Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies

(previous years) 

Lina Stergiou received her Diploma in Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens in 1990 and her Master of Architecture from the Pratt Institute, New York, in 1992, with an Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Scholarship and a Pratt Institute Assistantship. She is an adjunct assistant professor of Architectural Design at the University of Thessaly, and she practices design in Athens. Her work integrates cultural studies, urban speculations and references from the field of psychology. She has published in Architecture d' Aujourd' hui, Archis, Architext and Metalocus and exhibited her projects in Women architects in Europe (Paris), Athens-scape (RIBA gallery, London), the 3rd International Architectural Festival (Busan/Korea), and the 2nd and 3rd Biennale of Young Greek Architects. She is currently completing a book-length collection of her projects and articles on neutral and active space.  [Last Updated 2005]

Jilly Traganou holds a professional degree in Architecture (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 1990) and a Ph.D. (University of Westminster, 1998). She was awarded fellowships by Monubsho, the Greek State Fellowships Foundation, the Japan Foundation and the E.U. Science & Technology Institute. During the periods 1991-93, 1996-97 and 1999-2000 she was a visiting fellow at Kyoto University and at Tokyo Keizai University. She has taught at the University of Texas at Austin (1999-2003) and at the School of Architecture of the University of Thessaly in Volos (2003-04). She is the author of The Tokaido Road: Traveling and Representation in Edo and Meiji Japan (Routledge 2004) which was supported by a Graham Foundation grant. She has contributed articles in Suburbanizing the Masses (Ashgate 2003), Japanese Capitals (Routledge 2003), and Villes En Gares (L’Aube 1999), as well as the architectural journal Architecture d'Aujourd'hui.  [Last Updated 2005]

Vassilis Voutsakis teaches philosophy of law as a part-time lecturer in the Faculty of Law of the University of Athens, where he received his first degree. He was awarded a first D.E.A. in Jurisprudence from the University of Paris II, and a second one in Philosophy from the University of Paris I – Sorbonne. He completed his Doctorat d' Etat en Droit Public at the University of Montpellier. From 1996 to 2004 he was advisor to Constantine Simitis, the former Prime Minister of Greece. He recently published a book on the right of privacy and has also written several articles on law and culture, civil society, legal reasoning and the rule of law. He has translated books of political philosophy.   [Last Updated 2005]

John Christian Davis studied English at St. Andrews University, and subsequently Medieval Greek at King's College London. He has lived in Athens since 1985, working as a translator and pursuing research in Byzantine language and literature. Davis's translations of early Greek vernacular poetry were read by Alan Bates at the Byzantine Festival London (1998), and his rendering of a lament on the Crusaders' sack of Constantinople (1204) was set to music by the English Orthodox composer John Tavener. His published translations include unfinished works by Cavafy, as well as other contemporary Greek poets. He was recently awarded his doctorate by the University of Ioannina for his dissertation on a fourteenth-century Byzantine text and its background.  [Last Updated 2005]

Antonis Balasopoulos received his Ph.D. from the English Department of the University of Minnesota (1998) and is currently a Lecturer at the Department of English Studies at the University of Cyprus. He has been a fellow of the National Fellowship Foundation (I.K.Y) in Greece (1987-1990), the University of Minnesota (1994-1997), and the Salzburg Seminar (2001). His research and publications have focused on 18th and 19th century American prose fiction and on utopian fiction, with a particular emphasis on the intersections between literature, geography and the political. He is currently co-editing a special journal issue on "Comparative Literature and Global Studies" and working on a book manuscript on utopian fiction and expansionist fantasy in United States culture.  [Last Updated 2005]

Francois Bredenkampcompleted a Masters degree on early Christian political theory in 1975 and a Ph.D. in Byzantine History and Historiography at the RandAfrikaans University in Johannesburg in 1983. He has taught Greek language, literature, and history at three South African universities and became research specialist in the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa in 1989. Since 1997, he has served as Director of Research and Development on the Ga-Rankuwa Campus of the Tshwane University of Technology. His publications include The Byzantine Empire of Thessaloniki (1224-1242) Thessaloniki), The State: Theory & Practice ( Pretoria, 1997) (in Afrikaans), and a number of articles (mostly in English) on the Patristics and on approaches to ancient historiography. His translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations into Afrikaans, with notes and comments, is scheduled to appear in 2005. He is a member of the South African Academy for Arts and Science (Section: Humanities and Social Sciences).  [Last Updated 2005]

