SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at SFU

10/09/2026

The SNF Centre's 2026/27 Hellenisms Past & Present, Local & Global, Postdoctoral Fellow Chiara Battisti will be presenting "The Language of Prophecy: Oracles and Roman Power in the Greek East" as a part of the UBC Religion at Lunch Series!

When: Wednesday, October 14th at 11:00–11:50 a.m.

Where: in person at UBC, Buchanan C203 and online (https://ubc.zoom.us/j/63067128780pwd=LQSkcSwZpm2f0CODnfy2BZH1cCcTTV.1)

ABSTRACT
How did religion help the ancient Greeks make sense of Rome’s expanding empire and conquests? This talk explores a set of ancient prophecies that imagined, negotiated, and sometimes challenged Roman imperialism. From oracles to poetic predictions, these texts reveal how religion became a way of understanding a rapidly changing Mediterranean world.

10/08/2026

Due to an unexpected last-minute issue, we’re unfortunately unable to webcast or record tonight’s talk. We sincerely apologize for the change and any inconvenience this may cause to your evening plans. Thank you for your understanding.

10/07/2026

Χρήστος Καρράς / Christos Carras (EN below)
Σε αυτό το επεισόδιο της σειράς GREECE IN CONTEXT, ο Χρήστος Καρράς, γεννημένος και μεγαλωμένος στο Λονδίνο, σπούδασε φιλοσοφία στο Κέιμπριτζ και ολοκλήρωσε το διδακτορικό του στην αισθητική της σύγχρονης μουσικής στο Παρίσι.
Το πρόσφατο έργο του επικεντρώνεται στη βιωσιμότητα στον πολιτιστικό τομέα, υποστηρίζοντας ότι τα μουσεία πρέπει να ενσωματώσουν τη βιωσιμότητα στη διακυβέρνηση, τις διαδικασίες και τη μακροπρόθεσμη στρατηγική τους. Από τη συλλογή του Μουσείου Μπενάκη επιλέγει ένα απλό πρωτοκυκλαδικό μαρμάρινο σκεύος, το οποίο τον συγκινεί για την υλική του καθαρότητα και τη διαχρονικότητά του.

💡 Η σειρά GREECE IN CONTEXT αποτελείται από έντεκα επεισόδια σε ελληνικά και αγγλικά, γυρισμένα σε χώρους του Μουσείου, με αναφορές στην ιστορία και τον πολιτισμό της Ελλάδας. Κάθε επεισόδιο φιλοξενεί έναν προσκεκλημένο ομιλητή, ο οποίος καλείται να μοιραστεί τις απόψεις του, απαντώντας σε τέσσερα βασικά ερωτήματα που σχετίζονται με το έργο του και την προσωπική του προσέγγιση στον ελληνικό πολιτισμό.
👉Δείτε τη σειρά 🔗 Link in Bio
Περισσότερες πληροφορίες στο 🔗 greeceincontext.com
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In this episode of the GREECE IN CONTEXT series, Christos Carras, born and raised in London, studied philosophy at Cambridge and completed a PhD in aesthetics of contemporary music in Paris.
His recent work focuses on sustainability in the cultural sector, arguing that museums must integrate sustainability into governance, processes and long-term strategy. From the Benaki Museum collection he selects a simple Early Cycladic marble bowl, which he finds emotionally powerful for its material purity and timelessness

💡 The GREECE IN CONTEXT series consists of eleven episodes in Greek and English, filmed within the Benaki Museum’s spaces, exploring aspects of Greek history and culture. Each episode hosts a guest speaker invited to share their views by responding to four central questions related to their work and their understanding of Greek culture.
Start Watching at Link in bio
For more information, please visit greeceincontext.com

09/29/2026

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University presents in coordination with the Emily and Edward McWhinney Professor in International Relations, Dr. James Horncastle, a special talk by Nick Dallas, University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki)

Join us Wednesday, October 7th at 7 pm in person at the SFU Harbour Centre Campus, Room 1315, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84587116628), for his talk “From Grammos to Tashkent - Greek Civil War Refugees”.

This talk will be moderated by Dr. James Horcastle, Associate Professor, Department of Global Humanities.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be webcast and recorded.

