Members

Angelos Kontogiannis-Mandros

Phd Political Science
Post-Doctoral Researcher
Principal Investigator of the Project

Angelos Kontogiannis-Mandros is a post-doctoral researcher at Panteion University Athens and Principal Investigator of the project. He is a graduate of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the University of Athens specialised in Political Behaviour (Msc, University of Essex) and Social & Cultural Psychology (Msc, London School of Economics and Political Science), fields that remain at the forefront of his research interests. In 2018 he completed his Phd thesis (Department of European & International Studies, King’s College London) on the crisis of the modernisation project in Greece and the transformation of the Greek party system under the impact of the 2010-2013 cycle of of contention. He has participated in various domestic and international conferences as well as in specialised summer schools on social sciences methodology (Essex, ECPR), political economy (Harvard) and international relations (OSA). His current research centres on the study of euroscepticism and electoral abstention in Greece after the 2015 referendum, and the left-wing varieties of populism that emerged in the European South in the course of the crisis.

Thanos Liapas

PhD Political Economy

Thanos Liapas is a final year doctoral researcher at the European University Viadrina in Germany. His thesis is about the political economy of the negotiations between the Greek left-wing government of Syriza and the Troika (ECB, European Commission and IMF) in 2015. His research interests include international political economy, international relations, critical European studies and the study of the European employers’ organizations.

Despina Paraskeva-Veloudogianni

Political Science and Sociology

Despina Paraskeva-Veloudogianni was born in 1985 in Athens. She graduated from the Department of Philology of the University of Athens and then attended the Postgraduate Programme “Political Science and Sociology” at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, where she is currently studying as a PhD candidate. Her main research interests are political philosophy, social and feminist theory. She is a member of the scientific team that created the teachers’ education and training programme“Democratic Education” and author of the book The Enemy, the Blood, the Punisher. Analyzing thirteen speeches of the “Leader” of Golden Dawn.

Katerina Sergidou

Phd Candidate Social Anthropology

Katerina Sergidou is a social anthropologist with a background in History-Archaeology (BA. National and Kapodistrian University of Athens) and in communication and cultural studies (MA. Panteion University of Political and Social Sciences). Since May 2017 she has been elaborating a jointly supervised (cotutelle) doctoral dissertation at the Department of Social Anthropology and Philosophy of Values of the University of the Basque Country (UPV) (doctoral program of Feminist and Gender studies) and the Department of Communication Media and Culture of Panteion University as a fellow of the State Scholarship Foundation (IKY) of Greece. Her dissertation is on women´s participation in the carnival of Cádiz (Andalucía), through a feminist-anthropological perspective. She has undertaken research in Greece, the Spanish State, and Cyprus which has resulted to several journal articles, co-editing books, presence in international conferences and public writing.Currently she forms part of the feminist research group EzdonkOraindik based in the Basque Country. She is also engaged in feminist activism, and she is a frequent columnist for feminist politics and Spanish culture. Her research interests include contemporary carnival festivities, feminist methodologies in social research, popular art and politics, the concept of feminist hegemony, feminist activism, and Spanish politics. She is engaged in Oral History research as a member of OPIFEMIN, an oral history group, and she is currently working as a researcher at Panteion University.She is also a member of the editorial committee of the journal Entanglementsexperiments in multimodal ethnography, the academic journal Πόλις Άπολις and the literary journal Marginalia.

Costas Gousis

PhD Sociology, Post-Doctoral Researcher

Costas Gousis was born in 1986 in Volos. He is a graduate of the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) with a Master’s degree in Political Theory and Philosophy at the School of Political Sciences of AUTH. As an AHRC Techne funded doctoral student, he conducted research on immigrant activism in Greece during the last two decades and received his PhD from the University of Roehampton in 2021. His thesis explores a wide variety of immigrant activism cases including labour and feminist organising, citizenship struggles and justice campaigns. He has worked as a social researcher and as a lawyer in the field of human rights and refugee law, first as a member of the Asylum Appeals Committees of the Hellenic Republic under Presidential Decree 114/2010 and subsequently in the Legal Service of the Youth Support Centre of ARSIS in Athens, providing legal assistance for asylum seekers. He is working as a project coordinator at Eteron – Institute for Research and Social Change since 2021, coordinating research projects on young people’s attitudes in respect of politics, patterns of youth mobilisation, and voting behaviour. Ηe has participated in international conferences and workshops and has published his articles in collective volumes and peer-reviewed journals such as Citizenship Studies, Radical Philosophy Review, Praksis, Dissonância: Critical Theory Journal etc.

