Research team
Stratis Bournazos was born in Athens in 1969. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Athens and received his Master's degree from the Department of History and Archeology of the University of Crete on the subject of propaganda about Makronisos, 1947-1950. His doctoral dissertation is entitled “Congress for Cultural Freedom in Greece. Anti-Communism and the Cultural Cold War.” His research interests include the links between Greek education and conservative ideology during the first half of the 20th century focusing on mechanisms of censorship and prosecution of “deviant” perspectives. His research on the Greek anticommunism investigates how old censorious practices have been incorporated in new repressive institutional forms resulting from the Civil War and the “unstable democracy” of the following years, in correlation with international Cold War developments. He is a member of the Archives of Contemporary Social History (ASKI). For years he had been editor-in-chief of the Sunday insert “Enthemata: Views and ideas, Discourse and the Arts” of the newspaper Avgi (2000-2016; 2000-2008 co-editor with Angelos Elefantis). In the CIVIL postdoctoral research project he participated as a PhD candidate-researcher from September 2018 to June 2019.
Maria Chalkou is the principal editor of Filmicon: Journal of Greek Film Studies. She holds a PhD in film theory and history (University of Glasgow), sponsored by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation, and an MA in film and art theory (University of Kent). She is currently a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University while teaching film history, film theory and documentary in the Department of Audio & Visual Arts of Ionian University. She has published on Greek cinema, film censorship, film criticism, genre theory, transnationality and cinematic representations of the past.
Dimitris Christopoulos (Athens 1969) is a Professor of State and Legal Theory at the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, Athens. He was President of the Hellenic League for Human Rights (2003-2011); Vice president (2013-2016) and, since 2016, President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH); and a founding member of the Research Center for Minority Groups. Christopoulos has a long publication record and long-standing practice of promoting human rights and freedom of speech. He has addressed systematically the issues of censorship, freedom of expression, repression as well as minority rights, immigration, citizenship and human rights in critical essays, newspaper articles, and public activism both in Greece and internationally. Both his academic work and civic commitment involve censorship and freedom of expression while he is internationally recognized in the field. He co-edited with Penelope Petsini the Dictionary of Censorship in Greece: Weak Democracy, Dictatorship, Metapolitefsi (Athens: Kastaniotis, 2018) and Censorship in Greece (Athens: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2016). His publications include the monographs: Η ετερότητα ως σχέση εξουσίας, Όψεις της ελληνικής, βαλκανικής και ευρωπαϊκής εμπειρίας (Athens: Kritiki, 2002), Ποιος είναι έλληνας πολίτης; Το καθεστώς ιθαγένειας από την ίδρυση του ελληνικού κράτους ως τις αρχές του 21ου αιώνα (Athens: Vivliorama, 2012; 2019), Στο ρίσκο της κρίσης – Στρατηγικές της Αριστεράς των δικαιωμάτων (Athens: Alexandreia, 2014). He is the Course Leader of “Art, freedom and censorship” at the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, since 2017. At Panteion University he has taught the courses: “Minorities in Europe”, “Citizenship and Immigration”, “Introduction to European Theory of State and Law”, and in the Postgraduate Program “Political Science and Modern History” the course “Censorship: Interdisciplinary approaches”. In the CIVIL postdoctoral research project he is responsible for the educational programs.
Eleni Kouki studied history at the Department of History and Archeology of the School of Philosophy of Ioannina. In her Ph.D., which she completed in 2016 at the Department of History and Archaeology of the School of Philosophy of EKPA, she focused on the monuments and ceremonies of the April 21st Dictatorship. Her research interests range from Greek post-WWII history, monuments, and political rituals to memory in general and public history. She has participated as a researcher in various research projects and has published her work in collective volumes and academic journals. She teaches in the postgraduate program of Public History at the Hellenic Open University. She has worked as a journalist for more than a decade specializing in cultural issues. In the CIVIL research program she contributed as a post-doc researcher of the Panteion University.
Penelope Petsini (Bucharest, 1973) studied photography in Athens and UK (University of London, Goldsmiths College –MA in Image and Communication; University of Derby –PhD) sponsored by the State Scholarship Foundation (I.K.Y.). Her research interests, both in terms of theory and practice, focus on photography and its relation to personal and collective memory, history and politics. She has exhibited and published extensively both in Greece and internationally. She curated a series of photography and visual art exhibitions, the most recent being “Another Life: Human Flows | Unknown Odysseys” (Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, 5-11/2016) and “Sites of Memory” (Benaki Museum, Athens, 6-7/2016). She also curated Photobiennale 2018, that is two international group exhibitions at the Museum of Photography and the Center of Contemporary Art/ MOMus entitled Capitalist Realism: Future Perfect | Past Continuous (28/9/2018 - 29/3/2019, Thessaloniki), and the homonymous book (University of Macedonia Press, 2018). Recent publications also include Sites of Memory: Photography, Collective Memory and History (Athens: Hellenic Center of Photography & NEON Foundation, 2016); the collective readers Censorship in Greece (Athens: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2016) and Companion of Censorship in Greece: Weak Democracy, Dictatorship, Metapolitefsi (Athens: Kastaniotis, 2018) co-edited with Dimitris Christopoulos; and Photography and collective identities: Greek Photography Studies I (Athens: Koukkida 2021) co-edited with John Stathatos. She has had affiliated appointments as lecturer of photography theory and contemporary art since 2004. She is currently lecturing in the MA course “Censorship: Interdisciplinary approaches” in the Department of Political Science and History, Panteion University, Athens. She is Principal Researcher in the post-doctoral programme “Censorship in Visual Arts and Film” (CIVIL).
Michalis Stefanidakis teaches computer architecture and programming courses in the Department of Informatics of Ionian University. His research interests include application platforms, middleware and services, the semantic web and linked data, ubiquitous computing, high performance parallel programming and real-time embedded systems.
Christos Triantafyllou was born in Athens, Greece, in 1991. He studied at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where he earned his PhD in Modern and Contemporary Greek History in 2020. He is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of West Attica, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. In the past, he has worked as a researcher at the Contemporary Social History Archives and at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has also worked as a copyeditor in the publishing field. His work has been published in academic journals and in collective volumes. His research interests include political and cultural history, the history of historiography, and memory studies, focusing on the Greek 20th century.
Valia Tsirigoti was born in 1986. She studied Sociology at Panteion University and obtained a postgraduate degree in Education and Culture from Harokopio University, specializing in Emotional Creativity. As part of her postgraduate studies, she conducted field research at the University of Cyprus (Department of Social and Political Sciences), as well as at the Aalto University of Helsinki (Department of Stage Design) and the Helsinki Theater Academy. She specializes in Cognitive Psychotherapy and Systemic Psychodrama (Center for Applied Psychotherapy and Counseling) and Addiction Counseling (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens). She is constantly trained on topics that combine applied psychotherapeutic dimensions of art and is responsible for the Psychosocial Support team of “Crossing”. Her texts, short stories and poems have been published in various publications and collective publications. In 2019 he participated in the collective reader “Dictionary of Censorship in Greece”. She is a research associate in the CIVIL postdoctoral research project.