News in the Centre for Hellenic Studies
Professor Edith Hall, world-leading expert on Greek drama, to join Centre
November 2011 The Department of Classics and the Centre for Hellenic Studies are delighted to welcome as a new colleague Professor Edith Hall, a world-leading expert on Greek drama and its modern reception. Her ground-breaking work in this field has earned her an international reputation as an original and radical scholar and she has now extended her innovative approach to other classical subjects, including the reception and understanding of slavery, as well as to modern performance studies. The arrival of Professor Hall will significantly enhance our already strong profile in these areas and we look forward to developing new research projects with her.
PhD student wins London Cultural Connections prize
October 2011 Congratulations to Alex Rodriguez Suarez, a PhD student in the Centre for Hellenic Studies, who has won a £100 prize for his presentation on ‘Between Creation & Display: The Wandering of the Royal Gold Cup’ at the London Cultural Connections competition that took place during the 2011 Arts & Humanities Festival. London Cultural Connections is a unique training programme that helps PhD students develop their public speaking skills and build up relationships with major cultural institutions in Britain’s capital city. The programme is run in collaboration with a number of partners including the Courtauld Institute of Art, the British Film Institute, the Globe Theatre, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. The participants selected an object from one of these collections and their task, in eight minutes, was to create an exciting, thought provoking and prize winning presentation. The audience then chose the winner.
Greek (Hi)stories through the Lens: conference & exhibition success
July 2011 It was with great pleasure that the Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) hosted the international conference Greek (Hi)stories through the Lens: Photographs, Photographers and their Testimonies on 8-11 June 2011 in collaboration with the Arts and Humanities Research Institute. The idea for the conference was first conceived by the CHS historian Dr Philip Carabott back in 2009, on the grounds of the significant gap concerning the use of photographic culture in Greek historiography and related disciplines. Professor of Archaeology Yannis Hamilakis (University of Southampton) and literature specialist Dr Eleni Papargyriou (CHS) joined forces with Dr Carabott to bring the event to fruition. The conference proved to be a major success, with more than forty papers presented by scholars from around the globe and across disciplines over four days of intense discussions, debates and presentations of compelling visual material. Keynote speakers (photography expert John Stathatos, Professor Eduardo Cadava from Princeton and King's historian Professor Ludmilla Jordanova), conference participants and members of the audience all noted the significance of putting Greek photography on the academic map, not only as material evidence but also as the subject to prompt a host of theoretical questions regarding representation, memory and the treatment of material culture. The organizers envisage a volume of selected conference papers by a high-profile publisher.
The occasion was also marked by the exhibition The Human Price of War: Voula Papaioannou’s Photo-testimonies on 1940s Greece (pictured above, left), held by the Centre for Hellenic Studies in collaboration with the Benaki Museum in Athens, were the Papaioannou archive is housed. During 7-13 June approximately five hundred scholars, students, and photography enthusiasts had the opportunity to enjoy Papaioannou’s deeply humanist photography, documenting the Axis Occupation, the Athens famine and the Greek Civil War in a manner not unlike Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans’s realism. If the exhibition of Papaioannou’s work was a first for London audiences, the concept of an original University exhibition was a first for the Great Hall at the King's Strand Campus too. Specifically designed by Mobile Studio for the Great Hall, the transparent, colourful construction allowed visitors to take in the gorgeous room along with the photographic material. The exhibition, generously sponsored by the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Hellenic Foundation, received excellent comments.
New Appointment: Dr Niketas Siniossoglou
July 2011 The Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) is delighted to announce that Dr Niketas Siniossoglou (pictured, left) has been awarded a two-year Leverhulme Research Fellowship to work in the Centre. Dr Siniossoglou's wide ranging research interests cover many centuries of Hellenic culture, examining the reception of Hellenic traditions, fitting very well with the research of other staff in the Centre. He studied Philosophy at the universities of Athens, Munich and Cambridge, receiving his doctorate in ancient philosophy from the latter. From 2009 to 2011 he was a British Academy Post-doctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge. Dr Siniossoglou is the author of Plato and Theodoret: The Christian Appropriation of Platonic Philosophy and the Hellenic Intellectual Resistance (CUP 2008); Radical Platonism in Byzantium: Illumination and Utopia in Gemistos Plethon (CUP 2011); and Theophilos Kaires: Gnostike - Stoicheia Philosophias (Kaires Library 2008).
Identity/Identities in Late Medieval CYPRUS
June 2011 The annual Byzantine colloquium hosted and funded by the Institute of Classical Studies this year joined forces with the Newton Fellowship held at the Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) in 2009-2011 by Guillaume Saint-Guillain. Convened by Guillaume and Tassos Papacostas of the CHS, the two-day gathering on 13-14 June 2011 was entitled Identity / Identities in late medieval Cyprus and investigated the bewildering range of expressions of identity, be it religious, linguistic, or cultural, through art, architecture, institutions and language in the composite, multi-confessional and multi-lingual society of the Lusignan Kingdom of Cyprus (thirteenth through fifteenth centuries).
