Eventlist

Where: Greek Centre, Mezzanine, 168 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne
Lecturer: Dr. Dimitrios Varvaritis
Entry: FREE

Synopsis

This seminar will focus on the published writings of one of Australia’s first Greek leaders the Orthodox priest Reverend Seraphim Phocas.

The books, articles and reports of Phocas in Greek scholarly journals remain unstudied. An examination of this body of work reveals a profound commitment, on the part of Phocas, to Orthodox tradition and indeed a particular strand of sectarianism in his thought.

This seminar will thus present and critically examine these writings. It will furthermore argue that they must be seen within a critical juncture of a number of broad historical factors affecting both Orthodox Christianity and Australian colonial society at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

These factors include: the continuous exchanges, chiefly at a high clerical level, between Protestant Anglicans and Orthodox Christians, the permanent settlement of Orthodox Christians in the various Australian colonies and finally the continued sectarian rivalries and cleavages within Australian colonial society.

Bio

Dr. Dimitrios Varvaritis is currently an independent researcher and will be a Research Fellow, for the academic year 2016-2017, at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies.

He was educated in Australia and Britain. He holds a Bachelors degree in Law from the University of Sydney and a MA in History from the London School of Economics.

His doctorate in History was awarded from Kings College London. His main area of research concerns the political and economic history of Modern Greece and the wider eastern Mediterranean region.

He has contributed to the edited volume Sephardi Lives: A documentary history 1700-1950 (Stanford University Press, 2014) and has co-authored, together with Professor Ioanna Sapfo Pepelasis, an article that will appear in the Journal of Evolutionary Studies in Business.

Sponsors

We'd like to thank the following donors: Ithacan Philanthropic Society.

During the course of the year considerable expenses are incurred in staging the seminars. In order to mitigate these costs individuals or organisations are invited to donate against a lecture of their choice.  

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