The weekly Greek History and Culture Public Seminar Series organized by the Greek Community of Melbourne has been affected by Covid events just like other elements of the Community’s educational and cultural event programming. Due to the on-going nature of the Covid pandemic, it was deemed necessary to suspend the series in mid-March.

This being the tenth year of the series was shaping up as being a celebratory year to commemorate decade of intellectual debate, academic visits, captivating presentations and stimulating discussions. Things haven’t gone to plan, the organisers were blindsided by developments, just like everyone else.

Fortunately this period of hibernation and suspension will end soon. The seminars series will be reinstated by the end of month, with the main difference being that they will be delivered online and occur fortnightly.

According to the convenor, Dr Nick Dallas, this may not be an ideal situation, it doesn’t cover the coming together and interaction of people at the Greek Centre nor the social dimension the seminars provided but it’s a first step towards the return to normalcy. Whether towards the end of the series we allow audience attendance to the Centre, even on a limited basis, remains to be seen.

The seminars will be broadcast via the video-conferencing platform Zoom but will also be simultaneously streamed on the Community’s Facebook and Youtube channels. The Community’s first virtual annual general meeting this year was broadcast successfully in May and a similar approach will be used to resume the seminars. Registration will not be mandatory for participants but for those who would like the potential to ask questions using the chat function of Zoom, prior registration is necessary.

To restart the series a topic and speaker have been chosen fitting our times. On Thursday 25th June the series will recommence with the University of Melbourne’s Louise Hitchcock, Professor of Aegean Archaeology. Her topic ‘What the Covid-19 Pandemic Can Tell Us About the Bronze Age (12th century) Collapse in Greece’. The talk’s aim is to re-examine theories of events and mythologies surrounding the end of Bronze Age in the Mediterranean, which resulted in collapse, depopulation in Greece, and the destruction of the Mycenaean civilization as well as of many sites around the Mediterranean.

More information about the event will be released in the forthcoming weeks ahead.