A. Anastassiadis
Associate Professor of History
Phrixos B. Papachristidis Chair of Modern Greek Studies
Tassos Anastassiadis is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at McGill University and Papachristidis Chair in Modern Greek and Greek-Canadian Studies. His work focuses on the interplay between individual mobility and institutional inertia in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean during the long nineteenth century. He is a historian of European and Mediterranean interactions and transactions, through which he investigates the emergence of different modernities between the 18th and mid-20th centuries. Greece and the Greek-speaking world of the Eastern Mediterranean, in their various synchronic relations to their Ottoman, Balkan and Mediterranean contexts, as well as the diachronic place they occupy in the European imaginary, constitute the geographic entry point to his approach. Some of these mobile subjects include religious and educational actors, archeologists participating in the Grand Tour and technocrats serving their mandates in Greece. State and religious institutions comprise the focus of his study of institutional inertia, whether this stasis be conscious or unconscious, real or perceived. Having studied in the U.S. (B.A., M.A), France (PhD, “agrégation d’histoire”), and worked in France (Paris - VII, EPHE, Sciences-Po, Greece (Ecole française d’Athènes) and finally in Canada (McGill University), he is sensitive to questions of mobility and nomadism both as research subjects and as the effects of globalization on the educational system. He is also piloting a research program on the civil and global history of the Army of the Orient at the École française d’Athènes.
Office: Leacock Building room 827
Office Hours: Tuesday 3-4:30; Thursday 4-5
G. Kellaris
Sessional Lecturer
George Kellaris received his B.A. in Athens, Greece on Greek History and Archaeology, with specialization on Byzantine archaeology. He pursued graduate studies at McGill where he obtained his M.A. in Art History (Medieval Art) and continued there with doctoral studies. He has taught courses on medieval art at McGill and Carleton universities. He has collaborated with Customs Canada in expertise reports on cases of illegal importation of antiquities, and with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts on works of art by Eastern Christians. His academic interests focus on Early Christian mosaics, the art and architecture of the Crusader States in Eastern Mediterranean and issues of cultural hybridity in the past. Since 2001 he has been teaching Modern Greek language at McGill University and Université de Montréal.
D. Machlouta
Ph.D Student, Immigrec Researcher
Dimitris Machlouta is a Ph.D. student at McGill University with an interest in global and transnational history and the history of mobilities, currently completing his comprehensive exams. Being born in Greece, he initially studied history and archaeology at the University of Ioannina before continuing his graduate studies (M.A.) in history at York University in Toronto. He has received the Stavros Niarchos Foundation fellowship for graduate studies at McGill University and the Hellenic Community fellowship from the Hellenic Scholarship Foundation of Montreal.
He has worked as an archivist at the National Bank of Greece’s Historical Archive in Athens, and he was a Library Research Fellow at California State University in Sacramento. In Montréal -besides working as a teaching assistant at McGill-he is engaged with Immigrec.
M.Michalopulou
MSSG Coordinator (2022-Present)
Michaela is a PhD3 student at McGill University in the Sociology Department, researching contemporary surveillance technologies and their implications within the context of consumerism. She completed her Bachelor of Arts Honours in Sociology at Queen's University and Master's in Sociology at the University of Ottawa.
She has received the Hellenic Scholarships Foundation 2022-2023 Award and is the Program Coordinator for McGill Summer Studies in Greece.
L.Tsiptsios
PhD Student
Agrégé d’histoire in France, I am a cotutelle Ph.D. student at McGill University (under the supervision of Professor Tassos Anastassiadis) and the University of Rouen-Normandie (under the supervision of Professor Jean-Numa Ducange) with an interest in post-Ottoman political history. Born in Germany and educated in France, I graduated in 2017 in History and Political Science at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. In parallel, I also studied History at the École normale supérieure (Paris). In 2019, I completed my Master at Paris 1 with a thesis on the social history of Thessaloniki during the Interwar period through PAOK, the football team founded by the Constantinopolitan Greeks in the city. Through the lenses of sports, I tried to understand the consequences of the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, and especially the formation of new political cleavages after the arrival of the Asia Minor refugees in Thessaloniki. My current Ph.D. project focuses on Greek expansionism in Asia Minor, state formation and internal colonization in Macedonia after the Balkan Wars.
In 2019-2020 I worked as a Teaching Fellow at the French Department of Columbia University. Then I was a chargé de cours at the University of Rouen-Normandy in 2021-2022. Now I work as a teaching assistant at McGill.
C. S. Konstantopoulos
Ph.D Student
Christos-Stavros Konstantopoulos is a Ph.D. student at McGill University. Having grown up in Athens, he obtained his B.A. in History from the University of Cambridge and subsequently pursued an MPhil in Comparative Politics at the University of Oxford, studying how networks of experts tried to promote eugenic ideas among British policy-makers in the decade before the First World War. He has worked for the University of Oxford’s SCHOOLPOL project on the transformation of education systems after the Second World War and served in the Hellenic Army History Directorate.
His interests include the history of health, populations, and development, the politics and history of education, the role of experts in policy-making, and social and military history. His current research focuses on the ‘Spanish’ Influenza pandemic on the First World War’s Macedonian Front.
Former Fellows & Students
D. Çevik
Research Administrator (2018- 2020)
Deniz Özlem Çevik was Immigrec’s research administrator from 2018 to 2020. Deniz has an undergraduate degree from Bogazici University (Istanbul) and two graduate degrees from McGill University (History '16, Information Studies '20). Following her work with us and completion of her MISt, she was successful applying to work as archivist for the federal government. She currently works for the Government of Canada as a Policy Analyst and studies at the École nationale d'administration publique (PhD in Public Administration).
