Personal profile

Research interests

I work on contemporary European cultural and transnational histories, focusing on Greece and the Balkans, Britain and Germany. My research topics are: histories of war, resistance and foreign intervention; histories of refugee reception and cross-cultural contacts; memory studies.

Scholarly biography

PhD in Contemporary History, Sussex University (UK)
MA in Contemporary History, Sussex University (UK) 
BA in History and Archaeology, University of Athens (GR)

I joined the Humanities Progrmame at the University of Brighton in 2014, having previously held posts at the University of Sussex and at Canada’s Queen’s University.

My scholar interests tend to move along with the political developments of our times. In the early 2000s I focused on the history of Western European representations of the Balkans and the recent military interventions in the region.

The post-2008 Greek crisis made apparent how powerful certain memories of the Second World War were still in Greece, which inspired me to research the radical political thinking that developed across the country in the years of fascist occupation.

In 2015 I had a first hand experience of the 'Refugee Crisis’ in the Greek islands, and since then I have worked in many projects on the local histories of refugee reception.

Supervisory Interests

I supervise PhDs on a range of modern European history themes, especially on histories and memories of conflict, resistance and refugeedom. I am also interested in innovative projects on the method and challenges of writing the history of today. In our School we have an excellent record in securing funding for applicants that are keen to shape their ideas in close dialogue with us.  

My recent doctoral students are: 

  • Ömercan Tüm, 'The Representation of Muslim Masculinities in Contemporary British and American Diaspora Novels' (started 2023)
  • Mr Yazan Abu Jbara 'Resistance in and through Palestinian Memoirs' (started 2022)
  • Mr Irfan Chowdhury 'How systematic were the British Army’s war crimes in Iraq between 2003 and 2011?' (started 2022)
  • Amadeusz Lange 'In the shadows, unveiling Polish women’s contributions in clandestine activity, 1939-1945' (started 2022)
  • Rosemary Rich, ‘The memory of Second World War conscientious objection since 1945’ (PhD awarded 2023)
  • Vanessa Tautter, ‘Narratives of Victimisation among the Contemporary Right in Austria and Northern Ireland’ (PhD awarded 2023)
  • Oscar Louis Norris-Broughton, 'Guilds at Home and Abroad: A History of Knowledge of Guild Socialism' (PhD awarded 2022 at Freie Universität Berlin)
  • Pete Morgan, ‘British representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23’ (awarded 2022 Brighton)
  • Kate Newby, ‘Children’s and Transgenerational Memories of violence in Norther Ireland in the 1970s’ (awarded 2020 Brighton)
  • Ian Cantoni, ‘Spanish Republican refugee camps in southern France following the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939’ (awarded 2019 Brighton)
  • Chris Crook, ‘Empire or Europe? Priorities within British Foreign Policies 1919-1926’ (awarded 2017 Sussex)

 

Knowledge exchange

INDICATIVE WRITINGS IN NON-ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

with Dimitris Dalakoglou, Fortress Europe as infrastructure, Open Democracy (27 February 2020)

Περιοδολόγηση της ιστορίας του προσφυγικού στη Χίο [Periodisation of the refugee crisis in Chios], Απλωταριά (26 Sep 2018)

Πρέπει να Γράψουμε την Ιστορία του Προσφυγικού [We must write the history of the refugee crisis], Απλωταριά (15 Jul 2018)

Greece: The History of a Crisis (2013-5) - Author and administrator for a blog that offered a historical perspective on the Greek Crisis

Greece: seeds of hope in the despair of austerity’, Anticapitalist Initiative (12 February 2013)

 

RECENT PRESENTATIONS AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

‘Living with Refugees: Historical reflections on local community responses to the recent ‘refugee crisis’’, for Negotiating Displacement: New Perspectives and Connections in War, Migration and Refugee Studies, NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies – Amsterdam (8-9 December 2019)

‘The radical political imaginary of the Greek resistance during the Second World War’, for Resistance movements during World War II under Comparative Perspectives, History Department of East China Normal University – Shanghai (24-27 October 2019)

‘Solidarity and Opposition: Local Communities and Activism during the 'Refugee Crisis'’, for Department of History and Philosophy of Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (14 May 2019)

‘Between Solidarity and Opposition: Responses to the Refugees in an Aegean Host Community’, for Unsettled Europe: Refugees, states and politics in Southeastern Europe, University of Graz - Center for Southeast European Studies (27-29 January 2017)

‘Visions of Liberation: Greece 1941-1944’, for Radical Histories/Histories of Radicalism, Raphael Samuel History Centre - Queen Mary University of London (1-3 July 2016)

‘“Welcome to Greece, F**k the Police”: The Syrian Refugee “Crisis” and the Breaching of the Aegean Border’, for Association for the Study of Nationalities conference, Columbia University – United States (14-16 April 2016)

'“Belsen 92”: the historiographical link between the Holocaust and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s', for British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies Annual Conference, Cambridge University (28-30 March 2015)

‘Who won the war? The politics of remembering in Greece, from the 1940s to today’, for Occupation/Liberation: Cultural Representations of 1944-45 - The Annual Conference of the Group for War and Culture Studies, University of Bristol (10-12 September 2014)

‘The Shifting Memory of the Balkan Wars in Western Historiography, 1912-1999’, for The Balkan Wars 1912/13. Experience, Perception, Remembrance, Istanbul Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies & Regensburg Institute for the Study of Eastern and Southeastern Europe (IOS), Istanbul-Turkey (11-13 October 2012)

 

BOOK REVIEWS

National Identities (2018) - review of Rodanthi Tzanelli, ‘Nation-building and identity in Europe: The dialogics of reciprocity’ (2008)

Social History, 42/4 (2017), 573-4 – review of Dimitris Dalakoglou, ‘The Road: an ethnography of (im)mobility, space, and cross-border infrastructures in the Balkans’ (2017)

Labour History Review, 81/2 (2016), 175-7 – review of Nikolaos Papadogiannis, ‘Militant Around the Clock? Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, and Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece, 1974–1981’ (2015)

Slavonic & East European Review, 92/3 (2014), 564-5 – review of Mark Biondich, ‘The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence since 1878. Zones of Violence’ (2011)

Keywords

  • DF Greece
  • Resistance
  • Occupation
  • Second World War
  • memory
  • D901 Europe (General)
  • refugee receiving societies
  • 2015 refugee arrivlas
  • DR Balkan Peninsula
  • represenations

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