Othon Alexandrakis

Candidate statement

Othon Alexandrakis (incumbent) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at York University, Canada. His research and publications explore cultural processes of change, micro-social responses to conditions of shared hardship, the politics of knowledge, transnational migration and childhoods, and ethnographic methods. He has over fifteen years of ethnographic research experience in Greece, primarily among undocumented migrants, anti-establishment youth, the Roma community (commonly known as Gypsies), and unaccompanied refugee children. Alexandrakis is currently engaged in two research projects: the first, as single investigator, explores political agency among unaccompanied migrant youth in Greece in a project titled Critical Humanitarianism: Precarious Pathways and Disruptive Sanctuary in Greece; the second, as co-investigator on an international interdisciplinary team, examines how liminal life shapes migrant child well-being and developmental trajectories in Hidden Sites of Liminality: Children Affected by War and Protracted Displacement (Greece, Italy, France). He has published articles in leading journals and edited volumes, and is the editor of Impulse to Act: A New Anthropology of Resistance and Social Justice (2016) and author of Radical Resilience: Athenian Topographies of Precarity and Possibility (2022). Alexandrakis currently serves on the Executive Board of the MGSA as Chair of the Digital Communications and Social Media Committee and has contributed to several other MGSA committees. During his term, he has worked with colleagues to strengthen the Association’s digital presence, including efforts to update MGSA’s web infrastructure and improve usability for members and streamline committee work.