Register now: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2002559111209

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

ABSTRACT
After the defeat of the Democratic Army of Greece at the Battle of Grammos in August 1949, around 100,000 people found themselves in political exile in the People's Democracies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Of these, approximately 12,000 Democratic Army of Greece combatants were settled in Tashkent, the capital of Soviet Uzbekistan. Nick Dallas is one of the first researchers to examine the few surviving archives of the Greek Community of Tashkent. The centrepiece of this archival collection is thousands of registration cards with the personal and military details of the combatants who arrived in late 1949. Examination of these cards has allowed the development of a very accurate and detailed picture of the men and women that were exiled in Central Asia for many decades. A depiction of life and the challenges in the early years will also presented.

SPEAKER BIO
Nick Dallas was born in Mirini, Karditsa in the region of Thessaly. He arrived in Australia in 1971 on the Patris, an iconic migrant ship that brought thousands of Greeks to Australia. He studied at the University of Melbourne, where he completed his PhD in organic chemistry, followed by undergraduate degrees in the humanities and economics. He has worked for many years in educational publishing and since 2012 has been a director on the Board of Management of the Greek Community of Melbourne, where he heads the education committee and coordinates the community's public seminar series. Since 2024, he has been a doctoral candidate at the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki), Department of Balkan, Slavic, and Eastern Studies. His research interests include migration studies, bilingual education, 20th century Greek history.

09/28/2026

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present the 2026 Classical Association of Canada-SCEC Western Tour Speaker, Dr. Cillian O'Hogan, University of Toronto!

Join us Friday, October 2nd at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83452670034), for his talk “A female Latin poet and the classical legacy in the middle ages: the remarkable poetry of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim”.

This talk will be moderated by Dr. David Mirhady, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Global Humanities at SFU.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be webcast but not recorded.

Register now! https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/a-female-latin-poet-legacy-in-the-middle-ages-hrotsvit-of-gandersheim-tickets-2001072498711

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

ABSTRACT

The tenth-century nun Hrotsvit of Gandersheim is well-known to historians of drama and scholars of medieval literature, but she is seldom read by classicists. This is a shame, since in addition to being one of the most accomplished and important Latin writers of the Middle Ages, she is also an extremely thoughtful and significant interpreter of classical poetry. Modelling her works in turn on Ovid (legendary tales), Terence (dramas), and Virgil (short epics), she takes classical genres and combines them with Christian content, prefacing each work with prefaces in which she speaks openly about her method, her inspiration, and the challenges she faced while writing. In this paper, I introduce Hrotsvit's fascinating poetry, and situate her in the context of female intellectual culture in the Ottonian age, which reveals much greater engagement with the classical past on the part of women readers and writers than might be assumed.

SPEAKER BIO

I grew up in Dublin and studied Classics at Trinity College, Dublin. After a PhD on the later Latin poet Prudentius at Toronto I was employed successively as a Hellenist at the University of Waterloo, a Byzantinist at the British Library, and a classical Latinist at the University of British Columbia. In 2018, I came back to Toronto as a medieval Latinist. In other words, I'm a generalist with pretty wide-ranging interests in all things Latin and Greek (as well as Irish).

09/16/2026

Κατερίνα Βρανά/ Katerina Vrana (EN below)
Σε αυτό το επεισόδιο της σειράς GREECE IN CONTEXT, η Κατερίνα Βρανά είναι Ελληνίδα stand-up κωμικός, που πραγματοποιεί παραστάσεις στα ελληνικά και στα αγγλικά και αγαπά να αστειεύεται με τα στερεότυπα: πολιτισμικά, έμφυλα και, πιο πρόσφατα, εκείνα που αφορούν την αναπηρία, μετά τη δική της εμπειρία αναπηρίας.

Το αντικείμενο που επιλέγει από τις Συλλογές του Μουσείου Μπενάκη είναι η παραδοσιακή ελληνική φουστανέλα —μια λευκή πλισέ φούστα που φορούσαν σκληροτράχηλοι, υπερ-ανδροπρεπείς αγωνιστές της ελευθερίας ‒ και όμως, φούστα. Μέσα από αυτήν αναδεικνύει το πόσο άκαμπτοι είναι οι σύγχρονοι έμφυλοι κανόνες.

