Abstract: A post-war barrack hut, now in an advanced state of disrepair, stands on the banks of Lake Ziros near Preveza, Greece. Dating to 1946, it was transferred from Switzerland as part of a Swiss humanitarian aid project to establish a children’s village at Ziros, which was later developed into a children’s town under the auspices of the Royal Greek charitable funds. This post-war relic bears witness to the transnational history of Swiss humanitarian aid in the immediate postwar years and serves as a place of memory for former child residents. The presentation reconstructs the hut’s history within the broader context of Swiss relief initiatives across postwar Europe and reassesses its heritage value today. It discusses how values and meanings have been produced, contested, and re-ascribed in built heritage over time. It highlights overlooked dimensions of this heritage: first, by centring the memories of former residents and conceptualising the site as a geography of childhood; and secondly, by framing the hut as shared built heritage across heritage communities and national contexts. The discussion engages contemporary debates in heritage studies that revolve around transnational perspectives, underrepresented geographies, and notions of identity, memory, and minority.

Barrack hut at Ziros, Preveza, Greece. Photograph by Maria Kouvari, 2023

Bio: Maria Kouvari is an architect and architectural historian with a PhD from ETH Zurich. Her current research concerns transnational histories and underrepresented geographies. Her doctoral dissertation, titled ‘Minor/s’ Heritage’, has been awarded grants from the Sophie Afenduli Fondation and the Foundation for Education and European Culture. Kouvari is the founder and coordinator of ‘Children Matter,’ a working group within the European Architectural History Network (EAHN).

2) Dr Fiona Antonelaki: ‘Fifteen-minute Tales: Mythology Retellings on the BBC Greek-language Programmes’

Abstract: ‘You cannot imagine how much you can fit into a fifteen-minute broadcast slot’, wrote the poet Nanos Valaoritis in 1947, when he became a regular contributor to the BBC Greek-language radio programmes. This paper revisits the original radio works written by a vibrant group of Greek intellectuals who worked for the BBC in the aftermath of World War II. It focuses on radio adaptations of ancient Greek myths (e.g., Perseus and Andromeda, Theseus, Helen of Troy), aired between 1946 and 1951. What distinguished the Greek-language adaptations of these myths from the contemporaneous Greek-themed radio plays aired on the BBC’s domestic services? In what ways was the radio version of these stories influenced by their treatment, sometimes even by the same authors, in other media and art forms (e.g., poetry, theatre, cinema)? As the original audio files of the radio programmes in question have not been preserved, this paper is based on the study of unpublished broadcast scripts stored at the BBC Written Archives Centre.

Perseus and Andromeda, 1936, David Gascoyne. © The estate of David Gascoyne. Photo: Tate.

Bio: Fiona Antonelaki is a postdoctoral researcher at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She is the principal investigator of the research project ‘Reading Poetry Aloud: Education, Culture and the Media in Greece, 1930-1960’, funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation. She studied history and archaeology at the University of Athens and Modern Greek literature at King’s College London (Ph.D. 2018). Her research focuses on modern Greek literature and/in performance, with a special interest in radio and audio cultures, and the relationship between literary modernism and popular culture. She has held research and teaching positions at Princeton University, the University of Thessaly, the University of Padua, and the University of Cambridge. She is reviews co-editor for the Journal of Greek Media & Culture.