Cultural Trauma and National Identity in Greece and Israel - CuTrau2021
José Brunner is Professor Emeritus at the Buchmann Faculty of Law and the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas of Tel Aviv University, where he taught from 1984 to 2018. In the course of these years, Brunner served as Director of the Cohn Institute (2015-18), the Minerva Institute for German History (2005-2013), and, until recently, the Eva & Marc Besen Institute for the Study of Historical Consciousness, where he edited the journal History & Memory (2012-2020). He founded the Interdisciplinary Study Program for Law and the Humanities (in 2010) and co-established Israel’s first Legal Clinic for the Rights of Holocaust Survivors (in 2011). Brunner published more than 100 scientific publications in various languages, including 2 monographs and 17 edited volumes. His research addresses a broad spectrum of topics, which include various issues in modern and contemporary political theory, the history of compensation for Holocaust survivors in Germany and Israel, the history and politics of psychoanalysis, the politics of the mental health discourse on trauma, and psychological theories of Nazism. Currently he is working on a global history of trauma.
Nikiforos Diamandouros was born on 25 June 1942 in Athens, Greece. From 2003 to October 2013, he was the Ombudsman of the European Union (European Ombudsman). From 1998 to 2003, he served as the first National Ombudsman of Greece. He is Emeritus Professor of comparative politics at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of Athens. From 1995 to 1998 he served as Director and Chairman of the Greek National Centre for Social Research (EKKE). Since 2012, he is a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe (Bruges). In May 2014, he was elected to the Greek Academy (=National Academy of Arts and Sciences). He has written extensively on the politics and history of Southern, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe, including Greece, and, more specifically, on democratisation, state and nation-building, the relationship between culture and politics, as well as the ombudsman institution, and the principles of good administrative practice. Edited volumes: The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective, 1995; Parties, Politics and Democracy in the New Southern Europe, 2001; The European Ombudsman: Origins, Establishment, Evolution, 2005; Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe, 2006; Spatial Conceptions of the Nation; Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey, 2010. Monographs: The Origins of State-Building in Modern Greece, 1821-1828, 2002 (in Greek) and Cultural Dualism and Political Change in Post-authoritarian Greece, 2000 (in Greek). Decorations: Grand Commander of the Order of the Phoenix, Greece, 2004; Golden Cross of Merit, Poland, 2010; Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, France, 2014.
Paul Isaac Hagouel is a Holocaust researcher and has published original works – papers in Greece and abroad. He has lectured (invited lecturer) about the Holocaust in Greece and abroad. His father Leon fought at the Italian Greek War 1940-1941. He survived his incarceration in Auschwitz – Birkenau (KL Number 118633). His mother Yvette Beraha was rescued by two Christian Greek ladies, Danae Pavlidou and Zoe Morou (Yad Vashem Righteous of Nations, 1998). Since 2013 he is a member of the Greek Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – IHRA, member of the Academic Working Group [AWG] and of the Committee of the Genocide of Roma [2022 Committee Chair]. Born in Athens in 1950, raised in Thessaloniki. BE “summa cum laude” and MS in Electrical Engineering, New York University, 1972 & 1973. Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, 1976. Taught at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering) the courses «Theory & Technology of Integrated Circuits» and «Advanced Topics of Physics [Quantum Mechanics, Holography] », 1977-1982. He was a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught «Introduction to Electrical Engineering», 1995. He was engaged as an Engineer and as co-CEO of the Graphic Arts Hagouel SA Company (1981-2010).