The fourteen original papers by speakers from France, Italy, Germany, Greece, Cyprus, the UK and the USA were organized in five thematic sessions, and were followed by lively and constructive discussions involving both speakers and members of the large audience that included students, researchers and members of the public. The proceedings of the colloquium were brought to a close by Dr Anna Pouradier-Duteil Loizidou, director of the Cyprus Research Centre (CRC, Ministry of Education and Culture, Nicosia), who announced the publication of the acts by the CRC. Finally Professor Judith Herrin thanked on behalf of the CHS Guillaume Saint-Guillain for his help, cooperation and valuable contribution during the two years of his Newton Fellowship at King’s, and presented him with a gift that will hopefully remind him of his sojourn outre-manche for a long time to come.
New appointment: Dr Alessandra Bucossi
June 2011 The Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr Alessandra Bucossi (pictured, left) to the new Sophia Research Fellowship in Byzantine Studies. This appointment is the result of a fund-raising initiative led by Professor Judith Herrin; generous donations from the Hellenic Foundation, the International Relations Committee of the Greek Ministry of Culture, the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, and an anonymous donor were matched by the School of Arts & Humanities, allowing us to offer a three year post-doctoral fellowship. We are hugely grateful to be able to offer an opportunity to a promising young scholar in difficult times. Dr Bucossi studied Classical Philology at the University of Genoa, and then took her MA in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King’s. She completed a DPhil at Oxford, working under the direction of Professor Elizabeth Jeffreys on the literature of theological debate between east and west in 12th century Constantinople. She is now planning to look at the development of this literature in the 13th century. We look forward to involving her in the teaching, research and outreach activities of the Centre.
Professor Charlotte Roueché wins Teaching Excellence Award
May 2011 Congratulations to Professor Charlotte Roueché who has been awarded a 2011 Teaching Excellence Award. These awards, now in their ninth year, provide King's students with an opportunity to recognise teaching staff across the College, and students are invited to nominate a member of staff or a group of staff for the awards. This year 287 staff members were nominated for the awards, and 1,214 staff and students took part.
Book publication: Reading Games in the Greek Novel
April 2011 Dr Eleni Papargyriou's book Reading Games in the Greek Novel(book cover pictured, right) has recently been publised by Legenda. How is play constituent in the formation of the Greek modernist novel? Covering the formative years between 1930 and 1975 and featuring key Greek authors such as Yannis Skarimbas, Stratis Tsirkas and Nikos Kachtitsis, this is a comprehensive and innovative study of Greek modernist prose fiction and the first of its kind to appear in English.
£115,000 raised to establish fellowship
March 2011 The Centre for Hellenic Studies has received generous donations from the Michael Marks Charitable Trust, the Greek Ministry of Culture and an anonymous donor, which, together with matching funds from the School of Arts & Humanities at King's, will support a new fellowship, the Sophia Research Fellowship in Byzantine Studies.
£10,000 donation for new publication series
March 2011 A £10,000 anonymous donation has been awarded to establish the new publication series Translated Texts for Byzantinists co-edited by the Centre's Professor Emerita Judith Herrin (to be published by Liverpool University Press). The intention of the series is to broaden access to Byzantine texts, enabling students, non-specialists and scholars working in related disciplines to access material otherwise unavailable to them.
£6,000 MA modern language scholarship
February 2011 The School of Arts & Humanities is pleased to offer 4 scholarships to the value of £6,000 each to students studying for a Masters degree in one of the following: MA German and Comparative Literature; MRes in German and Comparative Literature; MA French Literature and Culture; MA Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies; MA Modern Greek Studies. The studentships are open to all students who have made an admissions application before 17:00GMT on 15 June 2011. Further details and how to apply.
£6,000 MA Late Antique & Byzantine scholarship
February 2011 The School of Arts and Humanities is pleased to offer 3 scholarships to the value of £6,000 each to students studying for a Masters degree in one of the following: MA Medieval Studies; MA Ancient History; MA Medieval History; MA Medieval English; MA Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. The studentships are open to all students who have made an admissions application before 17:00GMT on 15 June 2011. Further details and how to apply.
New PhD programme in Digital Hellenic Studies
January 2011 The Centre for Hellenic Studies, in collaboration with the Department of Digital Humanities at King's, is pleased to announce a new postgraduate research PhD programme in Digital Hellenic Studies, which is now open for applications and will be available from September 2011.
New MA programme in Greek Tradition
January 2011 The Centre for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce a new postgraduate taught MA programme in Greek Tradition, which is now open for applications and will be available from September 2011.