The Spring 2023 Dukakis Lecture: “On Hellenic Statecraft and the Geopolitics of Difference”

On Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 19:00, at Ypsilon (Edessis 5), the Dukakis Center at ACT  – The American College of Thessaloniki hosts Alex Papadopoulos, Professor of Urban and Political Geography, DePaul University, Chicago. Triantafyllos Petridis, Director at the 3rd Secondary School in Athens, also participates in the event. The lecture is organized by the ACT Dukakis Center with the support of SAAK/ Anatolia Alumni Association.

The lecture will be delivered in English with commentary in Greek by Triantafyllos Petrides, followed by a discussion with the audience in both languages.

Alex Papadopoulos, Professor of Urban and Political Geography at DePaul University in Chicago, has produced a number of innovative and thought-provoking studies on the implications of what he calls the “changing character of state power.”

How did Greece become a modern state? What role has Greece played in the development of regional affairs in the Balkans and along the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean? The bicentennial of the Greek Revolution of 1821 and the centennials of the liberation of Thessaloniki (1912), and of the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey (1922) have brought renewed interest in these questions.

Professor Papadopoulos’ most recent book, Hellenic Statecraft and the Geopolitics of Difference (2021), written in collaboration with Triantafyllos Petridis, sheds new light on the historical and geopolitical processes by which a modern Greece emerged during the course of the twentieth century, following the Balkan Wars, the First World War, and the Great Catastrophe, with their concomitant redrawing of borders and inventions of minorities and minority politics. 

Papadopoulos and Petridis ask what Hellenism is, how contemporary century actors have created or contested the boundaries of Hellenicity, and how one is to understand “difference” in these contexts. The story they unravel is one of state-building, urbanization, and national identity, with a key role played in the North, in Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Thrace.

 Alex G. Papadopoulos is a Professor of Urban and Political Geography at DePaul University. He studies the contestation of urban space in Europe and the United States. His urban work includes studies on Brussels, Saint Petersburg, Istanbul, and Chicago, and his political geographic research entangles “the urban” in works on SE European geopolitics. Professor Papadopoulos is currently a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Ionian University, where he is teaching and carrying out collaborative research on Anthropocene threats to tangible and intangible cultural heritage(s). The project contributes to Ionian’s partnership with UNESCO. His work includes curriculum design, the development and teaching of coursework on spatial methods of threat assessment, research on a threats/risk mitigation spatial model and rubric, and scientific expertise to standing committees that manage the Ionian University - UNESCO ‘threats’ project. Alex Papadopoulos is an Anatolia High School alumnus, class of '80.

Triantafyllos G. Petridis, Director at the 3rd Secondary School in Athens, Greece, is an educator and independent researcher with degrees in history, archaeology, and political science. He has worked extensively on minority education in Greece, the critical teaching of history, and inter-communal reconciliation based on new pedagogies and curricula.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 7 PM in the Ypsilon. The lecture is open to the general public and will be in English with Greek synopsis and bilingual discussion.

For further information, you may contact Dukakis Center at ACT, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For online registration please click here: https://bit.ly/3LPXhGy

The Dukakis Center is an independent, non-profit unit of ACT -- the American College of Thessaloniki. The mission of the Dukakis Center is to inspire youth from both sides of the Atlantic to take an active interest and role in public affairs. Named after three-term Governor of Massachusetts Michael S. Dukakis, the Center has hosted scores of public events dedicated to sharing Governor Dukakis’ public service ethos with a new generation of citizens. In 2023-24 the Dukakis Center will celebrate its 25 season of public service initiatives in Thessaloniki.