Dimitri serves as liaison to the Global Studies program, the Department of Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Cultures, and the Department of Classics. In this role, he provides communication and outreach, research support, and instructional services to faculty and students. His ability to provide these services is facilitated by a long academic career, through which he has gained extensive experience in research, teaching, and academic publishing. He is an active researcher in premodern Middle Eastern history, with affiliated faculty status in the History department.

Dimitri holds a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and a B.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Before joining the UVA Library, he was Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of St Andrews (Scotland, U.K.) He has also held several research fellowships (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ; British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship; Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship in Byzantine Studies). He is the author and editor of a number of books, journal articles, and book chapters focusing mainly on the political and intellectual history of the fifteenth-century Ottoman Empire. Apart from Ottoman history, his fields of expertise include Byzantine studies, as well as Middle Eastern history from late antiquity to the present.