The LAGOOS project is delighted to be welcoming Professor Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London (KCL) and Director of KCL’s Centre for Hellenic Studies to Innsbruck.

Prof. Van Steen’s lecture “Five Years of Feeding: A Recently Published New Source on the Living Conditions of the Children of late 1940s Greece” will be held on 04.06.2024 at 18:00 at the University of Innsbruck’s Classics Department (Innrain 52a, Ágnes-Heller-Haus, Seminarraum 11). The talk deals with a part of Prof. Van Steen’s work on the previously unpublished memoir of social worker Charles Schermerhorn. The text of this memoir (edited by Van Steen with Routledge earlier this year) offers new and eye-opening source material pertaining to the epicenter of the early Cold War: northern Greece.

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Charles Schermerhorn’s appointment as an UNRRA child welfare specialist attests to a Western-imported and hegemonic humanitarian model, which had to serve as an antidote to the rise of Soviet-style communism in Southern Europe and the Balkans. The global focus of the time was on children: they held the future of their respective societies and, as adults, would determine whether a nation would align itself with the West or with the East.

The LAGOOS team is excited to have Prof. Van Steen with us in Innsbruck. As a valued member of the project’s Academic Advisory Board, we look forward to the chance to exchange with Gonda on the project’s ongoing work and goals.