💡 Η σειρά GREECE IN CONTEXT αποτελείται από έντεκα επεισόδια σε ελληνικά και αγγλικά, γυρισμένα σε χώρους του Μουσείου, με αναφορές στην ιστορία και τον πολιτισμό της Ελλάδας. Κάθε επεισόδιο φιλοξενεί έναν προσκεκλημένο ομιλητή, ο οποίος καλείται να μοιραστεί τις απόψεις του, απαντώντας σε τέσσερα βασικά ερωτήματα που σχετίζονται με το έργο του και την προσωπική του προσέγγιση στον ελληνικό πολιτισμό.
🤝🏻 Συνεργασία: Μουσείο Μπενάκη & Κέντρο Ελληνικών Σπουδών του Ιδρύματος Σταύρος Νιάρχος στο Πανεπιστήμιο Σάιμον Φρέιζερ (Βανκούβερ, Καναδάς)
👉Δείτε τη σειρά 🔗 https://bit.ly/GreeceInContext_YouTubePlaylist
ℹΠερισσότερες πληροφορίες greeceincontext.com
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In this episode of the GREECE IN CONTEXT series, Katerina Vrana is a Greek stand-up comedian who performs in Greek and English and loves to joke about stereotypes—cultural, gender, and, more recently, those around disability after she herself became disabled.
Her chosen object is the traditional Greek foustanella—a white pleated skirt once worn by tough, hyper-masculine freedom fighters, albeit a skirt. Through it she highlights how rigid modern gender norms are.
💡 The GREECE IN CONTEXT series consists of eleven episodes in Greek and English, filmed within the Benaki Museum’s spaces, exploring aspects of Greek history and culture. Each episode hosts a guest speaker invited to share their views by responding to four central questions related to their work and their understanding of Greek culture.
🤝🏻A collaboration between the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) and the Benaki Museum, formally established in 2024, the Benaki Museum
👉🏻Start Watching at 🔗 https://bit.ly/GreeceInContext_YouTubePlaylist/
ℹ For more information, please visit 🔗 https://greeceincontext.com/

09/10/2026

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present the first talk of our 2026 Fall Speaker Series with Dr. Maria Schoina, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece!

Join us September 18th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89084516030), for her talk "Mary Shelley’s Greece: Rethinking Hellenism and Philhellenism".

This talk will be moderated by Dr. Dimitris Krallis, Professor, Department of Global Humanities.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/2000278280182

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

ABSTRACT

In this presentation, I will examine Mary Shelley’s conceptualization and fictionalization of Greece, analyzing how her engagement with classical Greece and her sustained interest in the Greek War of Independence contributed to a distinctive form of philhellenic discourse. This discourse influenced the themes and motifs of her works, ranging from her most explicitly philhellenic novel, The Last Man (1826), to her last long work of fiction, Falkner (1837). Drawing upon archival materials, I argue that Mary Shelley’s nuanced reinterpretations of both ancient and modern Greece illuminate significant aspects of her literary, political, and gender sensibilities while also revealing an alternative tradition of Hellenism and Philhellenism that merits further exploration.

SPEAKER BIO

Maria Schoina is Associate Professor of English Literature in the School of English of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her publications include Romantic “Anglo-Italians”: Configurations of Identity in Byron, the Shelleys, and the Pisan Circle (Ashgate 2009; Routledge 2019), essays on Mary Shelley’s Greek studies in The Keats-Shelley Review (2019) and Notes & Queries (2020), essays on Byron in The Oxford Handbook of Lord Byron(2024) and in Studies in Romanticism (64.3.2025, on the Greek contexts of Don Juan). She has co-edited with Alexander Grammatikos the collection Byron and Translation (Liverpool University Press, 2024). Schoina is Joint President of the International Association of Byron Societies. In support of her research on Mary Shelley she received in 2024-25 a Carr-Thomas-Ovenden Fellowship in English Literature at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

