Gonda Van Steen earned a BA and MA degree in Classics in Belgium and a PhD degree in Classics and Hellenic Studies from Princeton University. Her research and teaching interests include Greek language and literature through Byzantine and Modern Greek, Western travellers to Greece and the Ottoman Empire, nineteenth and twentieth-century receptions of the classics and especially of ancient theatre, and modern Greek intellectual and social history. Van Steen holds the position of Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature in the Centre for Hellenic Studies and Department of Classics at King’s College London. Formerly, as the Cassas Chair in Greek Studies at the University of Florida, she taught courses in ancient and modern Greek language and literature and served as president and subsequently as executive director of the Modern Greek Studies Association. She takes a keen interest in transnational collaborations and study abroad programs.

Van Steen is the author of numerous articles and six books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000); Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010); Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (2011); and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974 (2015). Her 2019 book, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo, has taken her into the new, uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history (Greek translation Ζητούνται παιδιά από την Ελλάδα, Athens: Potamos, 2021). In 2024, Van Steen published an edited volume titled The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951 (Routledge). She also authored, introduced, and co-produced a testimony theatre play, called Adoption Reckonings: For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine (Anthem Press, 2025). Two co-edited volumes are in progress: The War for Anatolia and the Remaking of International Order: Greece, Turkey and the End of WWI (co-edited with Georgios Giannakopoulos and Joseph A. Maiolo, expected late 2025) and Greece at the Turning Point: Remembrances of U.S. Foreign Service Families Living and Working in Postwar Greece (co-edited with Harrison Blackman).

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Modern Greek history and politics
• Ancient through Modern Greek language and literature
• Reception Studies
• Adoption Studies

Teaching

• Modern Greek history and politics
• Ancient through Modern Greek language and literature
• Reception Studies
• Study abroad programs

Expertise and public engagement

Media appearances related to my work on the adoptions of Greek children in the postwar and Cold War era.

Consultant on documentary film project related to the above topic.

Publications 

Book publications

• The War for Anatolia and the Remaking of International Order: Greece, Turkey and the End of WWI, co-edited with Georgios Giannakopoulos and Joseph A. Maiolo (London: Bloomsbury). 270 pp.
• Adoption Reckonings: For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine (Anthem Press, 2025). 73 pp.
• The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece: Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946-1951 (London: Routledge, 2024). 266 pp. Scholarly edition.
• Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece: Kid pro quo? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019). 330 pp. Paperback edition 2021.
  Winner of the 2019 Book Prize of the European Society of Modern Greek Studies
• Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974. Classical Presences series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 376 pp.
• Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands. Classical Presences series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 354 pp.
• Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire: Comte de Marcellus and the Last of the Classics (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2010). 251 pp. Shortlisted for the 2011 Runciman Award
• Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 284 pp.
  2000 John D. Criticos Prize from the London Hellenic Society

Refereed journal articles and chapters in books (selection)

• “The State of the ‘Historic’ Greek Adoptions: A Broken Story That Keeps on Breaking.” Adoption & Culture 12, no. 2 (Fall 2024): 177-198. https://doi.org/10.1353/ado.00015
• “Finish What You Start: The Cold War Greek Adoption Experience and Recommendations for Current Policy Reform.” In Facing the Past: Policies and Good Practices for Responses to Illegal Intercountry Adoptions, edited by E. Loibl and D.M. Smolin, 149-180 (The Hague, the Netherlands: Eleven, 2024)
• “Adoption’s Unfinished Business.” In Voices of the Lost Children of Greece: Oral Histories of Cold War International Adoption, edited by M. Cardaras, 5-25 (London and New York: Anthem Press, 2023)
• “Of Foundlings and ‘Lostlings’: When the Scopas Scandal Rocked the Unstable Foundations of the First 1950s Intercountry Adoptions.” Annales de démographie historique 141, no. 1 (2021): 123-155
• “Inglorious Barbarians: Court Intrigue and Military Disaster Strike Xerxes, ‘The Sick Man of Europe.’” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus, edited by R. F. Kennedy, 243-269 (Leiden: Brill, 2018)
• “Comedy and Tragedy in Agon(y): The 1902 Comedy Panathenaia of Andreas Nikolaras.” In Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes, edited by Ph. Walsh, 240-262 (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
• “Arthur W. Pinero and Cavafy the Dramatist: The Parallel Quest for the Quality Play.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 48, 2 (Fall 2015) 73-106
•  “Snapshots of Aristophanes and Menander: From Spontaneous Reception to Belated Reception Study.” In The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy, ed. M. Revermann, 433-450 (Cambridge: CUP, 2014)
• “Sin and the City: A Mid-Fifteenth-Century Lament for the Fall of Athens to the ‘Persians.’” In Re-imagining the Past: Antiquity and Modern Greek Culture, ed. D. Tziovas, 229-251 (Oxford: OUP, 2014)