Nicholas de Lange is Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies in the University of Cambridge. His publications include: Origen and the Jews : Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in third-century Palestine (Cambridge, 1976); (with M. Harl) Origène, Sur les Ecritures : Philocalie, 1-20 (Paris, 1983); Greek Jewish Texts from the Cairo Genizah (Tübingen, 1996); (ed.) Hebrew Scholarship and the Medieval World (Cambridge, 2001).   [Last Updated 2005]

Patrick Gray's long term interest in the fifth and sixth centuries began while he was studying history of theology at Trinity College, Toronto, and at Yale. He started his teaching career as a tutor at Trinity and St. Michael's Colleges. Except for a stint at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, he has spent most of his career teaching Humanities and Religious Studies at York University, Toronto, where he is currently professor. Additionally, he teaches graduate courses for Trinity College in the Toronto School of Theology. His doctoral work led to the publication of The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451-553). Since then he has published numerous articles on early-byzantine Christology, Palestine, Justinian, and the creation of the canon of church fathers in the East. Work begun many years ago on a fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies has recently come to fruition in an edition cum translation of the sixth-century theologian Leontius of Jerusalem.  [Last Updated 2005]

Nikolaos Kontogiannis is an archaeologist, currently working for the Committee for the Preservation, Restoration, and Promotion of the Castles of the Pylia Province, Messenia, of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture. He studied at the Universities of Athens (B.A., Ph.D.) and Birmingham (M.Phil.). His main field of interest is the late Byzantine and Frankish period (13th-15th centuries), especially the study of military architecture and ceramics. His publications have focused on the islands of Kos and Andros, as well as on the area of Messenia. He has participated in numerous excavations and field research, and currently works on the publication of their results.  [Last Updated 2005]

Alexei M. Lidov is a specialist in Byzantine iconography and Eastern Christian sacred images, and since 1991 the founder and director of the Research Center for Eastern Christian Culture in Moscow. He is the author of several books and articles, organizer of international symposia, and editor of collections of articles dedicated to the symbolic language of Eastern Christian culture, including: Jerusalem in Russian Culture (Moscow 1994),  The Eastern Christian Church. Liturgy and Art (Saint-Petersburg 1994), The Miracle-Working Icon in Byzantium and Old  Rus’ (Moscow 1996), Byzantine Icons of Sinai (Moscow - Athens 1999), The Iconostasis. Origins-Evolution-Symbolism  (Moscow 2000),  Relics in the Art and Culture of the Eastern Christian World  (Moscow 2000), Christian Relics in the Moscow Kremlin (Moscow 2000), Eastern Christian Relics (Moscow 2003), Hierotopy. Studies in the Making of Sacred Spaces (Moscow 2004).  [Last Updated 2005]

Sotiris Rizas is a Senior Research Fellow at the Research Center for Neohellenic History in the Academy of Athens. His publications include the following books (in Greek): The Presidency of the Republic in Greek Politics 1924-1935 (Athens 1992); The Macedonian Question: Foreign Intervention and Greek Policy (Athens 1996); Enosis-Partition-Independence: The United States and Britain in Search of a Solution for the Cyprus Question 1963-1967 (Athens 2000); Greece, The United States and Europe, 1961-1964: Political and Economic Aspects of the Security Question from the Cold War to Ditente (Athens 2001); The United States, the Dictatorship of the Colonels and the Cyprus Question 1967-1974 (Athens 2002); From Crisis to Ditente: Constantinos Mitsotakis and the Greek-Turkish Rapprochement (Athens 2003).  [Last Updated 2005]

