Stefanos Gandolfo
Stefanos Gandolfo is the Director of the Columbia Global Center in Athens.
Stefanos began his studies at Yale University, graduating cum laude in Economics and Philosophy. He pursued his Master’s degree at Peking University in Chinese Philosophy (taught in Chinese) where he received the Outstanding International Student Award and the Exceptional Thesis Award. During his time in China, he worked for the Sinica Podcast, the leading podcast on contemporary Chinese affairs. He completed his PhD at the University of Oxford where his dissertation – awarded with no corrections – on the organization of knowledge in pre-modern China received an honorable distinction by the Royal Asiatic Society.
Stefanos has published broadly on Chinese philosophy and culture and has extensive experience as a translator of contemporary Chinese thinkers and has taught Chinese philosophy, history and culture at Oxford and in Greece. He is currently co-editing a new series on Chinese culture published by Crete University Press.
In addition to Greek and English, he speaks Italian, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Japanese (high reading level) and has excellent knowledge of ancient Chinese.
Stefanos Kordosis
Dr Stefanos Kordosis serves as an assistant professor at the International Hellenic University, Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Economics, specializing in the History of Central Eurasia from the Black Sea to China. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and European Studies and a Master of Arts in International Relations and Strategic Studies from Panteion University, Athens. His Phd focuses on the relations between Byzantium and the Nomadic Empire of the Türks through Byzantine and Chinese sources (submitted in 2007 at the University of the Aegean, Department of Mediterranean Studies).
His post doctorate research is on East-West contacts across Eurasia and the role of nomadic nations, Black Sea history and relations with Byzantium, past and present aspects of the trans-Eurasian communication and Great Power competition in Central Eurasia. In 2016-2017 he was awarded the Fulbright Greece fellowship for Greek Academics by which he visited the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania. Dr Stefanos Kordosis’s research and teaching experience include the following: Tutor/Student Consultant at Hellenic Open University, Foreign Expert at Xibei Daxue (西北大学), Institute of Middle East Research (西北大学中东研究所), Post-Doc. Researcher at the University of Ioannina and at National Hellenic Research Foundation, Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Ioannina and at the International Hellenic University.
Effie Meramveliotaki
Effie Meramveliotaki is an archaeologist and curator of the East Asian Collection at the Byzantine & Christian Museum. She possesses extensive knowledge of Byzantine and Chinese art, as well as significant experience in organizing and implementing exhibitions at both national and international levels. She specializes in the study of Hellenistic Art in Central Asia and its indirect influences on the art of China and Japan. She has participated in international conferences in Japan and China and collaborates with Greek universities on topics related to Chinese culture.
Anna Irene Baka
Dr. Anna Irene Baka is a Marie Curie Fellow at Harvard’s East Asian Languages and Civilizations and Ca’ Foscari’s Philosophy Department. She currently works on RIGHΤ—an EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie global project for the sustainable continuation of the EU-China Human Rights Dialogue. Specializing in comparative East-West philosophy, the history of legal ideas and interdisciplinary approaches to law, her educational journey—supported by the Hellenic National Scholarship— took her from Athens to Brussels and Hong Kong. Beyond academia, Dr. Baka is a practicing jurist with a dedicated focus on human rights.
Fenia Papakosma
Fenia Papakosma studied Translation and Interpreting at the University of Salford in Manchester. She moved to China in 2001, where she studied Chinese at Hebei Normal University. She then worked at the Greek Consulate in Beijing as an interpreter, a position she held for four years.
In 2008, she completed her Master’s degree in Chinese Studies at SOAS, University of London. In 2017, she received a scholarship to attend a specialized seminar on Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language at the Beijing International Chinese College.
In 2020, she founded Mandarin Books, a publishing house dedicated to producing and promoting Chinese language learning materials. She has authored two Chinese grammar books tailored for Greek-speaking learners, along with accompanying exercise books.
Since 2021, she has been teaching Chinese at the Institute of International Relations (IDIS).
Harry Papasotiriou
Harry Papasotiriou is a senior research associate of IDIS China Program. He graduated with honors from Oxford (School of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) and obtained his doctorate from Stanford (Department of Political Science). He is a Professor of International Relations at Panteion University, and the president of the Scientific Board of the Institute of International Relations. He participates in the Scientific Council of the Konstantinos Karamanlis Institute of Democracy. He is the first international relations scholar in Greece to research and teach China’s international relations.
Marianna Sampson
Maria Anna Sampson is a graduate of Queen Mary University of London, where she earned a First Class LLB in Law. She also completed an MSc in China and Globalization at King’s College London, specializing in interdisciplinary Chinese studies with a focus on international relations, economics, and environmental studies. Her postgraduate research focused on international arbitration practices within the China International Commercial Court. Her research interests include Sino-Greek relations, legal aspects of international trade, and the strategic role of the Belt and Road Initiative. She is also the author of Mediterranean Silk Roads, a blog dedicated to analyzing global business trends and their impact on Chinese business, as well as Sino-Greek relations. She is also an intermediate Mandarin speaker.
Georgios Steiris
Georgios Steiris is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He previously taught at the University of Peloponnese, the Hellenic Open University, and in Study Abroad Programs of the University of Connecticut and Boston University. He has been Visiting Professor at Jyväskylä University (Finland) and Visiting Fellow at Bogazici University (Turkey) and Macquarie University (Australia). He has served as Secretary-General of the Greek Philosophical Society (2015– 2016). He was awarded the Golden Jubilee Medal ‘80 years of Al- Farabi Kazakh National University’. Since 2011 he has been teaching Chinese Philosophy at undergraduate and postgraduate level at the University of Athens. He has also published two articles on Chinese philosophy and has participated in three international academic conferences on Chinese philosophy. In addition, he supervises two PhD candidates researching in the field of Chinese philosophy. Recent works of his include Maximus the Confessor as a European Philosopher (2017), The Oxford Handbook for Dionysius the Areopagite (2022), and Long Platonism: The Routes of Plato’s Reception to the Italian Renaissance (2025, forthcoming).
Plamen Tonchev
Mr Plamen Tonchev has been Head of Asia Unit at the Institute of International Economic Relations (IIER), Greece, since 1998. Plamen is a founding member of the European Think-tank Network on China (ETNC) and a contributor to its annual reports. In addition, he sits on the EU Chapter of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (EU CSCAP) committee.
Konstantinos Tsimonis
Konstantinos Tsimonis first went to China in 2003 and studied there for five years in total. During his doctoral studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London he did his fieldwork in China as a visiting doctoral student at Peking University. Since 2015, he has been working at the Lau China Institute, King’s College London and since 2022, he has been a member of the Institute of International Relations (IDIS), Panteion University. He is also the academic lead of the IDIS China Program. His research has been funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation, the British Academy and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, among other organisations.