Josep Maria Antentas

Phd Sociology
Post-Doctoral Researcher

Josep Maria Antentas is professor of Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
(UAB) specialized in sociology of labour, social movements and political conflict. His
research articles have appeared in journals such as Historical Materialism, Labor History,
Antipode, Globalizations, Rethinking Marxism, Science & Society, Dialectical Anthropology,
Capitalism Nature Socialism, and Socialism & Democracy. He is the author of the book
Espectros de Octubre (Sylone, 2018) on the Catalan independence movement and the
Spanish regime crisis.

Zeno Leoni

Phd International and European Studies
Lecturer King’s College London

Dr Zeno Leoni is a Lecturer in War Studies Education at the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, based within the Joint Services and Staff College (JSCSC) of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. He is also an affiliate to the Lau China Institute of King’s College London, where he is co-convenor of the same institute’s policy brief series China in the World. Since the AY 2020/2021 he has been a Visiting Scholar in Defence and Security Studies at Nebrija University, in Madrid.
Research

In 2021 he published a monograph titled American Grand Strategy from Obama to Trump: Imperialism After Bush and China’s Hegemonic Challenge (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan) and
a chapter on the New Cold War and the implications of Covid-19 in a collection titled The global impact of COVID-19 on rights and justice (Oxon: Routledge). In 2022 his book chapter on US-China competition in the MENA region will be published within a collection of essays titledThe Routledge Handbook on China in the Middle East and North Africa (Oxon: Routledge). Currently, Zeno is finishing a short book titled The China Conundrum: World Order and Economic Power, a text on Sino-Western relations aimed for a general audience.

Policy engagement
Dr. Leoni is engaging policy-makers in Italy and the UK. In 2020 he worked within the Italian Joint Chiefs of Defence Staff to write Italy’s first civil-military-produced Future Trends Concept 2040+ document, analysing future geopolitical, technological, environmental, and economic trends. Meanwhile, every year in Rome he delivers a guest lecture at the Italian Defence Higher Studies Institute (IASD), Italy’s premier defence education institution.
In the UK he recently supported the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) during a Study Day on China. At the Joint Services and Staff College he teaches courses on China for the Higher Command and Staff Course (HCSC), whose members come from Five Eyes (FVEY) countries and have the rank of General or equivalent.
In June 2021 he organised a private roundtable with the Lau China Institute and the School of Security Studies of King’s College London and the Asia-Pacific Team of the HM Government Cabinet Office to discuss the Integrated review 2021. In September 2021 he wasinvited to the Oxford Indo-Pacific Symposium, a three-day long series of small-group discussions between academics, government, and think tanks happening behind closed doors at the Pembroke College of Oxford University.

Media engagement
Dr. Leoni’s commentaries on US-China relations and global politicsappeared on media such as The Times, Corriere della Sera, Rai Radio Uno, Limes, France24, TRT World, Libération,and Le Temps, in addition to a variety of podcasts. His recent analysis ofhow Taiwan may defend itself in a military conflict with China reached about 12.000 reads on The Conversation, while one of his latest commentaries on President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better World (B3W) can be found here.
Entrepreneurship
Zeno is the Executive Director of ITSS Verona (International Team for the Study of Security Verona), a not-for-profit cultural association committed to spreading knowledge in the broadly conceived field of International Security. ITSS Verona has 60 interns and a scientific committee of 100 scholars from all over the world. In October 2019, the association organized the biggest academic conference on Brexit, and in the Summer 2022 it is launching its first summer school.