Candidates: 2026 ELECTION FOR THE MGSA EXECUTIVE BOARD

Standing for: Graduate Students

    • Spencer Cook
    • Name: Spencer Cook
    • Candidate Statement:
      Spencer Cook (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He holds a BSFS in Culture and Politics from Georgetown University and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Spencer’s dissertation project is a historical ethnography of trade, conflict, and borders in Cyprus since the 1960s. Following everything from sheep and goats to halloumi to craft beer, it explores how economic exchange becomes entangled with the contested politics of division and reunification on the island. As Graduate Student Representative, Spencer hopes to strengthen graduate student participation in all facets of MGSA and to support the growing network of scholars interested in modern Greece and Greek topics—including Cyprus and other, lesser-studied areas of the Greek-speaking world. He has found a warm and encouraging community in MGSA and would love to support its work as Graduate Student Representative.
    • Chloe Tsolakoglou
    • Name: Chloe Tsolakoglou
    • Candidate Statement:
      Chloe Tsolakoglou (MFA, MA, MPhil) is a poet, translator, and scholar based in New York City. Originally from Athens, she is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she has also completed certificates in Comparative Literature and Psychoanalytic Studies. Her dissertation, Soma and Riotous Archē: The Role of the Queer Body in Revolutions, examines how the body functions as a site of political struggle and a mode of theorizing revolution across literary and political archives. Her scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in Diacritics, Chiasma, Ergon, and elsewhere. She recently translated Marios Chakkas’ The Commune (dist. MIT Press), which brings an important modern Greek text to new audiences. As a scholar working between Greek and international literary traditions, she is committed to strengthening connections across disciplines and supporting emerging scholars in Modern Greek Studies. She would be honored to serve as Graduate Representative and to advocate for graduate students while helping expand MGSA’s intellectual and collaborative networks.
    • Grace Monk
    • Name: Grace Monk
    • Candidate Statement:
      Grace Monk: I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where I’m writing a dissertation about shipwreck in Greek and Latin American contexts and the ways that shipwreck prompts us to think about the past. More generally, I study Greek and Latin American literature and culture of the 20th-21st centuries. I first became interested in Modern Greek Studies as an undergraduate, and before graduate school I worked at Anatolia College in Thessaloniki. At Princeton, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies is my home base. I’m involved in the graduate reading group, and I’ve run the Modern Greek language table for several years. I also help out with concerts and our annual graduate conference, and over the summer, I’ve worked with undergraduates in Greece and Cyprus. I’m currently on Princeton’s graduate student governance committee (part of the admin’s shared governance model), and I’ve worked in governance and programming at the Modern Language Association. I would enjoy getting to know the broader graduate community involved in Modern Greek Studies and supporting graduate involvement in the field. It was a pleasure to present at MGSA in the fall of 2024 and to see everyone here on campus. I look forward to the upcoming Symposium, and I’m deeply appreciative of this scholarly community.

Standing for: Regular Members

    • Othon Alexandrakis
    • Name: 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.
    • Franklin L. Hess
    • Name: Franklin L. Hess
    • Candidate Statement:
      Franklin L. Hess (incumbent) is the Coordinator of the Modern Greek Program at Indiana University, where he holds the rank of Senior Lecturer. His research focuses on film, television, popular culture, and food studies. Hess has served multiple terms on the Executive Board of the MGSA and has served as both Secretary and President of the organization. He has participated three times on the Program Committee of the MGSA Symposium, including as co-chair in 2017. He also chaired the Local Arrangements Committee when Indiana University Bloomington hosted the Symposium in 2013. In his current term on the Executive Board, Hess is serving as the Co-Chair of the Undergraduate Studies Committee and chairing the Financial Advisory Committee and the Fundraising Committee.
    • Kelly Polychroniou
    • Name: Kelly Polychroniou
    • Candidate Statement:
      Kelly Polychroniou serves as Head of the Modern Greek Language Program and Master Lecturer in Modern Greek at Boston University. Her work combines teaching, program leadership, curriculum development, and student mentoring. She holds an M.A. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a B.A. in German Language and Literature from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. At Boston University, she has taught Modern Greek language, literature, culture, and film at multiple levels. As program head, she oversees curriculum, student placement, and lecturer support and training. Kelly is also leading the Greek summer program, bringing students to Greece for academic and cultural study. This work reflects her commitment to connecting classroom learning with lived experience. Kelly has served as Visiting Lecturer in Modern Greek at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and at DEREE College. Her academic interests include Modern Greek pedagogy, Cavafy, digital learning, and AI in language teaching. She has participated and presented my work at major conferences, including MGSA, NeMLA, and other professional meetings. In October, Kelly organized and hosted the MGSA Pedagogy Workshop at Boston University. She has also developed courses and organized many public-facing events that promote Greek language and culture. Kelly would be honored to contribute this experience and dedication as a member of the MGSA Executive Board.
