Current Social Science Research on Greece
10 June 2005
London School of Economics
One of the core purposes of the Hellenic Observatory is to foster research and teaching on contemporary Greece in the social sciences. In pursuing this, one of the central events organised by the Observatory, every second year, is our PhD Symposium. This brings together PhD students, who are researching a wide variety of aspects of the social sciences in relation to contemporary Greece, from across the length and breadth of Europe and beyond, and allows them to present their research to an audience not only of their peers but also more established scholars in their respective fields.
On 10 June 2005, the Observatory held the 2nd LSE PhD Symposium on Modern Greece, focusing on current social science research on Greece. As with the first Symposium held in 2003, this proved to be an exciting and intellectually fruitful event, bringing to the Old Theatre of the LSE, and dozens of other teaching rooms across the campus, over 120 participants and the extraordinary figure of over 70 presenters.
The Symposium revolved around the panel sessions, of which there were sixteen, in which the PhD students - and those with recently acquired doctorates - presented their research and engaged in debate with their peers and other Symposium participants.
Each panel was Chaired by one or two established scholars who were there both to enable the discussion and provide their own comments and suggestions on the panellists research findings. The panels were split up according to the focus of the research interests of those who had successfully applied to take part in the conference. It is no surprise, to those of you who work on issues related to contemporary Greece, that there was much interest in foreign affairs, matters relating to Greece and the EU and aspects of domestic Greek politics - and of course an number of high quality panels were devoted to those subjects.
Other panels were devoted to economics, history, social policy and public administration. More interestingly, there was a great wave of research interest in fields which do not traditionally attract so much attention. As such there were at least seven panels in total dedicated to media and communications, issues of migration and minorities and culture and identity.
Key-note speakers:
-
Professor Nicos Mouzelis, London School of Economics
-
Professor Stathis Kalyvas, Yale University
-
Professor Nikolaos Zahariadis, The University of Alabama at Birmingham
The event was sponsored by:
-
The Bodossaki Foundation
-
Stavros S. Niarchos Foundation
-
Kalofolias Group - Express Newspapers