2011 Joint Conference

                              Changing Conceptions of "Europe" in Modern Greece:
                                             Identities, Meanings, and Legitimation

28 & 29 January 2011
British School at Athens

                     

Conference Programme

This was a conference jointly organised by the British School at Athens and the LSE’s Hellenic Observatory. The conference – which took the form of a workshop – was held at the British School.

The title of the conference was ‘Changing Conceptions of “Europe” in Modern Greece: meanings, identities and legitimation’. This central focus was shared by a spread of academic papers ranging over different disciplines from the arts and humanities to the social sciences.

A group of invited guests contributed to a well-informed discussion. It is hoped that the papers from the conference will be published in a book on this theme.

The papers presented at the conference were:

• INTRODUCTION 
  Imagining 'Europe'
  Professor Kevin Featherstone, Director - Hellenic Observatory, LSE

• SESSION 1 
  Greece and Europe-Progress and Civilisation, 1890s-1920s
  Sir Michael Llewellyn-Smith

• SESSION 2
  Versions of Europe in the Greek literary imagination (1929-1961)
  Professor Roderick Beaton, King’s College London

• SESSION 3
  'Europe', 'Turkey' and Greek self-identity: The antinomies of 'mutual perceptions'
  Professor Stefanos Pesmazoglou, Panteion University Athens

• SESSION 4
  The European Union and the Political Economy of the Greek State
  Professor Georgios Pagoulatos, Athens University of Economics & Business

• SESSION 5
  Contesting Greek Exceptionalism: the political economy of the current crisis
  Professor Euclid Tsakalotos, Athens University of Economics & Business

• SESSION 6
  Time and Modernity: Changing Greek Perceptions of Personal Identity in the Context of Europe
  Professor Renee Hirschon, St. Peter’s College, Oxford

• SESSION 7
  The vicissitudes of identity in a divided society: The case of the Muslim minority in Western Thrace
  Professor Thalia Dragonas, Secretary, Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs

• CONCLUDING SESSION
  Themes and Comparisons

Click here for more information about the British School at Athens.

 

To coincide with the conference mentioned above, the British School and the Hellenic Observatory were delighted to arrange a public lecture by former Greek Premier Costas Simitis.

We were grateful to the British Ambassador, H.E. David Landsman, for agreeing to host the lecture at his Residence in Athens.

The Ambassador welcomed the guests to the lecture and Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith, one of his predecessors, chaired the lecture. Mr. Simitis addressed the current problems of the €-zone and ways in which they might be overcome in the future. In a wide-ranging survey, he argued that the rules of the euro-zone needed reform and new instruments – such as euro-bonds related to growth – were a means of mitigating the current austerity.

Professor Kevin Featherstone, Director of the Hellenic Observatory, gave a response to Mr. Simitis’ lecture. He agreed that the absence of ‘economic governance’ was a design-fault created at Maastricht and it had bequeathed the risk of a crisis waiting to happen.

Click here for the transcript of Former Prime Minister Costas Simitis's speech.

More information on the British Embassy in Athens and photos of the Lecture can be found here.