25 November 2025
King's Department of Classics and School of Politics and Economics host event to celebrate policy reform in Greece.
Koreas Professor Gonda Van Steen, Centre for Hellenic Studies, Department of Classics led on a campaign to change policy in Greece, allowing people who were adopted from Greece in the 1950s to 1970s to regain their Greek citizenship. Professor Van Steen and Dr Georgios Samaras, School of Politics & Economics, invited the Secretary General of the Greek Ministry of Interior and former Secretary General of Citizenship (2019–2023), who helped drive this important policy change, to King's.
This reform reflects the power of research and advocacy, and represents a significant change for the Greek diaspora worldwide.
Koreas Professor Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature; Director, Centre for Hellenic Studies, Faculty of Arts & Humanities
Between the 1950s and 1970s, thousands of Greek children were sent abroad for adoption, often under pressure or without their families’ full consent. Many grew up far from their birth culture, unsure or even unaware of their origins. In 2025, the Greek government introduced a new pathway for these adoptees to reclaim Greek citizenship, acknowledging both their nationality of origin and their wish to reconnect with their roots. Dr Athanasios Balermpas, Secretary General of the Greek Ministry of Interior, spoke about the necessity of the policy "to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else".
The Hellenic Republic of Greece is willing to help [these adoptees] with citizenship, come to Greece, work in Greece, feel they are members of society. We are one.
Dr Athanasios Balermpas, Secretary General of the Greek Ministry of Interior and former Secretary General of Citizenship (2019–2023)
Dr Mary Cardaras, Director of The Demos Centre, American College of Greece, 70 years old, is a Greek adoptee who was given to an orphanage at 9 days old and was raised near Chicago. She shared her personal experience and discussed the difficulties her mother faced as a single mother at the time in Greece that led many mothers to give their child up for adoption. This was a heavy stigma that Mary and other adoptees have faced growing up aboard.
Mary talked about how she felt there was "always something missing and always a longing to know who we are and where we come from".
Dr Balermpas heard us and he helped us and is still helping us. We are being welcomed home. We are wanted. I do feel wanted for sure.
Dr Mary Cardaras, Greek adoptee and Director of The Demos Centre, American College of Greece.
Dr Balermpas’s response met the requests of the team of Nostos for Greek Adoptees, spearheaded by Professor Van Steen and Dr Cardaras. Professor Van Steen’s campaign, especially, was many years in the making and entailed diachronic research and impact work, media interviews and other awareness-raising activities, a film-screening introduced by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard (The Policy Institute at King’s), an archival exhibition in Athens, and even an adoption-related theatre play (the production of For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine was brilliantly staged by artistic director Kyriaki Mitsou and opened at King’s Greenwood Theatre in October 2024).
It is encouraging to see the Greek state prioritising efforts to address this historical inequality. The lessons from these adoptions are numerous and can help build a stronger, more robust democratic regime that better protects more vulnerable groups in society.
Dr Georgios Samaras, Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Policy at the School for Government and the Policy Institute, Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy
Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature. Director, Centre for Hellenic Studies
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public Policy
Exploring Greece’s past of forced adoption and new paths to citizenship, identity and belonging
