Vasilis (Bill) Molos
Director and Research Lead,
HHF Greek Canadian Archives
Vasilis (Bill) Molos serves as the Director and Research Lead of the HHF Greek Canadian Archives at York University. In this role, he oversees the archive’s operations, promotes and facilitates research on its collections, and builds strategic partnerships with donors and collaborators. Before beginning this role, he taught history at New York University Abu Dhabi, New York University, and Fordham University. His primary fields of interest include modern Greek history, identity, transnational and connected histories, and writing history from the margins. His forthcoming book manuscript is titled The Russian Mediterranean: Shaping Sovereignty and Selfhood on the Island of Paros, and is under contract with Edinburgh University Press.
Athanasios (Sakis) Gekas
Associate Professor of History,
Hellenic Heritage Foundation Chair of Modern Greek History
Athanasios (Sakis) Gekas is an Associate Professor of History and the HHF Chair in Modern Greek History at York University. He is the co-founder of the Greek Canadian History Project, the current president of the Hellenic Canadian Academic Association of Ontario, and a member of the Modern Greek Studies Association’s Executive Board. He has written and published on economic and social history, British colonialism, migration and diaspora, modern Greek and Mediterranean history. His most recent monograph, Xenocracy: State, Class and Colonialism in the Ionian Islands, 1815-1864 (Berghan, 2016), offers a much-needed account of the Ionian State under British protection.
Maria Paraschos
Adjunct Archivist - HHF Greek Canadian Archives
Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, York University Libraries
Maria Paraschos serves as the Archivist for the HHF Greek Canadian Archives at York University. She is responsible for making the collection available for research through the archival materials' arrangement, description, and digitization. She has a Master of Archival Studies degree from the University of British Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts in History and International Studies from York University’s bilingual Glendon College. She previously worked at Library and Archives Canada in several different positions, most notably as an archival assistant on the Indigenous Heritage digitization project We Are Here: Sharing Stories. Having grown up on the Danforth, working with the HHF Greek Canadian Archives at York University allows her to learn more about the place and community she calls home.
Affiliated Researchers
Project: Greeks in Canada
Alexandros Balasis is pursuing a PhD in History at York University and has been honoured with the HHF International Graduate Fellowship in Modern Greek History. He completed his undergraduate studies in History at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where he also earned a master’s degree exploring the Greek presence at international exhibitions at the turn of the 20th century. At the same time, he holds a second master’s degree from York University, focusing on Greek post-Second World War migration to Canada. He has worked as a researcher in “Istorima,” Greece’s largest oral history archive. His research interests center around transoceanic migration, focusing on migrants’ agency and their interactions with migration policies.
Project: Childhood Narratives from the 1940s | Greeks in Canada
Angelo Nicholas Laskaris is a PhD candidate in History working under the supervision of Professor Athanasios Gekas at York University. His current research investigates childhood memories and experiences of Greek Canadians during the 1940s in Greece. His work takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the fields of oral history, migration, and diaspora studies. Angelo Laskaris holds an MA in History from York University (2020) and a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto (2019).
Projects: Greeks in Canada; Musical Geographies
Alexandra Mourgou is a Postdoctoral Researcher at York University, holding the Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship, working on her project ‘Musical Geographies and the Greek Canadian Experience in Toronto. Places, Cultures, & Diasporic Identities’. Her research interests and publications focus mainly on urban, cultural, and historical geography, and more specifically on the interconnections between space and music. She received a joint Ph.D. degree in cultural geography at the National Technical University of Athens and University Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne (joint degree) in February 2022. She holds a master’s in architecture at the N.T.U.A. and a post-master’s degree in Urbanism at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’ Architecture de Paris La Villette.
Projects: Greeks in Canada
Effrosyni Rantou is a Ph.D. student in Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Rantou has a B.A. from Panteion University, Athens, and a M.A. from The New School, New York. Her work in Social Anthropology focuses on aspects of migration and borders, humanitarian aid as a state of exception and alternative forms of citizenship. Currently, her doctoral research explores subterranean politics, vertical and horizontal material dynamics and the formation of political subjectivities. She is interested in particular, in tracking the cross-scale relations between the disconnected subterranean practices with the politics and notions of everyday life by looking at the ways mines operate as vibrant political borders and maps through which systems of power redistribute sociopolitical tensions at the local, national and international levels. Her research is supported by the Onassis Foundation.
Theo Xenophontos
Projects: Film as Mediator; Greeks in Canada
Theo Xenophontos is a PhD candidate in the Cinema & Media Studies program at York University. He holds a BA from the University of Toronto (double major in Cinema Studies and English, with a minor in History) and a MA in Cinema & Media Studies from York University. He currently works for the Hellenic Heritage Foundation Greek Canadian Archives and is working to establish their Cypriot Canadian collection. Previously, he has worked with such organizations as Archive/Counter-Archive and Vtape. His writing can be read in Found Footage Magazine and Ergon. He can be heard on the podcast "Cyprus: An Island Divided."