Y. Z. Karabıçak
Postdoctoral Fellow - Johannes Gutenberg Universität-Mainz
Yusuf Ziya Karabıçak received an M.A degree from Bogazici University with a thesis on Greek associations in Constantinople in late 19th century (supervisor Vangelis Kechriotis). He continued his studies at McGill. In December 2020, he completed his PhD thesis titled “Local Patriots and Ecumenical Ottomans: The Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Ottoman Configuration of Power, 1768-1828” at McGill University (supervisor Tassos Anastassiadis) and EHESS Paris (supervisor Nathalie Clayer). His dissertation was awarded the 2021 McGill Faculty of Arts Insights award for best dissertation in the Humanities. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at Johannes Gutenberg University (Germany) carrying out a project titled “Crisis and Transformation of an Old Regime: Circulation of Ideologies and Institutions between Russian and Ottoman Empires, 1768–1774” as part of the Transottomanica priority program of the German Research Foundation (DFG).
He is a historian of the Ottoman Empire, focusing on questions of state formation, religion, diplomacy, patriotism, and revolution from an Ottoman (Muslim and Orthodox) perspective. He is interested in the Age of Revolutions and how this period unraveled in the Southeastern Europe.
S. Pabst
MA History 2019; Ph.D. candidate University of Athens
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and PhD student in Communications and Mass Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Athens, Greece. She is a graduate of McGill University (MA History) and the Ohio State University (BA) and her writing has appeared in AthensLive, Reductress, Passage and the Harvard Business Review. While at Immigrec, Stavroula received a scholarship from the Hellenic Scholarships Foundation of Montreal and her work, "One (Wom)an's Shopping is the Same (Wo)man's History? Immigration, Advertisement and Consumption Patterns in the Greek Community of Montreal 1960s-1970s," was published in Études canadiennes / Canadian Studies.
N.D. Gier
Program Alumna and Former Fellow
Nathalie Defne Gier completed her undergraduate studies at McGill University with a major in History and minors in Neo-Hellenic Studies and Art History, respectively. In 2016, she received the Greek Grand Tour Fellowship and while working as an intern at the French School at Athens (EfA). She received her MSt in Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at the University of Oxford. She then worked at the German Archeological Institute (DAI) in Istanbul as project assistant. In 2019 she completed her second masters degree in Archives Studies at the University College London. She is currently working as a branch librarian at the Research Centre of Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) Library in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests are perceptions of archives in Turkey and the history of museology in Late Ottoman and Early Republican periods. She has co-initiated the ANAMED Library Podcasts which is the first podcast in Turkey to discuss archives and libraries.
I. Vouza
Former MSSG Coordinator
Isavella Vouza is a PhD student in English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Junior Dean at St Catherine’s College. Her doctoral dissertation examines the intertwining of psychological ‘estrangement’ and aesthetic ‘defamiliarisation’, namely the literary techniques through which a familiar situation is presented in a ‘strange’ or unfamiliar manner, in twentieth-century Anglophone fiction. In particular, she is examining to what extent these modes of aesthetic or representational ‘distance’ undermine, question or indeed suggest new modes of belonging. Her research interests broadly include modern and contemporary Anglophone and Greek prose, global modernist studies, gender and sexuality studies, and ethnic and diaspora studies. She holds a B.A. (Honours) in English Language and Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, a Master’s degree in English from McGill University and a second Master’s in Comparative English and Modern Greek literature with Distinction from the University of Oxford.
N. Vassiliou
Communications Strategist & Museology Intern
Nicole Vassiliou is an intern working with McGill university for the Immigrec Virtual Museum. She obtained her Masters of Development Studies from York University, conducting field research in Athens Greece funded by SHHRC, she studied the response of civil society after the Greek economic crisis. She is a multidisciplinary academic, with Honours Bachelor's Degrees in both Psychology and Spanish, as well as Graduate Diplomas in Migration and Refugee Studies and Museum and Cultural Management.
Nicole is passionate about community outreach and providing relevant programs that are culturally sensitive and accessible. She has worked with both Non-Governmental Organizations and museums, understanding the complexities of stakeholder relations, while also creating content, programs and evaluation material to enhance strategic development of organizations to realize and expand upon their mission and goals. Currently, her professional interests focus upon the intersection of cultural management, tourism and sustainable development.
D. Nika
Former MSSG Coordinator
Danae Nika is a Master’s student in English at McGill University. She holds a BA Honors in English Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. In 2016, she received a grant by the Erasmus+ program to attend one semester at Lancaster University in the UK.
Her academic interests include Modernist Literature and Modernist poetry, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Translation Studies, and Classical and Modernist reception. Her current research addresses the importance of classical reception in the poetry of H.D, with a particular focus on H.D.’s reception of the myth of Hippolytus.
Danae was the Program Coordinator for the McGill Summer Studies in Greece Program for the 2019-2020 academic year.
A. Siotou
Postdoctoral Fellow
Alexandra Siotou is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. Alexandra studied Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly (Greece). She holds a Master’s Degree in Cultural Policy, Management and Communication from the Department of Communication, Media and Culture at the Panteion University of Athens. In 2015 she completed her Ph.D. thesis in Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly. Her doctoral dissertation, entitled “Love, Gendered Identities and Power Relationships: Examining Migrant’s Transnational Lives,” focuses on an under-researched dimension of migratory experience - migrants’ emotions - and discusses how migrants from Albania and Bulgaria (re)constitute their subjectivity in the context of multiple interweaving emotional experiences and transnational relations of power. Her research interests include the anthropology of migration, emotions, gender, sexuality and body politics.
While at McGill, Alexandra is participating in the Oral History Program “Immigrec,” where she conducts research on Greek immigration to Canada and supervises the oral history team.
