The Centre for Greek Diaspora Studies (CGDS) is a research centre that works to study the modern Greek diaspora. It funds research and events relating to the culture and history of the Greek diaspora in its historical importance and in its contemporary manifestations. For the Centre, the diaspora is Greek and Cypriot, and the diaspora is voluntary and forced. The Greek diaspora sits within a Mediterranean and global diasporic process that moves people, ideas and cultures across the globe.
CGDS operates alongside the The Hellenic Institute at Royal Holloway, University of London and is a focused, stand-alone strand of the operations of that Institute. It was founded in 2015 and is currently led by Dr Paris Chronakis.
CGDS aims at creating an active international network of scholars and students interested in all aspects of the Greek and Cypriot Diaspora communities around the world.
It funds international workshops, academic and public-facing events. It provides funding for research projects. The Centre seeks to support students working in the field at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and will sponsor events across the range of diaspora studies, including work in community history, drama and dance.
To achieve its aims, the Centre works with a range of partners at Royal Holloway and elsewhere and is committed to understand the Greek diaspora within the contexts set by various local cultures and histories and within a wider global experience of population movement. The Centre works with a range of partners in UK and Greece to deliver the academic programme and to engage various communities.
Dr Chronakis is engaged particularly in the history of the Jewish-Greek communities. and works closely with colleagues in the Holocaust Research Institute.
From September 2025, thanks to generous funding from the A.G. Leventis Foundation Dr Christopher Jotischky-Hull has been Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Greek Studies (2025-2027). He works on the construction of Greek national identity through and around the legacy of classical antiquity, and the development of prose literature in the modern Greek language and is developing a project on Greek responses to Ottoman-era slavery.
Current Projects
The World War before the First World War.
A Global History of the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913
In 2024, Dr Paris Papamichos Chronakis began archival research for the writing of a monograph on the global dimensions of the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). A large part of the research involves collecting data on the participation of Greek migrants and Cypriot volunteers in the Greek army. The research and writing of the study are expected to be
completed by 2030.
Classical and Ottoman Enslavement and the Greek Diaspora, 1770-1900
.
In 2025, Dr Christopher Jotischky, inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Greek Studies, began research on Classical and Ottoman Enslavement and the Greek Diaspora, 1770-1900. This research aims to build up a picture of how enslavement was presented in public discourse in 19th-century Greece (in journalism, among diaspora
Greeks, and among non-Greeks from enslaving nations such as Britain and the US who were resident in Greece)
Ancient Drama and Greek Cypriot Traditional Dance
Experiential Encounters in the Diasporic Present
In 2024, Ms Despina Christianoudi, a doctoral researcher in the Department of Music,Theatre and Media Arts at Royal Holloway University of London, began her doctoral research on the use of Greek traditional dance in the teaching of ancient Greek drama.
Part of her research explores how Greek and Cypriot traditional dances can serve as a methodology for actor training and the creation of contemporary classical choral performance. Through learning and creatively transforming traditional dances, actors explore collectivity, rhythm, repetition, memory and physical expression.
Women and Work in the Cypriot Diaspora
Experiences and Memories
Since 2023, historian Dr Katerina Papakonstantinou, a Visiting Researcher at the University of Westminster in London and a teacher at the community schools Manor Hill Greek School and Finchley Greek School, has been conducting research on Greek Cypriot migration to London during the 1960s and 1970s. Her research is based on oral history interviews with first-generation Greek Cypriots who migrated to London from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. It focuses primarily on Greek Cypriot migrant women and the ways in which they entered the migrant labour market, negotiated their family roles and participated in community institutions. Through oral-history interviews,
the research seeks to highlight the crucial yet overlooked role of Greek Cypriot women in the history of Cypriot migration and labour in London and to preserve their distinctive experiences and memories.
Many Routes, Many Realities
Oral Histories, Migration, and Diasporic Memory in London, c. 1950s onwards
Workshop
(Royal Holloway University of London, June 2027)
This international workshop, co-organised with Royal Holloway’s Centre for Global South Asia, is planned for mid-June 2027. It aims to explore how oral history can illuminate the diverse histories and experiences of migrants in London. The workshop will examine their
varied migration trajectories, focusing on how social class, age, generation and gender have shaped distinct patterns of migration, settlement and integration. It will offer a comparative perspective on migration in London and a unique opportunity to examine Greek and Cypriot diasporic experiences both together and in comparison with those of other migrant communities.
Out of the Harem, into Britain
Enslaved Greek Women of 1821 in the British-Greek Diaspora
This exhibition will focus on four individual Greek women who were kidnapped and enslaved during the Greek War of Independence and subsequently lived in Britain: Kalitza Hay (née Psaraki); Anastasia ‘Nefeeseh’ Lane (birth surname unknown); Andreana Burton (née Garofaliki); and Despina Ziffo (née Despoina Kapari). The exhibition will document these women’s likely experiences of enslavement and their subsequent lives in Britain through displaying on roller banners reproductions of photographs and archival material (e.g., letters; photographs; letters and diaries relating to the circumstances of their enslavement, recovery from enslavement, and subsequent lives).
History and Memory in Modern Greece
In collaboration with the Greek Library of London
This project aims to disseminate knowledge of Modern Greek history and culture among different generations of the Greek migrant community in London and the wider United Kingdom; to strengthen cultural bonds between Greeks in the United Kingdom and Greece; and to showcase the cultural identity of Greeks in Britain.
