Dr. Deema Kaneff, Dr. Georgios Agelopoulos, Dr. Eleftheria Deltsou, Dr. Aliki Angelidou

During the last decade the Balkans attracted the interest of an increasing number of social anthropologists. Recently published papers and monographs influenced both our understanding of the region as well as anthropological theory. The course discusses the origins of ethnographic accounts of the Balkans ("Western travelers and the understanding of the Balkans"), the interwar fieldwork projects in the region ("Fieldwork, ethnography and community studies"), the relationship between Mediterranean Anthropology and Balkan ethnographies, the postmodern perspectives of the Balkans ("Narratives and images: Balkanism and beyond"), the post-socialist anthropological analysis of the region and the relationship between European integration and images of the Balkans. Teaching methods: lectures, film screening, seminars, essay presentations. Τhe course will be taught in English.

Dr Deema Kaneff ( d.kaneff@bham.ac.uk )

holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Adelaide , was a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University and Senior Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology ( Halle ) before taking up the position of Reader in European Studies, at the Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham , UK . Her research interests focus on social and economic transformations in Eastern Europe ( Bulgaria and Ukraine , especially emerging inequalities and neoliberal reforms).

Dr. Georgios Agelopoulos ( avgiagel@otenet.gr ) is assistant Professor at the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia , Thessaloniki . He holds an M.Phil. ( University of St. Andrews , UK ) and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology ( University of Cambridge ). His research interests include the study of Nationalism and Ethnicity , Balkan Anthropology , Minorities , and Migration. He is currently teaching courses on "The Balkans, Europe and Modern Greece " and "Balkan Ethnographies". 

Dr. Elefteria Deltsou ( eldelt@uth.gr )is lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly , Volos . She holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Indiana . Her research interests include the politics of culture and the past, tourism, tradition and identity politics, development and the EU.

Dr. Aliki Angelidou ( alangel@panteion.gr ) is lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University , Athens . She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris , exploring the socio-economic transformations in post-socialist rural Bulgaria . Currently, she carries out research on migration and multiculturalism in Athens with special focus on migrants from former Soviet Union and East European countries. 

Prof. Vintila Mihailescu

The course aims to reflect on the uses and abuses of a core concept of anthropological thinking, in general, and a sensitive one for the "nation-building anthropologies", in particular : tradition. The first course (National ethnologies and the making of traditional facts. Some reminders of the historical and epistemological context) intends to critically revisit the ways in which "national ethnologies" of the Balkans usually defined - and still consider - their object as traditional facts, thus approaching social reality in a way rather different from the classical durkheimian principle of the social facts. The second course (The making of folk patrimony. A case study: the Calus) goes a step further, explaining and illustrating by means of several ethnographic films the way ethnology contributed to the very production of traditions. Coming closer to present days, the third course (The market of handicrafts. An exhibition an a case study: the pottery of Horezu) is presenting the market & marketing of traditions phenomena by means of a collective research on a leading pottery community in Romania . Finally, the last course (Branding traditional gastronomy. An experiment: how would you proceed ?) is, in fact, a "brainstorming" exercise, aiming to test the role and limits of the ethnologists in the "marketing of traditions".

Prof. Vintila Mihailescu ( mihailescuvintila@yahoo.com ) is full Professor of anthropology at the National School of Political Studies and Administration in Bucharest and General Director of the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Main fields of interest: cognitive anthropology, economic anthropology, community studies, history of anthropology.

Prof. Charalambos Kasimis, Dr. Yiorghos Tsimouris

This course will place its emphasis in the analysis of the characteristics of the migratory phenomenon in Europe and more particularly in Southern Europe and the Balkans. First, it will examine the reversal of the direction of migration towards Southern Europe in the context of external factors related to globalisation, the collapse of the Central Eastern European Countries (CEECs) regimes and the war conflicts and internal factors such as the demographic crisis and the changes of the labour market structures of the receiver countries. The course will move to the discussion of the migratory phenomenon in Greece and the connecting routes to some of the Balkan countries of origin. Emphasis will be placed upon the socio-economic dimensions of the phenomenon in the rural regions and the research experiences in the field.

In the second part of this course our aim is to foreground the relation between the construction of the nation-states and the proliferation of migrants and refugees in the modern world dominated by capitalism. In this context we shall explore the pragmatic and the symbolic aspects of borders, both voluntary and involuntary migration from the point of view of geographic, political and economic relations between the countries of origin of migrants and the countries of destination. We shall discuss migratory trajectories in the context of global political economy and the division of labour. Through concrete ethnographic paradigms, we shall approach the relation between migration and the production of collective identities. Similarly, issues on transnationalism, diasporas, hybridisation, xenophobia and racism will be presented and discussed.

