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The sub-faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies runs a year long seminar series, while students and staff often collaborate to develop conferences and colloquia on a variety of topics.

These seminars and conferences bring together researchers and speakers from around the university as well as throughout the UK and internationally, attracting audiences of diverse backgrounds.

From 2015 to 2018, the Greek Seminar was generously supported by an A. S. Onassis Foundation special grant.

This Term's Seminars

If you would like to receive regular updates about the Modern Greek Seminar then you can join the mailing list by sending an email to: modern-greek-seminar-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk

Trinity 2021

"What Greece...", 21 April 2021

 

Hilary 2021

Our Intense Biopolitical Present: COVID and Before

A roundtable as part of the series: Modern Greek Studies and Beyond: Local Cases, Global Debates

 

Michaelmas 2020

Three rountables were held as part of the series: Modern Greek Studies and Beyond: Local Cases, Global Debates recording of which can be found on YouTube:

Greek and Green? Eco-turn in Modern Greek Studies
Golden Dawn: The End of the Story?
On Islands and Camps: From Leros to Lesvos

 

Trinity 2020

Virtual seminar reflecting back on the Sub-faculty's recent research activity. To follow daily updates, please join the Modern Greek Studies at Oxford Facebook page and/or become members of the Seminar mail-list, by sending an email to modern-greek-seminar-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk. Weekly updates will also be published on the dedicated virtual seminar website.

 

Past Seminars

 

Hilary 2020

30 January

Maria Boletsi (University of Amsterdam / Leiden University)

On Ghost Ships, Conjurations, and Broken Promises: C.P. Cavafy's Poetics of the Spectral



This lecture is the first part of a three day event launching TORCH International Partnership "Rethinking Modern Greek Studies in the 21st Century: A Cultural Analysis Network". More details about the network and full programme can be found here
5 March

Vicky Kaisidou (University of Birmingham)

(Post)memory and Political responsibility: Twenty-first Century Novels of the Greek Civil War in Comparative Perspective
12 March

Evie Papada (Loughborough University)

A Present Denied: The Politics of Asylum and Vulnerability in Lesbos

 

Michaelmas 2019

24 October

Maria Tamboukou (University of East London)

Decolonizing Theory, Challenging the Nomad: Women Refugees in Greece Tell Their Story
31 October

Stelios Giamarelos (University College London)

The Modern Margin at the Classical Centre: A Critical Historiography of Architecture in Greece
7 November

Giorgos Sampatatakis (University of Patras)

Defining Loss: Thanatography and the Limits of the Sayable in Greek Literature, Theatre, and Performance on AIDS
14 November

Dimitris Asimakoulas (University of Surrey)

Aristophanes in Comic Books: Cultural Transfer, Humour, and Translation

 

Trinity 2019

2 May

Tom Western (University of Oxford)

Sonopolis: Sound, Citizenship and Migrant Activisms in Athens
22 May

Anastasia Revi, Giorgos Iliopoulos and Praxis Theatre Group, Oxford

Performing Greek Theatre Outside Greece
30 May Tonia Kazakopoulou (University of Reading)

Greek Cinema of Dejection
13 June

Alexis Radisoglou, Kristina Gedgaudaite and Dimitris Papanikolaou (University of Oxford)

There is Always Something about the Family:

Gender, Sexuality, Kinship and Social Change in Greece

Hilary 2019

17 January

Natasha Lemos

Common Topoi: Echoes across the National Divide in the War Literatures of Greece and Turkey

7 February

Huw Halstead (St Andrews)

Patrída as a Local Metaphor: Local Homelands, National Belonging,and the Expatriated Greeks of Turkey

21 February

Kostis Kornetis (Oxford)

The Three Generations of Transition: Memories of the Metapolitefsi in Comparative Perspective

7 March

Nikolaos Papadogiannis (Bangor)

Same-sex Practice in Greece and Spatial Mobility, 1960s-1980s

Michaelmas 2018

25 October Chryssanthi Avlami (Panteion)

Commerce, virtues and the question of civilization in Coray's 'Mémoire sur l'état actuel de la civilisation en Grèce' (Paris 1803)
1 November Irene Loulakaki (Greek Ministry of Education)