Emmanuel (Manos) Karagiannis is an Associate Professor at King's College London’s Department of Defence Studies. He was educated in the UK and the USA. He held research positions in prestigious U.S. and British universities (Yale University, Columbia University, Princeton University, London School of Economics, U.S Military Academy at West Point, Oxford University). He has published extensively on radicalization and terrorism, political Islam in Central Asia and the Middle East, ethnic conflicts in the former USSR, and Russian foreign and security policy. His new book The New Political Islam: Human Rights, Democracy and Justice has been published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. Also, he is the author of Political Islam in Central Asia (Routledge, 2010) and Energy and Security in the Caucasus (Routledge, 2002). His articles have appeared, among others, in Journal of North African Studies, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, Middle East Quarterly, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Contemporary Security Policy, Asian Security, European Security, Mediterranean Politics, Mediterranean Quarterly, Harvard Asia Quarterly, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalities Papers, Central Asian Survey, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, and Journal of Balkans and Near Eastern Studies. Dr Karagiannis has travelled extensively throughout the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Middle East to conduct research.
Triantafyllos Karatrantos is Security Policy Advisor to the Minister of Citizen Protection Greece. His main tasks are radicalization and violent extremism, jihadist terrorism and prevention policies. Dr Karatrantos is also post- doc researcher on "Polarisation & Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism" at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Senior Advisor on Radicalisation, Organised Crime and Terrorism Research and Prevention Policies at the Center for Security Studies (KEMEA) and Lecturer at the National Security School of Greece on the topics “Radicalisation and Jihadist Terrorism”. He holds a PhD in European Security and New Threats from the University of the Aegean. Since 2014 he is working at the Center for Security Studies (KEMEA) on training programs and European and research projects. Furthermore, he is a certified by RAN COE trainer in Radicalization and Member of the RAN LOCAL Group and a CEPOL network expert and a specialized trainer on hot-spots trends and challenges and FTF’s common identification indicators. Since 2005, when awarded him as a member of a youth team his first European grant from the Program Youth, he is actively coordinating and participating to the implementation of European and Research projects (HORIZON 2020, ISF- Police, AMIF, ERASMUS+).The last years he focus on first line practitioners training programs, especially short courses for Law Enforcement personnel on radicalisation and counter- terrorism and the linkages between security and foreign policy.
Dimitris Livanios
Dimitris Livanios is a Tenured Assistant Professor of Modern History, at the School of Economic and Political Sciences (Department of Journalism and Mass Communication), of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). He read history and archaeology at Aristotle University and earned his DPhil from Oxford University (St Antony’s College). Prior to coming to Greece, he taught modern Greek and Balkan history at the University Cambridge (1996-2002) and also at Birkbeck College, University of London (2002), and at Brown University, RI, USA. (2003-2006). His research interests focus on Modern Greek and Balkan history and politics from the 18th to the 20th centuries, and include the Macedonian Question, the emergence of nationalism in the Balkans, Greek historiography, British foreign policy towards the Balkans, and the interaction between religion and violence in the shaping of collective identities. He is the author of The Macedonian Question: Britain and the Southern Balkans, 1941-1949 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008), and of articles and contributions to edited volumes. He has co-organized four international conferences and has given invited lectures at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton, LSE and Yale.
Manussos Marangudakis is Professor of Comparative Cultural Sociology at the University of the Aegean. Previously he has held posts at Queen’s University in Belfast and the University of Ulster. He has been Fulbright Scholar and visiting Professor at Yale University – Center of Cultural Sociology, Hellenic Observatory (LSE) grant holder for 2013, and Director of the MA Program European Societies and European Integration (2010-2013). His work focuses on cultural sociology, civilizational analysis and historical-comparative sociology. He has published on subjects such as the Greek crisis, American fundamentalism, axial civilizations, and the social construction of nature. He has recently published The Greek Crisis and its Cultural Origins – A study in the theory of multiple modernities (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), The Profane and the Sacred in Anarchism (in Greek, Propombos, 2019), Genealogies of Sociology (in Greek, Propombos 2020) and The Syriza-Anel Governance-A Critical Analysis (ed., in Greek, Sideris Publications).
