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2026-2027 Academic Year
5 October 2026, King’s Strand campus, River Room (KIN227), 18:00-20.00: Lecture by Dr Spyros Tsoutsoumpis: ‘A Violent Middle Class: Paramilitaries, Gangs, and State Formation in Modern Greece, 1912-1949‘
Abstract: This presentation rethinks the relationship between violence, nation-building, and ethnicity in the northern borderlands of Greece between 1903 and 1949 through a reconstruction of events in Thesprotia from the Balkan Wars to the onset of the Cold War. The transformation of these regions from imperial borderlands into ‘ethnic’ homelands has typically been examined through the lens of the state. This presentation challenges that approach by focusing instead on the role of rural populations, minorities, and non-state armed actors, including paramilitaries, smugglers, guerrillas, and warlords, who have largely been written out of this history. The presentation problematizes conventional interpretations in two ways. First, it demonstrates that the inhabitants of the borderlands were active agents in these processes and played a central role in how the idea of the nation-state was established, disseminated, and negotiated within their communities. Secondly, it argues that experiences of mobilization and ethnic violence in the periphery had a decisive impact on the institutions, practices, and imaginaries of nation-building itself. In this respect, the periphery rather than the centre shaped both the timing and character of national and institutional formation. These findings challenge conventional understandings of the centre–periphery relationship and shed new light on the making of the nation-state in Greece and Southeastern Europe.
Speaker’s bio: Dr Spyridon Tsoutsoumpis is a historian of Modern Greece and Southeastern Europe and an associate lecturer at the Department of Politics in Manchester. His research focuses on the intersection of political violence, nation-building, and organized crime during the era of the European Civil War (1905-1949). Tsoutsoumpis has issued numerous publications, including A History of the Greek Resistance in the Second World War: The Peoples Armies (Manchester University Press, 2016) and Paramilitary Violence in the Post-Ottoman Borderlands: Pro-state Militias and Nation-Building, 1905-1949 (Bloomsbury 2006). Tsoutsoumpis holds a PhD in History from Manchester University and is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from Princeton University, The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Portico Foundation, New Europe College (Bucharest), and the Centre for Advanced Studies (Sofia). He has held lectureships at Lancaster University, Manchester Metropolitan University, Hradec Kralove University and Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1990799716543?aff=oddtdtcreator
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24-25 September 2026: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street: Ideas of Exile, Refugees and Displacement in the Ancient and Modern Mediterranean, two days of presentations organized by Ian Sideris, in conjunction with King’s CHS:
For more information about times and speakers, and a link to register:
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20 October 2026: Unveiling Byzantium: An Evening Remembering Averil Cameron (1940-2026)
Vespers in the King’s Chapel, 17:15-18:15: with the King’s choir and music by Rachmaninoff. (Contact: Fiona Haarer)
Talks and Remembrances: Council Room KIN 214, 18:30-21:00 (+ adjacent KIN 213)
A collaboration of SPBS, King’s Classics, History, CLAMS, and CHS
Welcome: Dr James Corke-Webster, HoD Classics
Photo credit: Kevin Edwards for the University of Oxford.
To see the registration page please click the link here:
Speakers:
Dr Alexandra Vukovich, History, King’s: ‘Critical Byzantine Matters’
Prof. Emeritus Michael Maas, Rice University, USA: ‘Remembering a Long-time, Long-distance Friend’
Prof. Emerita Margaret Mullett, Queen’s University Belfast: ‘Dialoguing with dialogue’
Short Remembrances (moderator Dr Tassos Papacostas)
More information and a registration link will appear on the SPBS website soon.
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27 October 2026: First of four seminars in the new series ‘Greece and the Modern World: Modern Greek History in European, Mediterranean and Global Perspectives’, co-organized by Georgios Giannakopoulos, Department of International Politics, City St George’s, University of London, and Gonda Van Steen, King’s College London. Time and location: 17:30-19:00, in D427 Rhind Building, City St George’s, University of London, St John Street, London EC1R 0JD.
First seminar: Migration and Diasporas: Nicholas Doumanis, University of Illinois Chicago, and Marilena Anastasopoulou, University College Dublin, with discussant Othon Anastasakis, St Antony’s College, Oxford.
Second seminar: Tu 17 November, same time and location: Orphans, Minorities, and the Remaking of States after Empire: İlay Romain Örs, The American College of Greece, and Theodora Dragostinova, The Ohio State University, with discussant Gonda Van Steen.
A third seminar on Greece and global capitalism is scheduled for Tu 1 December. A fourth seminar will held in the spring of 2027. Details TBC.
A fourth seminar is scheduled for Tu 20 April 2027, with speakers Panagiotis Karagkounis, on ‘Hellenising Refugeedom. Forced Displacement, Humanitarianism and the Making of Modern Greece, 1910s–1950s’, and Carl Mauzy, on ‘Uneasy witnesses – Second World War Greece through German eyes’.
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November 2026: Details TBA: Theatre play ‘For Three Refrigerators and a Washing Machine’, directed by Kyriaki Mitsou, in conjunction with CHS.
After its celebrated London debut in 2024, this moving testimony theatre play, featuring Greece’s adoption history, returns to confront the enduring quest for identity and belonging. Reimagining the question ‘Who am I?’, it transforms uncertainty into a story of courage, pride, and resilience. More details to follow.
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25 November 2026, River Room KIN227, 18:00-19.30: Lecture by Prof. Aristidis Hatzis (University of Athens)
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25 January and 1 February 2027, 17:00 (UK), 19:00 (Greece): Two online panels co-hosted by the CHS-BSA on ‘Writing the Townscape’, with support from the Cyprus High Commission in London and Aiora Press in Athens.
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4 February 2027, King’s Great Hall, 18:00-20:00: Annual Runciman Lecture: The 36th lecture in the series will be given by Professor Emeritus Michael Trapp, topio TBC. The lecture will be preceded by Orthodox Vespers at the King’s Chapel (17:15).
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10-12 March 2027 (TBC), King’s Greenwood Theatre (Guy’s campus near London Bridge Station):
The annual King’s Greek Play: details TBC
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4 June 2027, Council Room KIN 214: The annual Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Award Ceremony and Lecture will be held in conjunction with The Anglo-Hellenic League and King’s Classics Department. It will be co-hosted by the Foundation for Platonic Studies, which will be handing out the fifth Mary Margaret McCabe Dissertation Prize in Ancient Philosophy.
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7 June 2027, King’s Great Hall: The annual Runciman Award ceremony held by The Anglo-Hellenic League and co-hosted with CHS. For updates, consult
21in21.co.uk 