Leo is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in sociocultural anthropology at SIUC. His research is centered on material culture, particularly on the sensory appreciation of cultural objects, with a special focus in Greek-American diasporic communities.

In 2002 he took part in an invited poster presentation on money and memory in Toronto, Canada, hosted by the Society for Economic Anthropology. Later that year he presented a paper in the Central States Anthropology Conference in East Lancing MI. His paper was titled, “Monetary Mnemonics; refashioning identity through the consumption of new money”, and dealt with the relationship between social identities and money.

In 2003, at the Central States Anthropology Conference in Louisville, KY, he presented a paper titled “This Money is like plastic; it doesn’t taste good”; the paper dealt with the issues of embodied memory and cultural identity. Later this year (November 2003) he will present an invited paper at the annual conference of the American Anthropological Association. The paper, titled “Moneys That Matter”, focuses on the sedimentation of cultural values in the body, particularly through habitual experiences of everyday life.

Leo is also currently involved in researching alternative uses of money in the Internet, with a particular interest in the use of money as a mnemonic device.