Dr Charalambos Kasimis ( kasimis@aua.gr ) is Professor of Rural Sociology at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Agricultural University of Athens.His research interests focus on questions of rural transformation and development in Greece and the Balkans and more particularly on family farming, employment and rural community change. Migration and, more particularly, migration to rural regions has become one of his main research priorities in the past few years.

Dr. Yiorghos Tsimouris ( tsimouris@hotmail.com ) is assistant Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Panteion University , Athens . He studi ed Sociology at the University of Essex , UK (M.A. 1994) and Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex , UK (PhD. 1998). For his doctoral thesis he conducted research among people who came as refugees from Asia Minor , after the Greco-Turkish war of 1922. His last research is on the trajectory of the Greek community of Imvros (Gokseada).

Dr. Marilena Papachristophorou, Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik

This course seeks to introduce the student to the study of oral tradition and to examine issues related to it. Narrative genres, such as the folktale, the oral epics and the jocular narratives will serve as vehicles to present case studies. The first part will survey narrative genres and their possible adaptations to urban / web contexts as well as basic principles of the comparative method especially considering the study of the transcribed texts: international classification systems, national catalogues and archive research. That is, methodology issues of an initially philological research. It will also focus on questions of description and methodology for a two-way fieldwork: first, collecting and transcribing in order to compile archival material and, second, understanding orality in specific cultural and social contexts.

The second part will consider specific examples of an applied comparative approach; that is a general survey of the contexts and performances of the epic and romance traditions in the Balkans and an elaboration of Nasreddin Hoca in global contexts. Contested theories and ethnographic practice: the case of "oicotypes", enlarging localities and perceiving the Balkans as a melting pot. From fieldwork to the anthropology of orality: strategies, ideological and symbolic systems, collective identities, as well as different contexts of orality, contesting authenticity, gendered implications on narrative genres. The course will lead to fieldwork practice: free interview, recording and commentating cases of traditional verbal expression.

Dr. Marilena Papachristophorou (mpapach@academyofathens.gr) is a Researcher at the Hellenic Folklore Research Centre ( Academy of Athens ) and elected assistant professor of Folklore in the Dep. Of History and Archaeology at the University of Ioannina . She studied French and Comparative Literature in Sorbonne (University Paris IV) and obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris . Her main research objects consist in the development and the documentation of archival data and the study of orality with a special emphasis on oral narratives and fieldwork research.

Dr. Hande Birkalan-Gedik (hande1kalan@yahoo.com) is an associate professor of folklore at the Department of Anthropology at Yeditepe University , Istanbul - Turkey . Completing a double MA Folklore and Central Eurasian Studies, she obtained her Ph.D. at Indiana University, Folklore Institute with minors in Anthropology and Gender Studies. Her research specialities are gender and genre, folklore theory and methods, fieldwork, migration, and nationalism.

Prof. Vassilis Nitsiakos, Dr. Vassilis Dalkavoukis, Mr. Kostas Mantzos

This course is an introduction to ethnographic fieldwork and will be conducted in both Greek and English. It focuses on issues such as re-thinking "participant observation"; from realist ethnography to modern paradigms; fieldwork and the understanding of the "other"; Identity and "otherness"; applied ethnography in border areas; national borders and ethnic groups and boundaries. Oral histories and biographies are also examined as valuable theoretical and methodological tools that enrich qualitative social analysis and deepen our understanding of concepts such as "boundaries", "transition" and "memory". The course examines the case of the Greek- Albanian border zone with fieldwork practice in the area of Konitsa ( Greece ) and Permet ( Albania ).

Prof. Vassilis Nitsiakos ( bnitsiak@cc.uoi.gr ) holds an MA in Folklife studies ( University of Leeds ) and a PhD in Social Anthropology ( university of Cambridge ). He is teaching courses on Ethnic and National identities in the Balkans. His current research interests involve issues of migration, identities and the Ethnography of borders in the Greek-Albanian border.

Dr. Vassilis Dalkavoukis ( vdalkavo@he.duth.gr ) is Lecturer of Ethnography of Greece at the univ. of Thrace . His research interests include issues of local and ethnic identities in Northern Greece .

Kostas Mantzos ( kmantzos@hotmail.com ) holds an MA degree in Social Anthropology of UCL and is currently completing his Phd thesis on the Greek minority of Albania.

Dr. Ljupco Risteski

This course deals with "socially marginalized groups". More specifically, it focuses on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) population, Commercial Sexual Workers (CSW) and People who Use Drugs (PUD) exploring aspects of their social life. The course will discuss definitions and understandings of these groups in Anthropology and other social sciences. It will also address the epistemological and methodological problems posed in the ethnographic study of such groups using examples from researches conducted by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology at the Sts. Cyril and Methodius University in the city of Skopje.