Elka Bakalova is Professor of Byzantine and Mediaeval Art at the New Bulgarian University (Sofia) and corresponding member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. She has written several books, including Frescoes at the Village of Berende (1976), The Bachkovo Ossuary (1977) and The Ossuary of the Bachkovo Monastery (2003, second English edition), The Monastery of Rozhen (1990), and co-authored The Monasteries in Bulgaria (1992) and Le Grand Livre des Icônes (Paris, 2002). She is the editor of the Art Studies quarterly (Problemi na izkoustvoto) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and has published a large number of articles on medieval art of Bulgaria and on the Balkans.  [Last Updated 2005]

Vassilis K. Fouskas studied at the Universities of Athens, Perugia, and London. He is the author of, among others, Zones of Conflict: United States Foreign Policy in the Balkans and the Greater Middle East (2003) and Italy, Europe and the Left (1998). His most recent book (co-authored with Bulent Gokay), The New American Imperialism: The "War on Terror" and Blood for Oil, will be published later this year. Vassilis Fouskas is the founding editor of the peer-reviewed periodical Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans (Taylor & Francis), and is presently a Reader in international relations at Kingston University, London, a position he will leave on September 1, 2005, for a senior appointment at the Department of Politics, Stirling University, UK.  [Last Updated 2005]

Alexander Kazamias is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at Coventry University. He holds a Ph.D. in Diplomatic History from the University of London (2001). He specializes in Contemporary Greek political history, Greek Politics and Political Philosophy. He has written several articles in English and Greek in these areas and he is a regular contributor to the magazine ANTI. His chapter on the "Rise and Fall of the Simitis Government" has recently appeared in the book Entanglement of Reforms in Greece, published by Papazisis (2005).  [Last Updated 2005]

Pantelis Kyprianos studied at the Panteio University, Athens and did his post-graduate studies in Paris at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the University of Paris II (Ph.D., Political Sociology, 1990). He is Assistant Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Patras. His recent publications include Comparative History of Greek Education (Athens, 2004), as well as articles on political sociology and on the history of education.  [Last Updated 2005]

Peter Mackridge is Emeritus Professor of Modern Greek at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of St Cross College. He has authored The Modern Greek Language (1985) and Dionysios Solomos (1989), co-authored a comprehensive grammar (1997) and an essential grammar (2004) of Modern Greek, edited two novels by Kosmas Politis and the volume Dionysios Solomos, The Free Besieged and other Poems (2000), and co-edited (with Eleni Yannakakis) books on the development of Greek Macedonian cultural identity (1997) and on contemporary Greek fiction (2004). He has also published a large number of articles on medieval and Modern Greek language and literature.  [Last Updated 2005]

Elli Papakonstantinou studied at the School of Fine Arts (Thessaloniki) and the University of London (Master in Directing). As a director she collaborated with playwrights at the Royal Court Theatre, UK. for the creation and staging of new playwriting. She also adapted non-theatrical texts and plays. Her shows have been presented all over the world (the Opera House of Cairo, New York and the official inauguration ceremony of the New Library of Alexandria, etc.) and mostly in Greece (the National Theatre of Greece, etc.) and the UK (the West End, the off-West End and the Edinburgh Festival, etc.). She is co-founder and artistic director of the ODC Ensemble. The ODC Ensemble is a performing arts' company that explores the fusion of music, theatre and mixed media in both theatre spaces and site-specific performances. Ms Papakonstantinou was the recipient of the 'Edinburgh Festival First Award-1997' and of the 'Fulbright Artist's Award 2004-2005'.  [Last Updated 2005]

Riki Van Boeschoten teaches social anthropology and oral history in the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly, Greece. She is the director of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the oral history archive recently set up in the department, and supervises a research project on gender and migration. She is the author of four books and many articles concerning modern Balkan history and anthropology. The main focus of her work is on social memory, the anthropology of violence, ethnicity, and migration.  [Last Updated 2005]

Visiting Fellows 2003-2004
Visiting Fellows 2002-2003
Visiting Fellows 2001-2002
Visiting Fellows 2000-2001