    • Simos Zenios
    • Name: Simos Zenios
    • Candidate Statement:
      Simos Zenios (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Harvard University) is the Peter V. Tsantes Endowed Assistant Professor in Greek Literature and Language in the Department of Languages and Cultural Studies at Stony Brook University. He previously served as Associate Director of the UCLA SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and as Lecturer in Modern Greek Language and Culture at UCLA. At both institutions, he has been actively involved in wide-ranging academic programming and cross-institutional collaborations as well as community outreach. His research explores the intersections of literature and intellectual history in the European Enlightenment and Romanticism, as well as literary and critical theory and classical receptions. He has published studies in peer-reviewed journals and academic presses in the U.S. and Europe. The topics of these studies include the literature and intellectual history of the Greek Revolution, Romantic philhellenism and imperialism, early modern Cypriot literature and cultural transfers, Greek modernism, and rhetoric and aesthetics in the British Enlightenment. He would be honored to serve on the MGSA Executive Board, if elected, and to contribute broadly to the mission and goals of the MGSA. He is particularly interested in deepening collaborations among scholars and institutions in North America and those based in Greece, Europe, and Australia. He is also committed to expanding opportunities and support for graduate students and early-career scholars in the field.
    • Elsa Amanatidou
    • Name: Elsa Amanatidou
    • Candidate Statement:
      Elsa Amanatidou was educated at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of East Anglia and King’s College London. She is Teaching Professor in Language Studies and Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program at Brown University. At Brown she teaches all the levels of Proficiency in the undergraduate language and culture curriculum, translation and content courses and a graduate seminar for Classicists and Archeologists. In addition to her teaching, she has served in various positions pertaining to her training in Modern Foreign Language Education: Director of the Center of Language Studies at Brown University; President of the Consortium for Language Teaching and Learning; Chair of the MGSA Undergraduate Studies Committee. Her research interests lie in Second Language Acquisition, Foreign Language Literacy and strategies for creating and delivering an integrated language and content curriculum.
    • Lissi Athanasiou-Krikelis
    • Name: Lissi Athanasiou-Krikelis
    • Candidate Statement:
      Lissi Athanasiou-Krikelis (incumbent) is an Associate Professor of English in the Humanities Department and the Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at the New York Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on postmodern metafiction in both children’s and adult fiction, often weaving contemporary Greek literature. Her edited anthology on The Routledge Companion to Metafiction, co-edited with Josh Toth, is forthcoming in 2026. She has also published articles in various peer-reviewed journals, such as Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Children’s Literature Quarterly, International Research in Children’s Literature and Narrative, as well as in various edited anthologies. As a past member of the MGSA executive board, she has chaired the Graduate Studies Committee and launched the symposium's first formal mentoring program at Princeton University, helping emerging scholars to strengthen their professional network in the field of Modern Greek Studies. At New York Institute of Technology, she has chaired multiple significant Senate committees and is currently leading the assessment of the general education curriculum in collaboration with the Associate Provost. She would be honored to serve a second term on the MGSA Executive Board if elected.
    • Karen Emmerich
    • Name: Karen Emmerich
    • Candidate Statement:
      Karen Emmerich is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she specializes in modern Greek literature and translation studies. She is author of Literary Translation and the Making of Originals (2017), and translator of roughly 20 books from Greek into English, including books by Christos Ikonomou, Margarita Karapanou, Amanda Michalopoulou, Sofia Nikolaidou, Kallia Papadaki, Yannis Ritsos, Miltos Sachtouris, Eleni Vakalo, Alki Zei, and others. She is currently finishing a book tentatively titled Forms of Belonging: Citizenship, Migration, and the Modern Greek Literary Sphere, on the connection between literary and legal modes of belonging in the Modern Greek state. She has served on the MGSA board twice before (2003-2005, as graduate student representative, and 2014-2016), and also served as Associate Editor of the Humanities for the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (2012-2019).
    • Maria Hadjipolycarpou
    • Name: Maria Hadjipolycarpou
    • Candidate Statement:
      Maria Hadjipolycarpou is Teaching Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign, where she serves as the Director of the Modern Greek Studies Program. Her work focuses on the intersection of narrative theory, pedagogy, and the transition from oral to written traditions, with a particular emphasis on fostering students’ critical thinking and ethical awareness. As a program builder, she has developed new curricula and an interdisciplinary minor. Her current research investigates the concept of the archive and its role in determining cultural memory and authority. Beyond the classroom, she advocates for feminist perspectives and the inclusion of peripheral, subaltern, and global south narratives in global literary studies. Maria is actively engaged in national scholarly networks, recently organizing professional panels for the Modern Language Association (MLA) conference and spearheading international lecture series featuring global scholars. If elected to the Board, Maria aims to strengthen the organization’s professional networks and support innovative pedagogical models that bridge the gap between academic research and local and global community engagements. She brings a wealth of experience in institutional leadership and strategic program development.