The Muse and the mystification of writing: Cases from recent Greek poetry
15 November Lycourgos Sophoulis (Oxford)

In search of usable past: the case of the first Athenian cathedral
22 November Manolis Pratsinakis (Oxford)

Rethinking the new Greek emigration

 

Trinity 2018

 

24 May Demosthenis Papamarkos in conversation

Demosthenis Papamarkos was born in 1983. He has published two novels in 1998 and 2001 and two short story collections in 2012 and 2014. His last book, Giak, was written while he was still a DPhil student in Ancient History at the University of Oxford and took the Greek literary world by storm: it won two major literary awards in 2015, became an instant best-seller, having sold around 30,000 copies, and has sparked debates in the press and the academic world which continue to this day. Giak has already been adapted successfully for the stage twice and has created an unprecedented momentum for its author who has since then been working in a variety of media (film, theatre, graphic novel) as well as on his next novel. The Sub-Faculty of Byzantine and Modern Greek is proud to welcome Demosthenis Papamarkos back in Oxford, for a discussion on his achievements in recent years, on Giak and the reasons of its extraordinary success, on writing and publishing in Greece today, and on his future projects.
31 May Nina Rapi in conversation — download transcript (PDF)

Well known for her distinctive voice and her daring approach, Nina Rapi is a celebrated author of short stories, essays and theatre plays whose work has been presented internationally (Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, Lyric Studio, Tristan Bates, ICA, Riverside Studios, Gielgud Theatre, National Theatre of Greece, BITS Festival India), Estaca Zero Teatro (Portugal). An experienced educator, creative writing tutor, gender activist and public intellectual, Nina Rapi will discuss the different aspects of her career and the intricacies of writing (and seeing your work performed) between languages, countries and genders. She will also talk about her play Splinters, on stage in Oxford during week 6. This event is scheduled to accompany the performance of Nina Rapi’s Splinters (directed by Anastasia Revi), produced by the Oxford University Greek Society drama company PRAXIS.

Hilary 2018

25 January Marissia Frangou & Philip Hager (Canterbury Christ Church University & University of Kent)

Dramaturgies of Change: Greek Theatre Now
1 February Eleni Papazoglou (University of Thessaloniki)

Texts, Bodies and Moral Panics: Hofmannsthal's Electra goes to Epidaurus (2007)
26 February Gonda van Steen (University of Florida)

Rewriting tragedy on a prison island: Aris Alexandrou's Antigone (1951)

Part of the 'Reading the Classical Past' lecture series

(This seminar held at 5 p.m. First Floor Lecture Room 2, 47 Wellington Square)
1 March Eleftheria Ioannidou (University of Groningen)

A Classical Modernity: Greek Theatre and Fascism
8 March Marilena Zaroulia (University of Winchester)

What Makes our Motherland? Performing Greece (in crisis) at the National Theatre

Michaelmas 2017

26 October Takis Kayalis (Ioannina)

C. P. Cavafy: History, Archaeology, Empire
2 November Alexander Kazamias (Coventry)

The Visual Politics of Fear: Images of Anti-Communist Propaganda in Post-War Greece
9 November Fiona Antonelaki (King’s College London)

The Generation of the 1930s and the Greek Literary Canon: New Evidence, New Questions
16 November Dimitris Dalakoglou (Vrije, Amsterdam)

Heavy Metal and Neo-Nazism in Contemporary Greece

(a paper co-authored with Dimitris Borboudakis)
23 November Kristina Gedgaudaite (Oxford)

Memory Wars and their Ideologies: Asia Minor in Contemporary Greek Culture
30 November David Roessel (Stockton, NJ)

An Englishman and an American with the Greek Resistance: The War-Time Experience of Colonel C. M. Woodhouse and Major Jerry Wines in Memoir and Fiction

Trinity 2017

4 May Lydia Papadimitriou (Liverpool John Moores University)

A Blast and other crises: Tracing the economy and ecology of recent Greek cinema
11 May A discussion with the playwright Andreas Flourakis about his play Θέλω μια χώρα
25 May Alexandra Georgakopoulou-Nunes (King’s College London) &

