French-Greek historian at the École Normale Supérieure – Paris, Lukas Tsiptsios, will present a new online lecture as part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.
Titled ‘Bizim PAOK – Our PAOK: Refugees, Sports, and Venizelism in Interwar Thessaloniki,’ the seminar will be presented on Thursday 6 August.
PAOK, the Panthessalonian Sports Club of Constantinopolitans is the main club of Northern Greece. It is commonly related to the history of the Asia Minor refugees in Thessaloniki. But if the club is still carrying a “refugee memory”, the history of its foundation is usually forgotten.
The aim of this presentation is to do a social history of Thessaloniki in the Interwar period through PAOK, by following the paths of the Constantinopolitan elite that founded the club.
Using a sports club as a research object reveals new ways of understanding the social configuration of Thessaloniki in the Interwar Period.
By this way, sports are linked with the issue of integration of the refugees, their politicization by the Venizelist movement, but also more generally with the conquest and the Hellenization of Macedonia.
Lukas Tsiptsios is a French-Greek historian at the École Normale Supérieure – Paris, he studied history and political science at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, in the same institution where he completed his Master in History of International Relations with a thesis on PAOK in the Interwar period.