    • Maria Kaliambou
    • Name: Maria Kaliambou
    • Candidate Statement:
      Maria Kaliambou is Senior Lector II and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Hellenic Studies Program at Yale. She earned her BA in History and Archaeology from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and her PhD in Folklore and European Ethnol¬ogy from Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. She held postdoctoral fellowships at the University Charles-de-Gaulle in Lille and Prince¬ton University. Her research focuses on the dialogue between folklore and book history, both in Greece and the diaspora. She is also engaged in Modern Greek language pedagogy. She has been the Chair of the Modern Greek Special Interest Group at the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) and is an Oral Proficiency Interview tester for Modern Greek. She has received numerous ac¬colades, including the Lutz Röhrich Prize for the best dissertation in oral literature (2006) and the Vassiliki Karagiannaki Best Edited Book Prize in Modern Greek Studies from the Modern Greek Studies Association (2024). In 2011, the European Commission recognized her as Greece’s Erasmus Student Ambassador. Her publications include Home – Faith – Family: Transmission of Values in Greek Popular Booklets of Tales (1870–1970) (2006, in German), The Routledge Modern Greek Reader. Greek Folktales for Learning Modern Greek (2015), and the award-winning The Greek Revolution and the Greek Diaspora in the United States (2023, in English and Greek).
    • Gerasimus Katsan
    • Name: Gerasimus Katsan
    • Candidate Statement:
      Gerasimus Katsan is Associate Professor of Modern Greek at Queens College, CUNY and Coordinator of the Modern Greek Program. He has formerly served as Chair of the Department of European Languages and Literatures and as the Director of the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. He is the author of History and Ideology in Greek Postmodernist Fiction, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (2013), and co-edited the volume Retelling the Past in Contemporary Greek Literature, Film and Popular Culture, Lexington (2019). He previously served as Secretary of the MGSA Executive Board for two terms (2014-2020), and on various committees, including: Innovative Initiatives (2012-2016 and 2020-2023); Ad hoc Committee on Member Recognition (2006-2008); Administration Committee (2006-2008); Symposium Local Arrangements Committee (2006-2007); Program Committee, 25th Biennial Symposium (2016-2017); Reader/evaluator for the MGSA Best Dissertation Prize (2011); and as Chair, Edmund Keeley Book Prize Selection Committee (2017).
    • Katerina Lagos
    • Name: Katerina Lagos
    • Candidate Statement:
      Katerina Lagos (incumbent) is Professor of History and Director of the Angelo K. Tsakopoulos Hellenic Studies Program at California State University, Sacramento. She is a modern Greek historian with expertise in the interwar period, minorities, education, fascism, dictatorships, and Jewish history. She has published several book chapters and articles, including “Forced Assimilation or Emigration: Sephardic Jewry in Thessaloniki, 1917–1941" (2015)”, "Interwar Greece: Its Generals, a Republic, and the monarchy" (2020) and "Patterns of Uncontrolled Borrowing and Defaults: Contextualizing the Greek Economic Crises of 1843, 1893, and 2010” (2021). Her book publications include a co-edited volume with Othon Anastasakis, The Greek Military Dictatorship 1967-1974: Revisiting a Troubled Past (Berghahn, 2021), a monograph entitled The Fourth of August Regime and Greek Jewry, 1936-1941 (Palgrave, 2023), and is currently working on a second co-edited volume with Christine Philliou entitled The Greek Revolution: Ottoman Transits and the Modern World. From 2016-2022, Katerina was the social sciences book review editor for the Journal of Modern Greek Studies. Additionally, Katerina served on the MGSA Executive Board from 2014-2020, and was Vice-President from 2017-2020. In 2019, Katerina hosted the MGSA international symposium in Sacramento, California. She is especially proud of securing a $20,000 grant to bring international participants to the 2019 MGSA symposium in Sacramento. She strongly supports junior scholars and enjoys organizing academic conferences.