Korina Giaxoglou (Open University)

Memes, tweets & other small stories about Yanis Varoufakis: On the social-mediatization of the Greek economy

Hilary 2017

26 January Anne Zouroudi

A Detective in Winged Sandals: Greek Mythology in Crime Fiction
9 February Antonis Nikolopoulos (Soloúp)

Narrating History Through Comics in the Graphic Novel "Ayvali"
23 February Sotiris Paraschas (King’s College London)

What is an author in nineteenth-century Greece?
2 March David Holton (University of Cambridge)

Poetry and music in 16th-century Cyprus
9 March Maria Stassinopoulou (University of Vienna)

Book Launch: Across the Danube: Southeastern Europeans and Their Travelling Identities (17th–19th centuries)

Michaelmas 2016

20 October Katherine Barnes (Australian National University)

History from the ground up: Greece 1942-45 and The Sabotage Diaries
3 November Marjolijne Janssen

The Cambridge Grammar of Medieval Greek project
10 November Peter Mackridge (University of Oxford)

Literary representations of Greek life and language in the late eighteenth century

Trinity 2016

2 June Elena Tzelepis (University of Athens)

Reading Antigone in contemporary Athens: Inclusions, exclusions, foreclosures, and the eternal question of who belongs to the polis

Michaelmas 2015

15 October Akis Gavriilidis (Brussels)

Gustav-Adolf, the king of Asine that never was: Seferis between Europe and (his native) Asia

Trinity 2015

28 May Liana Giannakopoulou (University of Cambridge)

Engonopoulos’ Bolívar: from Pindar to Abraham Lincoln

Hilary 2015

29 January George Vassiadis (Royal Holloawy, University of London)

‘Honoured prisoners of the Reich’: the Rizos Rangavis family, 1941-1945
5 February Maria Margaronis (The Nation & University of Oxford)

Covering the Greek elections
19 February Elizabeth Kirtsoglou (University of Durham)

‘We are all Immigrants’: anthropological analysis of recognition and political subjectivity
5 March Akis Papantonis (University of Cologn)

Literature and biology of affection in a story set in Oxford: a presentation on the novella Καρυότυπος (Athens, 2014)

Michaelmas 2014

30 October Titika Dimitroulia (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Economy, politics, and literary publishing in Greece: from the fall of the dictatorship to the 2008 crisis
6 November David Wills

Reinventing Paradise: the Greek crisis and contemporary British travel narratives
20 November Sarah Ekdawi (University of Oxford)

The man, the text and the poet: multimodal translations of Cavafy
4 December James Pettifer (University of Oxford)

Hellenism in Albania: twenty years after communism

Trinity 2014

15 May 2014 Kalliopi Fouseki (UCL)

Claiming the Parthenon Marbles: whose claim and on behalf of whom?

Hilary 2014

13 March 2014 Vangelis Karamanolakis (University of Athens)

Historians and the trauma of the past: the destruction of security citizens’ records in Greece (1989)

Michaelmas 2013

31 October Screening of Twice a Stranger, followed by Panel discussion, Unmixing People: an assessment of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, with A. Abakan (BBC), R. Hirschon (St Peter’s), M. Llewellyn Smith (St Antony’s), V. Solomonides (King’s College, London)

Event co-organised with SEESOX.
7 November Annika Demosthenous (University of Oxford)

Lost cities: Kyrenia and Famagusta in Cypriot-Greek poetry
14 November Marios Psarras (Queen Mary, London)

‘No country for old faggots’: breaking with the parental home and exploring queer Utopias in Panos Koutras’s Strella
28 November Anna-Maria Sichani (University of Athens)

Revolutionary pathos, Greek ethos: alternative literary magazines and ‘marginal poetics; in the long (Greek) sixties
5 December Konstantina Zannou (Queen Mary, London)

National poets stammering the nation: Foscolo, Solomos and Kalvos

Trinity 2013

2 May Konstantinos Panapakidis (Goldsmiths College, London)

Dragging the past in Athens: autoethnography, visual methods and the recording of Greek drag performance culture
16 May Dimitris Gkintidis (University of Oxford)

