Colleauges

Group for the Study of the History of the Jews of Greece

Since 2005, one Friday afternoon a month, the Group for the Study of the History of the Jews of Greece has organized open discussions at which invited speakers present their current research on the history and memory of the Jews of Greece. At the same time, every year, a two-day meeting is devoted to the investigation of a crucial aspect of the Jewish past and its contemporary record: Greek documentaries about the Greek Jews (2007); the Jews of Thessaloniki in modern times (2008); the economy of the Occupation and the issue of Jewish property (2009); and the fictional presence of the Jews in modern Greek literature (2010). The aim of the Group is to highlight the intricate historical path of the Jews of Greece and the way this communicates with broader historical processes and historiographical narratives.

Research Team

Rika Benveniste

Scientific Head of the Project
Henriette-Rika Benveniste was born in Salonica, Greece. She studied History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed her doctoral studies in Medieval History at the Université de Sorbonne (Paris I, Panthéon). She is now a Professor of European Medieval History at the University of Thessaly. Her research interests include Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages and Jewish History and Historiography. She has been the scientific coordinator of a project on the audiovisual testimonies of Greek shoah survivors and she is now preparing a book on Greek Jews’ experiences of the Holocaust.

Anthony Molho

Anthony Molho (Salonika 1939) taught at Brown University, from which he retired as The David Herlihy University Professor Emeritus. From 2001 through 2010, he taught at the European University Institute, with which he continues to be affiliated in his capacity as Professor Emeritus. In 2011-2012, Anthony Molho was Global Distinguished Professor at the Center of European and Mediterranean Studies of New York University. He has supervised more than 24 PhDs. In 2010, Dr. Molho was awarded the Galileo Galilei International Prize. He has written on the history of public finance, of the state and of the family in Italy from the 13th to the 17th centuries; he has also been interested in the history of the early modern Mediterranean, in the concept of Europe, and in the history of historiography. Currently, he is co-editing a special issue of Jewish History on the history of the Jews in Thessaloniki and writing a book devoted to a group of historians of medieval and early modern Europe (including Hans Baron and Paul Oskar Kristeller) who, following their exile to the United States, transformed the study of the Renaissance.

Yorgos Antoniou

Yorgos Antoniou is academic assistant at the International Hellenic University and Open University of Greece. He holds a PhD from the European University Institute (2007) and has been a visiting lecturer at Yale University and the University of Cyprus. His research interests focus on the legacy and memory of wars in post-war societies, and on the study of collective memory, historiography, civil wars, genocides, the Second World War and public history.

Paris Papamichos Chronakis

Paris Papamichos Chronakis is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of History and the Modern Greek Studies Program at Brown University. He received his BA in History from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, his MA in Comparative History from Essex University, and his Ph.D. in Modern Greek and European History from the University of Crete. A recipient of numerous Greek, European, and U.S. grants, he was previously a Rothschild Foundation (Hanadiv) Europe post-doctoral teaching fellow at the University of Thessaly. He is a historian of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean working on the late Ottoman Empire, the modern Greek state, and on Sephardic Jewry and holding a special interest in the interrelated histories of the middle classes, interethnic relations, and the passage from empire to the nation-state. As co-editor and contributor, he is involved in two journal thematic issues on the history of the Jews of Salonica and on the Eastern Mediterranean bourgeoisies.

Pothiti Hantzaroula

Pothiti Hantzaroula studied at the University of Athens. She did an MA in Social History at the University of Warwick and completed her PhD thesis in History at the European University Institute of Florence in 2002. As post-doctoral researcher she participated in the project ‘Pythagoras’ Research Action: Gendered Aspects of Migration in Southeast Europe: Integration, Labour and Transnational Communication (GAME), EPEAEK II (Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly). She is Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology and History at the University of the Aegean. Her fields of research include oral history, the history and historiography of gender and sexuality, memory and history of the Second World War, and the history labour and class relations. Her book Σμιλεύοντας την υποταγή: Οι έμμισθες οικιακές εργάτριες στην Ελλάδα το πρώτο μισό του εικοστού αιώνα, Παπαζήσης, 2012 [Carving subordination: Domestic workers in Greece at the first half of the twentieth century] is an oral history of paid domestic work in Greece. She is one of the founding editors and member of the editorial board of the journal Historein: A Review of the Past and Other Stories.

Research Assistant

Ersi Malagiorgi

Kerassia (Ersi) Malagiorgi has a degree from the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. Her master’s thesis (2012) was on the Jews of Volos in the first post-war years.

Programming

Themis Dallas

Themis Dallas was born in London. He studied physics at the University of Patras and defended his PhD thesis in Computational Astrophysics in the same University in 1996. Since 1997 he is working professionally as a web developer and has completed more than 140 websites. His efforts include sites for the Ministry of Defense, the Foundation of Hellenic Work, the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee, the Acropolis Rally, many companies (mostly from the automobile sector) and, of course, the University of Thessaly. In 2004 he was elected as Teaching Assistant in the Department of History Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. He is also responsible for the website of the Department.