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About Us

Welcome to the Greek Future Archive of Socialities Under Quarantine!

This archive chiefly focuses on the period of the "Great/First Lockdown" in Greece (23 March - 18 May, 2020). The archive centers on the 'Greek' - and within that broad category the 'Thessalian' - experience (because that is where our university is located). At the same time, since the pandemic is a quintessential glo/cal experience and this particular database places emphasis on social media, you will discover many influences, borrowings, remediations in the items that have been gathered.

How did this archive come about?

This archive began in the context of the unprecedented lockdown/ quarantine experience as an alternative project in the context of the undergraduate course "Anthropology of Memory" (instructor Penelope Papailias) at the University of Thessaly, Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, conducted by undergraduate students and recent graduates. A little later, students from the Department of Music at the University of Ioannina (under the supervision of Dr. Aspasia Theodosiou) joined in the research.

What is the concept (in a little more depth)?

Specifically, this project emerges out of the 1) abrupt shift from the physical classroom to online platforms and the further development of experimental modes of collaborative learning and research (already on the agenda before the pandemic crisis) 2) the need and desire to understand the disruptions, new socialities, temporalities and spatialities, modes of (black) humor used to address the experience of quarantine (especially memes), new forms of creative expression and art (including children's), emergent nodes of platform communication and interaction, with the tools of anthropological theory and ethnographic method, and 3) the thematics of the undergraduate course on the "Anthropology of Memory", as we consider how "future memory" traces and key events are produced under lockdown, as well as the "nostalgia" for "before" and the speculation regarding "after".

The project considers how this moment might be retrospectively re-collected by various collectivities (families, friends, national public, activists, neighbors --and indeed the student cohort itself) as well as from various social positions. If the pandemic/epidemic represents a quintessential anthropological object given the way it reconfigures sociality and modes of relation (against the idea of "social isolation"), we aim to contribute to research on this topic through the prism of the anthropology of memory and ethnography of archive, treating the ephemeral jokes, bodily gestures, spatial arrangements of the everyday, as history-in-the-making.

Who made this archive?  

• Student researchers, IAKA Dept., U of Thessaly: Maria Demertzi (coordinator), Ifigeneia Karpeti, Aristeidis Michalomichelakis, Georgia Paveli, Michalis Panagiotopoulos, Dimitra Tzitska, Eleni Gouvi (coordinator), Lydia-Filio Theodosiou, Elisavet Savoulidi, Despina Kassandrou, Dimitra Papapavlou, Nikos Paschoulis, Triandafyllia-Christina Xanthi, Mariana Manousopoulou (Pelion Summer Lab) 
• Research Assistant, Audiovisual Curation: Maria Demertzi 
• Student researchers, Dept. of Musical Studies, U of Ioannina: Despoina Kanaki-Chrysochoidou & Anastasia Kiritsopoulou (coordinators), Sissie Theodosiou (faculty advisor), Εfthimia Georgakopoulou, Marina Kasapi, Ignatios Kouloudis, Elpida Kyriakopoulou, Sarantia Siklafidou, Dimitra Tzirini, Yiorgos Hontos
• Website design: Themis Dallas, Maria Demertzi
• Faculty Advisor: Penelope Papailias  

Funding