Encounters of Transformation: Intercultural Relations between Greek and Indigenous Australians
Join a symposium organised by the UNSW School of Humanities & Languages with the collaboration of the Foundation for Hellenic Studies (UNSW) and the students' HellSoc (Hellenic Society of UNSW).
The theme of the symposium is the interaction – direct or indirect – between Greek and Indigenous Australians, in a variety of domains and in a range of ways, such as through literature, the visual arts, sociopolitical advocacy movements and the self-representation of Australian First Peoples themselves. The symposium will be accompanied by exhibited artworks of Christina Tsaou, a young Greek visual artist inspired by Indigenous art.
This event is structured into two parts. Part A includes 4 presentations (20 minute presentation and a 10 minute Q&A for each presenter), and Part B is made up of two roundtable discussions (60 to 75 minutes each including a Q&A).
There will be a lunch and an afternoon tea break. The presentations will be delivered by academics, Greek and Indigenous, while the roundtable discussions will also feature Greek and Indigenous writers, artists, community leaders and/or activists, and generally people who have engaged somehow in Greek - Indigenous Australian relations.
Dr Petro Alexiou has studied literature, philosophy and history in Australia and Greece. From 1983-1996 he subtitled Greek films for Australia’s public broadcaster SBS-TV. He has written scripts for film and video and has published children’s stories and articles on Greek literature and cinema, as well as Greek-Australian history. His PhD thesis ‘A Body Broken: A critical biography of Alekos Doukas (1900-1962)’ explores the life and times of the migrant writer Alekos Doukas. His translations include: Panayota Nazou (2019) Promised Brides: Experiences and Testimonies of Greek Women in Australia (1950-1975), Georgia Charpantidou (2024) The embodiment of a distant homeland: the history of the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria from its founding to 1972 and the 1929 novel A Prisoner of War’s Story by Stratis Doukas.
Effy Alexakis’ photographs are held in both public and private collections in Australia – most significantly in the Australian National Gallery, Canberra, the State Library of New South Wales, Sydney, and the Australian Embassy, Athens. She has been ranked in the top ten portrait photographers in Australia and has been a recipient of significant grants including from the Australia Council, Australian-Greek Presidential Awards and numerous heritage grants.
Leonard Janiszewski has held both a New South Wales History Fellowship and a New South Wales Ethnic Affairs Commission Fellowship. They have produced various national and international touring exhibitions, five major books, numerous exhibition catalogues, over 250 book chapters, articles, conference papers, and three film documentaries essentially from material held in their project archive, ‘In Their Own Image: Greek-Australians’; the archive has recently been gifted to the State Library of New South Wales. Alexakis and Janiszewski have been Research Fellows with the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney, and have served on numerous government and university-based history, literature and arts committees.
Daphne Arapakis is a PhD Candidate in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis, "Diasporic Tensions, Colonial Dimensions: Greeks, Australian Multiculturalism, and Indigenous Sovereignty", explores the tensions between everyday expressions of multiculturalism and Indigenous politics in Australia. Daphne recently published an article in the Journal of Intercultural Studies titled "Ethnic Compartmentalisation: Greek Australian (Dis)Associations with White Australia and Indigenous Sovereignty".
Dr Vassilis Adrahtas is the Convenor of Greek Studies at UNSW and Subject Coordinator in Islamic Studies at WSU. His background is in theology, philosophy and sociology, while his specialisation is in early Christianity, Patristics, Byzantine philosophy, and Indigenous Australian religions. Over the years he has taught at several universities both in Australia and overseas. He has authored and co-edited ten books, published many chapters in collective volumes, and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals.
