Centre for Hellenic Studies (CHS) at King's College London

01/06/2026

Our speaker at our Katie Lentakis Memorial Fund Award 2026 is Professor Melissa lane of Princeton University. She will be speaking on ‘Plato’s Republic on Motivating (Ecological) Guardianship’, drawing on Plato’s Republic to explore how people can be educated so as to truly care about what it is right to do, bringing this perspective to bear on the challenges of ecology.

You can book tickets at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1987119576144?aff=oddtdtcreator

Melissa is the Class of 1943 Professor of Politics at Princeton University, where she is also Associated Faculty in Classics and in Philosophy, and has received the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Stanley J. Kelley Teaching Award of the Department of Politics, and the Faculty Community Engagement Award of the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. She currently also holds a three-year appointment dedicated to delivering periodic public lectures in London as the fiftieth Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College.

She has held a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of Classics, as well as fellowships and visiting professorships at a number of institutions including the ANU, Auckland, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, the American Academy in Rome, and the École Normale Supérieure.

Her most recent monograph, titled Of Rule and Office: Plato’s Ideas of the Political and published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, was awarded the 2024 Book Prize of the Journal of the History of Philosophy; her 2012 PUP monograph, Eco-Republic, continues to be widely discussed.

The only person ever to have delivered both the Carlyle Lectures and the Isaiah Berlin Lectures at the University of Oxford, Professor Lane has appeared multiple times on ‘In Our Time’ on BBC Radio Four, and has been published in periodicals in the US, UK, Italy and Germany.

24/05/2026

The keynote speaker at our Runciman Award ceremony is Kalli Papadaki.

Kallia is an award-winning writer.

She teaches screenwriting at the Stavrakos Film School and serves as a script consultant for the Pop Up Film Residency, the Mediterranean Film Institute, and ERT’s Microfilm program.

Her novel Dendrites, published by Polis Editions, was awarded the European Union Prize for Literature in 2017.

Her short story collection, The Back Lot Sound, received the Debut Author Award from Diavazo magazine in 2010.

Her screenplay for Penny Panayotopoulou’s film September won the Balkan Fund Development Award in 2010 and received a Nipkow Programme fellowship in Berlin in 2011. The film premiered in the Official Competition section of the 48th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

Her screenplay for the film Wishbone, also directed by Panayotopoulou, was nominated for the IRIS Screenplay Award by the Hellenic Film Academy. The film premiered in the World Competition of the 36th Galway Film Fleadh and won the Audience Award at the 65th Thessaloniki International Film Festival.

Her play Roots of Cotton, directed by Efi Theodorou, was staged at Little Epidaurus in July 2022 and published by Melani Editions.

Join us on 9th June to hear her speak on 'Being in Two Places at Once' - reserve your place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1986992021625?aff=oddtdtcreator

25/04/2026

Dear friends,
Our Centre shares in the sadness caused by the loss of Dame Averil Cameron, founder of CHS and so much more.

The Department of Classics is sad to learn of the death on the 7th April of our former colleague, Professor Dame Averil Cameron.

19/04/2026

We extend our condolences to the family of Professor Dame Averil Cameron and all those who were close to her.

The Department of Classics is sad to learn of the death on the 7th April of our former colleague, Professor Dame Averil Cameron.

Averil taught in the Classics Department, and later also in the Department of History, from 1965 to 1994, rising from Assistant Lecturer to Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies. She served as Head of the Classics Department and founded the Centre for Hellenic Studies, becoming its first Director, before leaving King's to become Warden of Keble College in Oxford. She maintained strong links with King's, chairing for example the steering committee of the King's Prosopography of the Byzantine World project from 2000 to 2005.

Averil was one of the most prominent historians of her generation. She was a leading voice in the seismic "invention" of the late antique and "rehabilitation" of the Byzantine worlds in the later twentieth century, and author of a plethora of publications in Classics, History, and Theology that ranged widely across chronological, geographical and thematic boundaries, and remain as influential now as when they were published. She was also a pioneering leader, both intellectually and practically, shepherding multiple fields and institutions into the twenty-first century.

But she will be remembered most at King's for her three decades of wonderful investment in the Department and the Faculty, and for her huge collegiality and generosity, particularly to the generations of junior scholars in whom she invested so much time and faith.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/averil-cameron

14/04/2026

8η Ετήσια διάλεξη εις Μνήμην της Νίκης Μαραγκού

09/04/2026

With warmest thanks to all who made the event possible:

31/03/2026

Coming in just a week from now:

O ομιλητής της 8ης ετήσιας διάλεξης εις μνήμην της Νίκης Μαραγκού είναι ο Μανόλης Σαββίδης.

Γεννήθηκε στην Αθήνα το 1959. Σπούδασε φιλολογία στις ΗΠΑ (Harvard 1982) και εργάστηκε ως φιλόλογος, δημοσιογράφος και εκδότης σε έντυπα και ηλεκτρονικά μέσα. Ίδρυσε τις εκδόσεις «Ιστός» (1989) και την πολιτισμική εταιρεία «Σπουδαστήριο Νέου Ελληνισμού» (1996), και διαχειρίστηκε το Αρχείο Καβάφη (1996-2012). Διηύθυνε την εκδοτική εταιρεία «Ερμής» (1995-2005) και το κοινωφελές Ίδρυμα Λαμπράκη (2010-2016). Από το 2012 είναι πρόεδρος του ΔΣ του Ιδρύματος Λαμπράκη.

Η 8η ετήσια διάλεξη εις μνήμην της Νίκης Μαραγκού, με θέμα «Ο ορισμός της ποίησης», θα πραγματοποιηθεί στις 21 Απριλίου 2026 στο Σπίτι της Κύπρου στην Αθήνα. Περισσότερες πληροφορίες εδώ: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1984707708182?fbclid=IwY2xjawQ4S2BleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETE1Y3NwRDJYa0R4VnlIcmRTc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHgaYEXVJ4ctA6VZzatJx-of1ohdnDbJn__SaaWfr4maApUQAX1rLr7ekkTLL_aem_6QYwQXwRE6GNbPvxoj20lg

24/03/2026

Dear friends, take note:

Full time continuing An exciting opportunity to conduct research and deliver teaching in the Discipline of Modern Greek and the School of Languages and Cultures Academic Level C Base ...

20/03/2026

Join us on Monday, 23 March, my friends:
23 March 2026, Bush House Lecture Theatre 1 (BH S1.01): 19:00-20:30: Book launch of Sir Roderick Beaton‘s latest book: Europe. Interlocutor: Prof. Georgios Varouxakis (Queen Mary, University of London, author of The West: The History of an Idea (2025))

Abstract: What do we think we mean by ‘Europe’? If it cannot be defined by geography alone, is it bound by history, by its politics, by a shared culture? In this perception-changing book, historian Roderick Beaton reconfigures the entire history of Europe, from its distant beginnings to today, as the story of an idea.

Since its birth in ancient Greece, Europe has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments over 2,500 years, ending with the war in Ukraine. His focus is not on regions or nation states, but always on the continent as a whole, so that it appears in the sharpest outline. Throughout, Europe: A New History draws on original sources to allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.

The story of Europe’s people is, Beaton shows us, as much about shared, and changing, identities as about great or wicked deeds, pitched battles, invasions or revolutions. Exploring the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, this wise, vital work places the Europe of today in the long arc of history, and lets us see it anew.

For more about the book, click here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/132124/roderick-beaton

12/11/2025

Exploring Greece’s past of forced adoption and new paths to citizenship, identity and belonging