Editorial Team
Fotini Tsibiridou, is dr. of Ethnology-Social Anthropology (EHESS-Paris 1990), professor of social anthropology in the department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, and director of the Culture-Borders-Gender/Lab at the University of Macedonia (cbg-lab.uom.gr). She carried out ethnographic research in a refugee village of 1922, among Pomak populations and minorities in Greek Thrace, in villages in Macedonia, the Peloponnese, in Istanbul, in the Sultanate of Oman and more broadly in the Middle East and the Balkans.
As of 2018 and in the context of postcolonial and feminist criticism, she explores the genre of religiosity, statehood, and gendered subjectivity in post-Ottoman topologies and geographies. Since 2020, as a founding member of the dëcolonıze hellàş initiative (https://decolonizehellas.org/), she has been dealing with issues of coloniality and postcolonial archives, the decolonization of gender and the defacement of patriarchy.
Ioannis Manos is an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Macedonia’s Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Oriental Studies. He holds a BA in History and Archaeology from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and an MA and PhD in Social Anthropology from the Universities of Hamburg (Germany) and Sussex (UK). He holds a diploma in social research methodology from the Graduate School in Social Sciences of the University of Sussex, where he also worked as a Full Time Visiting Research Fellow (Sussex European Institute). He received scholarships from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the University of Hamburg, the University of Sussex (Marie Cure Fellowship) and the Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is the Europe regional editor for the Teaching Anthropology Journal and has served as co-convenor of the EASA – Teaching Anthropology Network (2015-2023). His main research interests focus on Southeast Europe, including the geopolitical borders and border regions, nationalism and identity politics, anthropology of dance, music, education, migration, epistemology of research and research ethics. His scholarly publications include co-editorships of edited volumes, special issues and articles in edited volumes, academic journals, and conference proceedings in Greek and English.
Eleni Sideri
Assistant Professor, Dept of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, elasideri@uom.edu.gr
Areas of Expertise
Transnational migrations and diasporas, mobilities, film, cultural policies and diplomacy, post-socialism, the Caucasus, former Yugoslavia, Greece
Professional Background
Dr Eleni Sideri holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from SOAS/University of London. She did extensive fieldwork in the Caucasus, in former Yugoslavia (Sarajevo) and in Greece. She taught social anthropology in various departments and she has published in different languages. She recently completed her monograph, Coproducing Europe: An Ethnography of Film Markets, Creativity and Identity. Berghahn Books, 2023 and she co-edited the volume Sideri, Eleni, and Lydia Efthymia Roupakia, eds. Religions and migrations in the Black Sea Region. Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Alexandra Ioannidou
Professor of Slavic Studies, Dpt. For Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, ai@uom.edu.gr
Areas of Expertise
Slavic Literatures (Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian literatures), Comparative Literature, Literature and Politics, Literature and History, South Slavic idioms, Macedonian Language in Greece, Literary Translation, Literary Theory
Professional Background
Alexandra Ioannidou is professor of Slavic literatures and culture at the University of Macedonia. Her doctorate in Slavic Studies (Slawistik) at the University of Heidelberg referred to comparative literature. Since then, she has dealt with Slavic linguistics (Russian and Polish literature), but also with literature and politics as well as literature and history. She has conducted field research on Slavic idioms in Western, Central and Eastern Macedonia, while she has written studies and articles on comparative literature and translation. She has also taught at the University of Athens (nine years) and at the University of Jena (one year with a DAAD scholarship). Her monograph The Granin Affair. Literary criticism on the defendant’s dock (published 2008) was honored with the state award 2009. She has translated numerous books of literature and literary theory from German, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian into Greek.
Dimitrios Karkanis is an Assistant Professor of International Economic Development at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, in the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece. He holds a PhD degree (2016) in Economics from the University of Toulouse 1 Capitole, France. His research interests and published work in English, French and Greek language, includes studies on international trade (Chinese-Greek trade relations), international migration (migrant / refugee flow analysis) and economic development in the Least Developed Countries (food security). His teaching assignments include the courses of Economic Geography, Development Economics, Poverty and Development, China and the World Economy (University of Macedonia) and International Development, Poverty and Sustainability in the M.Sc. Humanitarian Logistics and Crisis Management (University of Macedonia – International Hellenic University). He also teaches Chinese (Mandarin) at the Confucius Institute and the Department of Language & Intercultural Studies, in the University of Thessaly in Volos, Greece.
Leonidas Karakatsanis is Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki, Greece) and an Honorary Fellow of the British Institute at Ankara. He is a political scientist by training with a deep interest in qualitative research, ethnography, and discourse analysis. He holds a PhD from the Ideology & Discourse Analysis program of the University of Essex. His research interests include the politics of culture, contentious politics and the study of borders and nationalism, while his research work focuses on the role of civil society in conflict transformation and the management of alterity. The geographical remit of his expertise is South-eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean with a special comparative interest in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. He is the author of the research monograph Turkish-Greek Relations. Rapprochement, Civil Society and the Politics of Friendship (Routledge, 2014) and co-editor of The Politics of Culture in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus. Performing the Left since the Sixties (Routledge, 2017).
Panos Kourgiotis is a political scientist specializing in the field of Area Studies (Middle East) and contemporary Islam. He speaks Arabic and Hebrew. He has graduated in 2005 from the Department of Mediterranean Studies (University of the Aegean) and he holds a Master’s Diploma on ‘Political Analysis’ from the Department of Political Sciences of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2009) and he has obtained his PhD from the same department as well (2013). In his doctoral thesis he studied the historical conditions for the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies of the University of Macedonia (2015-2017), he elucidated Western modernity’s impact on the transformations of the Islamic-reformist discourse. Between 2004-2007 he studied the Arabic language in both Tunisia and Syria, while in the latter he conducted field research which was published (in Greek) under the title ‘‘Inheriting the Umayyads? Globalization, resistance and coexistence in Bashar al-Asad’s Syria’’ in the collective volume Ethnography and Daily Life in ‘‘Our Near East’’ (2020). He has published in highly influential academic journals, such as The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, The Maghreb Review and Religions.
Demetra Tzanaki is a historian and political scientist with research interests in colonialism/coloniality, patriarchy, eugenics, gender, sexuality, and the formation of modern Europe. History and theory of gender and sexuality constitute central components of her theoretical and methodological approach in the genealogy of madness, psychiatry, forensic medicine, criminology, eugenics, psychoanalysis, sexology and genetics. She studied Political Science at the University of Athens, achieved her MA degree in Balkan History at the University of London and her DPhil (PhD) in Modern History at the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College). She has published extensively in acclaimed academic journals. She is the author of six monographs. Her latest book is entitled Intersex: The construction and the westernised truth regime of (social) sex (in Greek, Psifides, 2023). She is currently Teaching Fellow at Lifelong Learning for All (LLFA) at the Kapodistrian University of Athens (KUA) and Teaching Fellow at Open University.
Christina Grammatikopoulou is an Art Historian and Art Theorist (PhD, University of Barcelona). Her post-doctoral research at the Department of Balkan, Slavic & Oriental Studies of the University of Macedonia, supervised by Prof. Fotini Tsibiridou, focused on the aesthetics of feminist resistance (2020-2023). Her teaching (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Western Macedonia, University of Macedonia) has centred on digital culture, feminism, and anthropology. As a member of the technofeminist group #purplenoise, she has researched the topics of feminism and technology by means of artistic practice. Currently she is a research and teaching fellow at the University of Macedonia and the Culture - Borders - Gender /LAB. ΅Webpage: https://artword.org/