Raya Morag is Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and Head of Cinema Studies Program in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. Her research and publications deal with post-traumatic cinema and ethics; cinema, war, and masculinity; perpetrator trauma; documentary cinema; and corporeal-feminist film critique. Her current research projects focus on the perpetrator figure and societal trauma in cinema. She is the author of Defeated Masculinity: Post-Traumatic Cinema in the Aftermath of War (Peter Lang, New York, 2009), The Defeated Male. Cinema, Trauma, War (Koebner Series, Jerusalem, and Resling, Tel Aviv, 2011), Waltzing with Bashir: Perpetrator Trauma and Cinema (I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 2013), Perpetrator Trauma and Israeli Intifada Cinema (Resling, Tel Aviv, 2017), and Perpetrator Cinema. Confronting Genocide in Cambodian Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2020).
Nikos Nagopoulos is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Aegean. Scientific subject: Sociology of Knowledge. During the period 2014-15, he taught the subject “New forms of Sociology of Knowledge” at the Vienna University (Austria) - Institut of Sociology and worked as researcher at the “Lazarsfelds Archive of Social Science”. He is Director of the post-graduate program “Research in local social development and cohesion”, at the University of the Aegean. He also teaches the courses “European Demography and Migration/ Refugees’ Flows: Social Research and Policy” and "European policies for employment and social protection" in the post-graduate program “European societies - European integration” in the same Department, and participated as lecturer in summer schools of foreign universities focusing on refugees and migrants (inter alia: a. "Sono un migrante", Department of Sociology and Political Science in the University of Salerno-Italy (2014), b. Cultural Identity and social construction of “traumatic” remembering, University of Bethlehem, 2019.
Eyal Naveh is a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and at the Kibbutzim College of Education. He served as the chairperson of the department of General History at Tel Aviv University, (2012-2016) and is the head of the Academic Council at the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is the founder and the head of the Israeli Institute of History education. He is the co-director of PRIME and the coordinator and adviser of the Israeli-Palestinian two narratives history project. Professor Naveh received his PhD from UC Berkeley, USA. Naveh teaches U.S. history, modern Israeli history, and History education. Beside Tel Aviv University, he thought US and Israeli history at Harvard, UC Berkeley, Cornell, University of Toronto, Vienna University, and Venice International University. Beside his academic publications, he wrote seven textbooks to the Israeli public school system. His recent books are Side By Side – Parallel Histories of Israel and Palestine,( together with Sami Adwan and Dan Bar-On) (New Press, 2012); and Past in Turmoil – Public Debates over Historical Issues in Israel, Hakibbutz Hameuchad 2017) [Hebrew].
Kostas Rontos is Professor of Social Demography and Statistics at the Department of Sociology of the University of the Aegean. He is an expert of Population Europe, the Network of Europe’s Leading Demographic Research Centers. He used to be the President of the aforementioned- Department for 4 years. He is the Director of the Laboratory of Social Informatics, Statistics and Research Infrastructure and of the e-learning program “Empirical Research in Social Sciences”. He has served as editor, guest editor, editorial board member and reviewer in established scientific journals. He used to be a Director at the National Statistical Service of Greece, where he had being working for 24 years (1981-2005). Based on this frame, his research interests emphasize mainly to Statistics, Regional Development and Migration, Social Research, Demography and Information Systems.
Na'ama Shik received her PhD from Tel Aviv University. Her field of expertise is Jewish women in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and her dissertation was written under the supervision of Prof. Shulamit Volkov. Dr. Shik has published articles on various topics related to the unique experience of Jewish women in the camps – daily life, pregnancies and births, mother-daughter relations and the return to life. She has also published articles about the differences between testimonies and autobiographical literature published immediately after the war and those created at a later stage. Dr. Shik has been working at the International School for Holocaust Studies since 1999, and became the Director of the e-Learning Department in 2005.
Gad Yair is a cultural sociologist. He studies the effects of cultural codes on social theory and social life, mainly focusing on Israeli, German and American societies. He published extensively on cultural elements in French, German and American social theory, exposing how cultural traumas in each society predispose worldviews and direct theoretical questions. His recent book, The Unruly Mind: An Invitation to Israeli Science, compares German and Israeli science. Results from this study are also being published now in several journal articles.