Dr Ljupco S. Risteski ( risteski@iunona.pmf.ukim.edu.mk ) is associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius - Skopje . He received an MA (1997) in Social - Cultural Anthropology from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and a Ph.D. (2002) in Ethnology from the . University " Sts. Cyril and Methodius" - Skopje . His research interests include Balkan ethnology and anthropology, especially the fields of mythology and folk religion of Balkan Slavic people.

Dr. Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva, Dr. Ilia Iliev

The course will focus on some of the main characteristic features of consumerism and consumer culture in socialist and post-socialist societies. Mainly on the basis of material for Bulgaria changes of consumer practices and especially of food behavior will be presented. Then will be discussed the process of adapting Soviet and Western concepts, related to consumption, to the Bulgarian social sciences, social policies, and everyday practices. Finally, the course will invite for a discussion on similar processes in adapting concepts from Western anthropological traditions into local Balkan contexts.

Dr. Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva ( evgenia_blagoeva@hotmail.com ) is a chief assistant professor in cultural anthropology in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of New Bulgarian University , Sofia , Bulgaria . She has M.A. degree in ethnology from the Sofia University 'St. Kliment Ohrisdki' (1994) and Ph.D (1998) from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Ethnographic Institute with Museum. Her main research interests include names, name-giving and renaming; contemporary ethnic processes, studies of communities and identities in the Balkans, consumer culture as well as the main ethnic and religious minorities in Bulgaria.

Dr. Ilia Iliev ( ilyailiev@gmail.com ) is assistant professor at the Department of Ethnology, University 'St. Kliment Ohrisdki', Sofia , Bulgaria where he got his PhD in 1998. He teaches History and Theory of Ethnology and Ethnography of Socialism and is doing applied research on poverty and social exclusion in nowadays Bulgaria . His major research interests are social history of the communist countries, ethnicity, and the transformations of Bulgarian agriculture.

Dr. Alexandra Bakalaki, Dr. Venetia Kantsa

The course begins with a summary presentation of the basic anthropological approaches to the study of women and gender as they emerged during the 1970s.  Since then gender has been deployed as an analytical tool and/or perspective for the understanding of various social and cultural processes. However, anthropological research has also centered on the multiple and complex ways in which gender informs and is informed by cultural constructs pertaining to personhood, identity and the body and by the organization of social relations. Hence, the ethnographic part of the course will explore the interrelations between gender, "race", kinship, sexuality and ethnicity.

Dr. Alexandra Bakalaki ( abak@hist.auth.gr ) is assistant professor in Social Anthropology at the Department of History and Archaeology of Aristotle University in Thessaloniki .  She studied sociology in Indiana University and anthropology in the State University of New York at Buffalo . She has been engaged with the study of gender as both teacher and researcher.   

Dr. Venetia Kantsa ( vkantsa@sa.aegean.gr ) is lecturer in Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of Aegean , Mytilini. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at London School of Economics (LSE) exploring erotic relationships among women in contemporary Greece . Her research interests include gender and sexuality, kinship and new reproductive technologies.

Music and dance in the Balkans: Culture, identity, and power

Dr. Panagiotis Panopoulos, Dr. Ioannis Manos

Music and dance are interrelated social activities and critical cultural domains in which social relations, cultural symbolisms, transformations and conflicts are collectively articulated and expressed. In this course, we approach music and dance as social and cultural practices, as well as symbols, implicated in the construction of collective identities and the formation of local, national and transnational processes of network-building. Based on the instructors' ethnographic fieldwork [ Florina region , northern Greece (Manos) and the Greek island of Naxos (Panopoulos) ] , as well as on several case-studies from various Balkan countries, we will address the role of music and dance in the construction of gender, national and other individual and collective identities, as well as the politics of culture identity in state border regions. We will also consider some wider theoretical and methodological questions of ethnographic practice: the interplay of observation and participation in music and dance performances; the position of the ethnographer; issues of "authenticity", revitalizing of "tradition" and the influence of the market in the transformation of music and dance. The course will also include short fieldwork practice in local music and dance events.

Dr. Panagiotis Panopoulos ( ppanopou@sa.aegean.gr ) is assistant professor of Music and Dance at the Department of Social Anthropology and History, University of the Aegean , Mytilini , Greece . He studied Education at the University of Athens and Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean . He was awarded a PhD by the University of the Aegean in 1998. His recent ethnographic publications concern the symbolism of sound and hearing in modern Greece , through a case-study of animal bells. Another part of his research interests concerns the study of local associations and the role of musical performances in the construction of identity.

Dr. Ioannis Manos ( ioannis.manos@gmail.com ) ) is lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Balkan Studies at the University of Western Macedonia , Florina , Greece . He holds an MA (1998) and PhD (2002) in Social/Cultural Anthropology from the University of Hamburg in Germany . He has conducted fieldwork on the politics of culture and identity, the politicization of dance and its role in identity formation processes in northern Greece .