On generous others: European materiality and the discourse of autonomy in contemporary Greece
20 May Dimitris Kamouzis & Stefanos Katsikas (Centre for Asia Minor Studies & University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Book Launch: State-Nationalisms in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Turkey: Orthodox and Muslims, 1830–1945

Event co-organised with SEESOX
23 May Sheila Lecoeur (Imperial College, London)

Screening of: A Basket of Food, Greece in the 1940s
30 May Maria Vassilikou (Universität Freiburg)

The Holocaust in Greece in the light of a new collection of sources by Institut für Zeitgeschichte

Hilary 2013

7 February Akis Gavriilidis (University of Macedonia)

‘Two Brotherless Peoples’: Theodorakis, Elytis and other nationalists
14 February Dimitris Plantzos (University of Athens)

Hellas mon amour: Greek museums as national ‘sites of trauma’
28 February Michalis Chryssanthopoulos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)

Literature tackles history: the transformation of the public sphere in Greece in the late 19th and early 20th century
7 March Helena González Vaquerizo (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

Kazantzakis' Odyssey: a 20th century epic

Michaelmas 2012

25 October Fotini Dimirouli (University of Oxford)

Paradise Lost? Lawrence Durrell’s ‘romance’ with the Hellenic World
1 November Victoria Reuter (University of Oxford)

Ithaca revisited: modern responses to Cavafy
8 November Peter Mackridge (University of Oxford)

Vénise après Vénise: official languages in the Ionian Islands, 1797-1864
15 November Angie Voela (University of East London)

“Becoming-woman”: literature between the social sciences and the humanities
22 November Philip Phillis (University of Glasgow)

National or transnational? Reconfiguring contemporary Greek cinema
29 November David Holton (University of Cambridge)

Kazantzakis in the groves of academe: his 1946 visit to England

Michaelmas 2011

3 November Dimitris Antoniou (University of Oxford).

The Nation’s Vow: haunting fantasies of the Colonels’ Greece
17 November Giorgos Giannakopoulos (Queen Mary, London)

A.J. Toynbee's Frames of War in Asia Minor (1919-1922)
1 December Trouble in the archive: cultural responses to the Greek crisis

An illustrated lecture on recent film, literature and art from Greece by Dimitris Papanikolaou (Oxford), followed by a roundtable discussion.

Trinity 2011

26 May Spyros Tsoutsoumpis (University of Manchester)

Between honour and shame: a reappraisal of masculine identities among fighters of the Greek resistance (1941-1945)
9 June Hakan Özkan (University of Münster)

Romeyka in nowadays Turkey : the Pontic dialects of Trabzon
23 June Dimitris Papanikolaou (University of Oxford)

‘Alec Scouffi, un écrivain Grec assassiné à Paris’: movement, sexuality and the homosexual type in the long 1920s

Hilary 2011

27 January Giorgos Michalopoulos (University of Oxford)

What led to the war of 1897: Greek foreign policy in the late 19th century
10 February Eleni Papargyriou (King's College London)

Cavafy, photography and fetish
24 February Elisavet Pakis (University of Lancaster)

Staging lesbian blues: questioning gendered belonging in a Greek context
10 March Eleftheria Ioannidou (Freie Universität, Berlin)

Towards a national heterotopia: ancient theatres, ancient drama festivals and the cultural politics of performance in modern Greece

Michaelmas 2010

21 October Erato Basea (University of Oxford)

National identity in the Greek cinema of the auteur: the case of Michael Cacoyannis' Zorba the Greek (1964)

and

Dimitris Papanikolaou (University of Oxford)

Zorba and the Greek
4 November Efstratios Myrogiannis (University of Cambridge)

A canon in the making: ‘Byzantine History’ before Paparrigopoulos
18 November Philip Hager (University of Winchester)

Popular margins and the illegitimate mainstream: the field of theatre during the Colonels’ junta in Greece
2 December John Kittmer (King’s College, London)

‘Your body I know so well, like a poem memorized by heart’: some reflections on Ritsos reading the body

Hilary 2010

30 October Seila Lecoeur (Imperial College, London)

Mixed memories of occupation: the social impact of the Italian occupation of Syros,1941-43
4 February Christos Dermentzopoulos (Cultural Studies, University of Ioannina)

