Ideas of Exile, Refugees and Displacement in the Ancient and Modern Mediterranean
Starts:
Finishes:
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
This workshop will focus on ideas about exile, refugees and displacement in ancient and modern literature, thought and society, examining exile and forced migration in a broad sense, not just as a consequence of political stasis or war, and comparing and contrasting exile with voluntary emigration. It will be especially concerned with political dissidents, asylum seekers and wartime and post-war refugees, with forced migration as a loss of homeland and with what makes people feel alienated or at home in exile. Traditionally the disciplines of Ancient History, Modern History, Modern Languages and Classics have relied on different approaches and highlighted different themes when addressing questions of exile. But we want to ask what narratives, approaches and methodologies from Classics and Ancient History can offer researchers into modern and contemporary issues and themes, and vice versa, by focusing particularly on exile and exiles’ diaspora experiences.
Location: Malet Street Main Building, Room G16
Speakers:
Day 1: 24 September 2026
14.15 Opening remarks: ancient and modern exile narratives
Ian Sideris (Birkbeck College)
14.30 Daphne Kalogeropoulou (Birkbeck College)
Silenced Memories and Symbolic Displacement in the Athenian Amnesty of 403 BCE
15.15 Benjamin Gray (Cambridge University) and James Hua (Oxford University)
Integrating ancient Greece in refugee history: inscriptions, (in)visibility and refugee agency
16.15 Tea and coffee
16.45 Demetra Kasimis (Cambridge University)
Greek exile and political theory: Hospitality’s Hidden Abode
17.30 Ian Sideris (Birkbeck College)
Exile and Hellenism in the Poetry of George Seferis and C.P. Cavafy
18.15 Round table discussion
Participants: Catharine Edwards (Birkbeck College), Frisbee Sheffield (Cambridge University)
19.00 Closing remarks
Day 2: 25 September 2026
9.00 Elena Isayev (Exeter University)
The Exile as Weapon: Moving People to Challenge Autonomy and Exert Authority in Hellenistic Decrees
9.45 Daniel Hanigan (Cambridge University)
Against the Refugees: Libanius and the Politics of Dissent
10.30 Tea and coffee
11.00 Vayos Liapis (Open University of Cyprus)
Perpetual Exiles: Aris Alexandrou and his Antigone
11.45 Anna Coopey (St Andrews University)
“I am Nobody”: Ritsos’ Resistant (Classical) Receptions and Cultural Exile in 1940s Greece
12.30 Round table discussion
Participants: Joseph Viscomi (Birkbeck College), Athena Leoussi (University of Reading)
13.15 Closing remarks
Contact name: Sam Tewkesbury
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