution to the Department's research, and this field continues to be one of its strongholds in the twenty-first century. In 2018, the Festschrift Πλειών. Papers in memory of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood was published by the University of Crete, edited by Athena Kavoulaki. This followed a memorial conference that was held in 2012 in Crete.

After retiring from teaching in 1988, Sourvinou-Inwood began writing mystery novels set in ancient Greece, featuring a priestess as the detective; the novels draw extensively on her research. A collection of poems written during her undergraduate studies has also recently been published.

Sourvinou-Inwood moved to the UK in 1969, and graduated from Oxford in 1973 with a doctorate on Minoan civilization and Mycenaean beliefs in the afterlife. She subsequently worked as a lecturer in classical archaeology at Liverpool (1976–78), a senior research Fellow at University College, Oxford (1990–95), and Reader in Classical Literature at the University of Reading (1995–98).

Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood (Greek: Χριστιάνα Σουρβίνου; February 26, 1945 – May 19, 2007) was a scholar in the field of Ancient Greek religion and a highly influential Hellenist.

Sourvinou-Inwood was born in Volos, Greece, in 1945, but grew up in Corfu. Sourvinou-Inwood studied at the University of Athens from 1962–66, where she specialised in history and archaeology, and was a pupil of the Greek prehistoric archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos; after graduating with a starred first in Classics, she began research in the field of Mycenology in Rome, publishing her first article on the reading of a Linear B tablet from Knossos in 1968.