Dr Georgios Maris

Georgios Maris is Associate Professor of Political Economy of International Relations at the Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean. His research lies at the intersection of International and European Political Economy, European Studies, Governance, and Political Science, with particular emphasis on the political economy of European integration and the Greek Political Economy.

He has held academic positions at Neapolis University Pafos and the University of Cyprus and was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford. He undertook postdoctoral research at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the University of the Peloponnese, where he earned his PhD in Political Science and International Relations. He also holds postgraduate degrees from King’s College London and the University of the Aegean. Beyond academia, he served as a consultant to the European Commission’s Task Force for Greece. His research has appeared in leading international peer-reviewed journals, including German Politics, European Policy Analysis, European Politics and Society, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, European Review, Administrative Sciences, and Social Sciences.

As a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Hellenic Observatory, Georgios Maris will examine how political leaders in Greece understood, contested, and articulated the constraints of fiscal discipline during the critical early phase of the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The crisis profoundly reshaped Greece’s political landscape, intensifying political polarization, Eurosceptic rhetoric, and debates over the country’s position within the Eurozone and the European Union. Against this backdrop, his research will employ political discourse analysis to examine parliamentary speeches delivered between 2009 and 2011 by the leaders of Greece’s three major political parties: George Papandreou (PASOK), Antonis Samaras (New Democracy), and Alexis Tsipras (SYRIZA). The study will explore how these political leaders interpreted Greece’s obligations under European fiscal rules and the strategies through which they framed and communicated their positions. By linking political discourse to broader debates on fiscal discipline, economic governance, and European integration, the research aims to provide new insights into the interaction between domestic political contestation and European economic constraints during one of the most consequential periods of Greece’s recent political and economic history.