    • Roland S. Moore
    • Name: Roland S. Moore
    • Candidate Statement:
      Roland S. Moore, Ph.D. (incumbent), is Center Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Prevention Research Center of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, CA [ https://prev.org/person/roland-s-moore-phd/ ]. His doctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley’s Anthropology Department focused upon the cultural repercussions of economic change including tourism work and rural-urban migration in Central Greece. His present research interests concern the prevention or reduction of problems connected with the use of alcohol, commercial tobacco, and other drugs in community settings (such as American Indian reservation communities) and occupational contexts (e.g., military workplaces). Accordingly, the vast majority of his publications concern public health [ https://prev.org/research2/publications/?fwp_search_publications=Moore ]. A Life Member of the MGSA, Dr. Moore continues to follow developments in MGS with great interest. He was a Lecturer at the Center for Modern Greek Studies, San Francisco State University between 1997 and 2011. He also served as Book Review Editor for the Social Sciences, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2013-2016. He has served as coordinator of the MGSA-L email list for decades. In his current term on the MGSA Board, Dr. Moore leads the Administration Committee and also was the chair of the John O. Iatrides Best Dissertation Prize Committee in 2024.
    • Harris Mylonas
    • Name: Harris Mylonas
    • Candidate Statement:
      Harris Mylonas is Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where he teaches courses on nationalism, European integration, international affairs, and qualitative methods. Born in Thessaloniki, Greece, he graduated from Anatolia College high school, received his BA and MSc from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, an MA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from Yale University, and was an Academy Scholar at Harvard University. His research focuses on nation- and state-building, migration, diaspora politics, and international influences on domestic affairs, with particular emphasis on Greece, the Balkans, and Europe. He is the author of the award-winning The Politics of Nation-Building (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and co-author of Varieties of Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2023), as well as co-editor of several volumes and special issues on nationalism and diaspora politics. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of Nationalities Papers since 2018, a member of the Board of Directors of the Association for the Study of Nationalities since 2011, and is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As a member of the Executive Board of the Modern Greek Studies Association, he would work to strengthen interdisciplinary scholarship, advance diaspora and migration studies, support junior scholars, and expand MGSA’s transatlantic and public-facing engagement.
    • Fevronia K. Soumakis
    • Name: Fevronia K. Soumakis
    • Candidate Statement:
      Fevronia K. Soumakis (incumbent) is the Director of the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College, CUNY. She holds a PhD in History and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University and has taught a wide range of courses at both Columbia University and Queens College. She is the co-editor with Theodore G. Zervas of Educating Greek Americans: Historical Perspectives and Contemporary Pathways (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Her work on education and Greek Americans has appeared in The Greek Revolution and the Greek Diaspora in the United States (Kaliambou, ed., 2023) and Redirecting Ethnic Singularity: Italian Americans and Greek Americans in Conversation (Anagnostou, Kalogeras, and Patrona, eds., 2021). Fevronia is currently the Secretary of the Modern Greek Studies Association (2023-2026) and is Associate Editor (Humanities) of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (2024-2027).
    • Will Stroebel
    • Name: Will Stroebel
    • Candidate Statement:
      Will Stroebel (incumbent) is an Assistant Professor of Modern Greek and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. His work focuses on modern Greek and Turkish literatures, border studies, migration, book history and material culture. His first monograph, Literature’s Refuge, came out with Princeton U.P. in 2025. In all his capacities, he aims to expand the audience and interlocutors of Modern Greek Studies, which he believes has much to offer the larger intellectual ecosystem of the humanities and social sciences. He served on the MGSA Executive Board 2023-2026 as chair of the Transnational Studies Committee and co-chair of the Undergraduate Education Committee, as well as chair for the 2024 Constantinides Translation Prize. The main thrust of his work focused on revising and expanding the Resource Portal, organizing a series of Webinars, and co-organizing the 2025 Pedagogy Workshop alongside his colleagues at Boston University (where Kelly Polychroniou took the local organizational lead). Will has been humbled to serve the MGSA, which has always been like an extended family. It would be an honor to offer another term of service to the Executive Board and continue giving back to the MGSA community.
    • Yiorgo Topalidis
    • Name: Yiorgo Topalidis
    • Candidate Statement:
      Yiorgo Topalidis is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Flagler College. Yiorgo’s research interests include emigration of Ottoman Greeks to the U.S. and the construction, contestation, and transgenerational transfer of White identity. His most recent publications appear in the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, the Journal of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and the Journal of Urban History. If elected to the Modern Greek Studies Association’s Executive Board, Yiorgo’s expertise in Public History and Digital Sociology will align well with the responsibilities of the Membership & Publicity and Graduate Studies committees in the following ways. First, Yiorgo regularly uses social media to recruit research participants and publish digital content, tasks carried out by the Membership & Publicity committee. Additionally, Yiorgo has served on an ad hoc committee that selected the winner of the Victor Papacosma Graduate Essay Prize and has guided undergraduate and graduate research at Flagler College and the University of Florida, both of which reflect the functions of the Graduate Studies committee.