History, memory and identity in the film Politiki Kouzina (Touch of Spice)
18 February ‘Sex and the Other in Contemporary Greek Fiction’: A Conversation with Angela Dimitrakaki (History of Art, University of Edinburgh).
4 March Dimitris Tziovas (University of Birmingham)

The wound of history: Ritsos and the reception of Philoctetes

Michaelmas 2009

29 October Violetta Hionidou (University of Newcastle)

Famine, relief and politics in occupied Greece, 1941-1944
5 November Dimitris Sotiropoulos (University of Athens)

Are public policy reforms doomed? The case of Greece after 1974

Event co-organised with SEESOX
12 November Maria Margaronis

Translating Greece: ‘Truth’ and ‘ethnic truth’ in the mirror of the British media
19 November Dimitris Plantzos (University of Ioannina)

The Greeks and the ‘Global’: Negotiating classical culture and Hellenic identity in Modern Greece
26 November Andreas Papandreou (University of Athens)

The economics of climate change for Greece

Event co-organised with SEESOX
3 December Kostas Ifantis (University of Athens)

The evolution of Greek-US relationship: co-operation imperative amid dysfunctional geo-politics

Event co-organised with SEESOX

Trinity 2009

30 April Richard Clogg (University of Oxford)

Colonel Papadopoulos and the seduction of the Mother of Parliaments
05 May Peter Mackridge (University of Oxford)

Language and national identity in Greece, 1766-1976

Book launch
14 May Liana Giannakopoulou (King’s College, London)

Ritsos and the visual arts
21 May Philip Carabott (King’s College, London)

Stances and responses of Greek Orthodox society to the persecution of its Jewish fellow-citizens during the German occupation
28 May Tzina Kalogirou (University of Athens)

The visual impulse and some cases of ekphrasis in the poetry of Odysseas Elytis
4 June Julia Chryssostalis (University of Westminster)

Law writing the city: Athens’ legal architectography
8 June Eleni Papargyriou (University of Oxford)

Reading games in the Greek novel: modernity and periphery
11 June Dimitris Tziovas (University of Birmingham)

From Diaspora to Immigration: Greek Society and Culture in Transition

Book launch

Michaelmas 2008

30 October Margaret Kenna (Swansea University).

The “beanpole family” in Greece
6 November Roderick Beaton (King’s College, London).

Seferis in the Middle East: the “Levant Journal”
13 November Vassiliki Kolocotroni (University of Glasgow).

Nicolas Calas: the Golden Age
20 November Georgia Farinou-Malamatari (University of Thessaloniki)

Aspects of modern and postmodern Greek fictional biography in the 20th century
27 November Eleni Calligas (Arcadia Centre, Athens)

Installing British parliamentarism in the Ionian Islands, 1815-1864
4 December Maria Komninos (University of Athens)

Contemporary Greek cinema: the politics of identity

Hilary 2008

31 January Lia Chisacof (Bucharest)

Tragoudia horeftika (Dance Songs): A genre in folklore or in learned literature?
21 February George Yannoulopoulos (London)

Seferis and modernism: the question of language
28 February Achilleas Hadjikyriacou (European University Institute, Florence)

'The world is changing, men are not’: masculinity and gender relations in Greece in the 1950s and 1960s
6 March Christina Delistathi (University of Middlesex)

Translations of the Communist Manifesto: some preliminary findings and remarks

Michaelmas 2007

25 October Yannis Hamilakis (University of Southampton)

Dreaming ruins: materiality, archaeology and national imagination in Greece

Co-organised with the Institute of Archaeology
8 November Mark Hanse (University of Utrecht)

Paradise lost: the fate of the Cappadocians and their language(s)
15 November Churnjeet Mahn (University of Glasgow)

On not knowing Greek: British travel to Greece and the woman question
22 November Dimitris Asimakoulas (University of Surrey)

Fear and misery of the Greek junta: translations of Brecht's works under the colonels
29 November Anastasia Christou (University of Sussex)

Narrating Hellenism—negotiating homecoming: gender, place and identity in second generation ancestral return migration life stories