09/09/2026

Στάθης Καλύβας / Stathis Kalyvas (EN below)
Σε αυτό το επεισόδιο της σειράς GREECE IN CONTEXT, ο Στάθης Καλύβας, πολιτικός επιστήμονας και καθηγητής στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Οξφόρδης, μελετά τη συγκριτική πολιτική με έμφαση στον τρόπο με τον οποίο διαμορφώνονται οι πολιτικές ταυτότητες και στο πώς η σύγκρουση και η βία διαμορφώνουν τις κοινωνίες..
Στοχαστικά τοποθετημένος στον χώρο του Μουσείου Μπενάκη, εξετάζει πώς η ελληνική ταυτότητα συνδέεται με ισχυρά σύμβολα όπως η Ακρόπολη —ένα μνημείο που μετασχηματίστηκε σε εθνικό όραμα, διαμορφώνοντας την Αθήνα και συνεχίζοντας να καθορίζει την ελληνική αυτοαντίληψη. Υποστηρίζει ότι η πόλη που περιβάλλει το μνημείο δεν αποτελεί αποτυχία, αλλά μια συμπληρωματική δημιουργία που εκφράζει τη νεοελληνική πρωτοτυπία.
💡 Η σειρά GREECE IN CONTEXT αποτελείται από έντεκα επεισόδια σε ελληνικά και αγγλικά, γυρισμένα σε χώρους του Μουσείου, με αναφορές στην ιστορία και τον πολιτισμό της Ελλάδας. Κάθε επεισόδιο φιλοξενεί έναν προσκεκλημένο ομιλητή, ο οποίος καλείται να μοιραστεί τις απόψεις του, απαντώντας σε τέσσερα βασικά ερωτήματα που σχετίζονται με το έργο του και την προσωπική του προσέγγιση στον ελληνικό πολιτισμό.
🤝🏻 Συνεργασία: Μουσείο Μπενάκη & Κέντρο Ελληνικών Σπουδών του Ιδρύματος Σταύρος Νιάρχος στο Πανεπιστήμιο Σάιμον Φρέιζερ (Βανκούβερ, Καναδάς)
👉Δείτε τη σειρά 🔗 https://bit.ly/GreeceInContext_YouTubePlaylist
ℹΠερισσότερες πληροφορίες greeceincontext.com
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In this episode of the GREECE IN CONTEXT series, Stathis Kalyvas, political scientist and professor at the University of Oxford, studies comparative politics with a focus on how political identities are formed and how conflict and violence shape societies.
Reflecting inside the Benaki Museum, he examines how Greece’s identity is tied to powerful symbols such as the Acropolis—a landmark transformed into a national vision that shaped Athens and continues to define Greek self-perception. He argues that the city surrounding the monument is not a failure but a complementary creation that expresses modern Greek originality.
💡 The GREECE IN CONTEXT series consists of eleven episodes in Greek and English, filmed within the Benaki Museum’s spaces, exploring aspects of Greek history and culture. Each episode hosts a guest speaker invited to share their views by responding to four central questions related to their work and their understanding of Greek culture.
🤝🏻A collaboration between the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada) and the Benaki Museum, formally established in 2024, the Benaki Museum
👉🏻Start Watching at 🔗 https://bit.ly/GreeceInContext_YouTubePlaylist/
ℹ For more information, please visit 🔗 https://greeceincontext.com/

09/04/2026

The SNF Speakers Series returns for Fall 2026 on Friday, September 18th! We look forward to welcoming scholars from across North America as well as from Greece and we are excited to announce the first talk titled "Mary Shelley’s Greece: Rethinking Hellenism and Philhellenism" with Dr. Maria Schoina.

As a reminder, all Speaker Series talks are free and open to the public, held in person on Fridays at 2:30pm at the SFU Burnaby campus, in the Bennett Library, Room 7200. They will also be webcast via Zoom on links that will become available for each session once registration has opened. To receive an email preceding each talk with an abstract and speaker biography, please join our mailing list!

FALL SCHEDULE
- Friday, September 18 | Maria Schoina, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Friday, October 2 | Classical Association of Canada Speaker: Cillian O'Hogan, University of Toronto
- Friday, October 23 | Andrew Goldman, Gonzaga University
- Friday, November 13 | Ariel Fein, Yale Institute of Sacred Music
- Friday, November 27 | Alex Grammatikos, Langara College
- Friday, December 4 | Harry Killas, Emily Carr University

We look forward to seeing you!

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

Please send any questions to [email protected]. And don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive event reminders and notifications!

06/29/2026

Dr. James Horncastle has the most read article (and his 57th!) in the The Conversation Canada this month! If you missed it, check it out!

Donald Trump isn’t the first American president to fall prey to the allure of U.S. military might and to ignore its limitations.