Associate Prof Nick Doumanis will present a lecture about the history of modern Greeks, at the Ithacan Philanthropic Society, on Thursday 28 March 2019, as part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars, offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.

The story of the Greeks in the modern world is usually read through the frame of the nation-state. Nearly every book that has been written on the subject focusses on the Greek nation, yet before 1912 just as many Greeks lived in other parts of the eastern Mediterranean and in the global diaspora.

When preparing a history of the modern Greeks, how does one write a coherent story that includes Greeks in Athens and, say, the Peloponnese on the one hand, and on the other, those living near Trabzon, in Constantinople or in Russia? And what about the smaller communities dispersed throughout Africa, the Americas and Australasia?

The aim of this presentation is to give an idea of how a history of the Greeks might differ from the history of Greece.

Nicholas Doumanis is an historian of Europe and the Mediterranean world. Born in Australia in 1964, he studied at the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales, where he acquired his PhD. He has lectured in European history at Macquarie University and the University of Newcastle, and is currently an Associate Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. He is a former editor of The Journal of Religious History, a recipient of the Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship at Princeton University, and an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Sydney.

Doumanis was awarded the UK Fraenkel Prize for Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean. He has since published: Italy, Inventing the Nation which was translated into Italian by Il Mulino press: Una Facia Una Razza, and more recently A History of Greece covering the span of paleolithic to contemporary Greece. His latest book is Before the Nation with Oxford University Press. He is a member of the Australian Committee for the restitution of the Parthenon Marbles.

When: Thursday 28 March 2019, 7.00pm
Where: Ithacan Philanthropic Society (Level 2, 329 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne)