Penelope PapailiasPenelope Papailias grew up in New York City and studied English literature at Harvard and cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan before reverse migrating as an adult to Greece, her father’s homeland. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the MA Program in Mobility Studies at the University of Thessaly. Her work explores the cultural politics of memory and public death, ethnographies of digital mediation and colonialism, decoloniality, and Black geographies in the Greek context, with recent projects focusing on genealogies of ecocide and environmental crisis. Committed to experimental pedagogy, she develops collaborative, site-responsive initiatives that mobilize social research as public intervention. She recently curated the exhibition-event Floodmarks at the Museum of the City of Volos following the devastating floods of September 2023. This year’s PSL will inform the Experiential and Diachronic Landscape Observatory she is developing with architect Aspassia Kouzoupi. Penelope is co-founder and director of the Pelion Summer Lab.
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Pantelis ProbonasPantelis Probonas (he/him) (@pprobonas) is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Thessaly. His doctoral thesis is a multi-sited ethnography about the politics of death and the disposal of refugees' dead bodies at the EU frontier. Theoretically, he is mostly interested in the body, politics of life and death, medical anthropology, borders and borderlands. He also works as a journalist and his articles and writing pieces have been published in several Greek media. He is one of the founding members of PSL and has been involved in desinging each year's concepts, coordinating and facilitating large part of PSL's activities.
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George Mantzios
George Mantzios (he/him) is Assistant Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Mount Royal University (Canada), Associate Director of the Pelion Summer Lab for Cultural Theory and Experimental Humanities, and co-lead of the Ethnography Research and Practice Lab (Mount Royal University). He was previously the Mary Seeger O’Boyle Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies. George holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Toronto (2023), where his ethnographic research traced practices of historical redress in contemporary Athens— including archival activism, speculative fiction, and the defacement and reappropriation of national monuments and abandoned infrastructures. His scholarship engages debates on monumentality, ruination, political aesthetics, speculation, infrastructure, collective memory, and reparative justice. George has been involved with the Pelion Summer Lab since 2018, first as a participant on PSL2 Liminal Lives & Para-sites and since 2019 as part of the organizing team. His publications have appeared in Anthropology Quarterly, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, and the International Journal of Cultural Studies.
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Penny PaspaliPenny Paspali (she/her) holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from University of Thessaly. She is a researcher for the Greek department of the European Observatory on Femicides (femicide.gr/). Her doctoral thesis, titled Femicides, Networked Affects, and Digital Feminisms: An Ethnography about the Fourth Wave, is an ethnographic research conducted from 2021-2023 about digital grassroots feminisms in Greece. Her research interests are focused on digital anthropology and anthropology of social movements, data activism as well as ecological matters of care and survivance. She holds a BA in History from the Dept. of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology from the same institution and an MA in Gender Studies from University of Łódź in Poland and University of Oviedo in Spain. She was a cohort member of PSL1 Democracy & Dissent (2017), participant as intern in PSL4 After/Lives (2022), and then member of the organizing team in all following PSLs (5 Ec/o/ntologies & 6 Anthropo(s)cenes).
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Dimitra MorosouDimitra Morosou (she/her) is co-responsible for the PSL’s website and social media. She is a postgraduate student in the MSc program “Mobility Studies” at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. She also holds her undergraduate degree in Social Anthropology from the same department. She was student intern in PSL5 Ec/o/ntologies (2023) and member of the organizing team of PSL6 Anthropo(s)cenes. She also participated in an Erasmus+ traineeship program at the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (Nicosia). Her research interests focus on Disability Studies in dialogue with anthropology and intersectional approaches. She likes to experiment with methodological approaches.
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Conor smithConor Smith (he/him) holds BA degrees in History and Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a MS in “Mobility Studies” from the University of Thessaly. His ethnographic research focuses on imposed and alternative ecologies in the Greek countryside through an analysis of the works of land reclamation—drainages of lakes, deforestation, agricultural modernization, etc. He is interested in historical ethnography, black radical theory, colonialism, the politics of historical writing, and environmental ethnography. He was a helper/friend/carrier-of-heavy-objects at PSL 5 Ec/o/ntologies (2023) and a cohort member at PSL 6 Anthropo(s)cenes (2025). He currently lives in Athens.
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Antonis PetrasAntonis Petras (he/him) holds an MA in Mobility Studies, a BA in Anthropology and a BA in History from the University of Thessaly. His MA thesis titled "Mud Solidarity: Cultivating Social Infrastructure Outside the Walls of White Ecology" focused on the aftermath of the 2023 floods that struck the region of Thessaly. His research examines how infrastructures are re-attributed with meaning in the face of the climate crisis, and the ways in which solidarity became infrastructural when urban networks collapsed. He was a cohort member in PSL 5 Ec/o/ntologies & 6 Anthropo(s)cenes .
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Katerina GiannitsiKaterina Giannitsi studied Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Western Macedonia. She is a postgraduate student in the MSc program “Mobility Studies” at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly. She is a visual artist working as a graphic designer. She designed the graphics for PSL7 The Planet in the Port & PSL6 Anthropo-scenes.
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Former Members of PSL team
Alexandros Papageorgiou
Alexandros Papageorgiou holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Thessaly - Department of History, Archeology and Social Anthropology (IAKA). He was a researcher at the research project "Anthrobombing: Narrative Experimentations for the Design of a Public Anthropology Platform" (2020-2022) that he carried out together with Alexandra Siotou and Penelope Papailias. He was a member of PSL1 Democracy & Dissent (2017) & 3 Data & Power (2019) cohorts. He was a member of the organizing team od PSL5 Ec/o/ntologies & 6 Anthropo(s)cenes (2025).
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Erika TsioukantanaErika Tsioukantana holds a BA in Social Anthropology at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of University of Thessaly. She was an intern on PSL5 and she designed the graphics for the Ec/o/ntologies program.
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Eftychia VardouliEftychia was a cohort member of PSL3 Data & Power (2019) and member of the organizing team of PSL4 After/Lives (2022) as cultural manager.
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Petros PetridisPetros is an Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Panteion University. He was member of the organizing team of PSLs 2 Liminal Lives & Para-sites (2018) and 3 Data & Power (2019) and instructor on PSL1 Democracy & Dissent (2017).
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Mitsos BilalisMitsos is an Assistant Professor of History in the Dept. of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology in University of Thessaly. He was member of the organizing team of PSL1 Democracy & Dissent (2017) and 2 Liminal Lives & Para-sites (2018) and he was instructor in PSL 3 Data & Power (2019).
Ioanna LaliotouIoanna is a Professor of History in the Dept. of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology in University of Thessaly and Head of the same Department. She was member of the organizing team of PSL1 Democracy & Dissent (2017).
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Christina MitsopoulouChristina (Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology) is one of the founding members of PSL, contributing to the organization of PSLs 1 (2017), 2 Liminal Lives & Para-sites (2018), and 3 Data & Power (2019), facilitating most of the activities taking place during the programs.
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