The John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation has always been a supporter of the operation and multifaceted work of the Research Centre for the Humanities (RCH) since the establishment of the latter in 2015. The main purpose of the RCH is the support and funding of research in the humanities through a process of annual public calls for the submission of research proposals by young researchers. In addition, it organizes workshops, conferences and meetings with the aim of further disseminating research results to both the scientific community and the general public.

• 135 applications for scientific research were submitted for funding under the 5^th Public Call.

In 2020, with funding from the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, activities were implemented in three areas:

RCH Digital Library

The RCH Digital Library was launched, a new publishing endeavour in collaboration with the National Documentation Centre, which aims, on the one hand, to disseminate scientific knowledge in the field of humanities by creating a wider reading and research community and, on the other, to expand the field of digital publishing and its growing research potential. In 2020 the design and development of an entirely new digital reading environment was completed, which includes a variety of publishing series, such as the annual volumes with the results of the research projects conducted with funding from RCH, the minutes from conferences workshops, as well as material from the 1821 Digital Archive.

Annual Research Projects

Each year, the RCH publishes public calls for the submission of proposals, inviting postdoctoral researchers and research groups to submit proposals for a period of one year. The applications are evaluated by distinguished, in their relevant disciplines, scientists from Greece and abroad, using criteria such as the originality of the research idea, the novelty of the proposed methodology, as well as the final deliverables.

In 2020, with a grant from the Foundation, the following research projects were developed:

• Ruptured Humans: Sexual Crimes in Interwar Greece

Researcher: Dimitra Vassiliadou, Dr. of History, University of Crete

• “Le Génie du Nord” and Cosmopolitanism: An alternative cultural history of Western Europe between the wars

Researcher: Chara Kolokytha, Dr. of Art History, Northumbria University, UK

• Family Reunification Post-Mortem – Dead Border Crossers as “Biological Thanato-Citizens”

Research Group: Christos Kouroutzas, Dr. of Sociology, University of the Aegean

Sevasti Trubeta, Professor of Sociology, University of Applied Sciences Magdeburg-Stendal, Germany

Dimitris Paraskevopoulos, Dr. of Sociology, University of the Aegean

• The Condition of Unaccompanied Children in the Athens City Centre: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Institutional Framework

Research Group: Michalis Spourdalakis, Professor of Political Sociology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Costas Gousis, PhD candidate in Political Science, Roehampton University, UK

Alkistis Prepi, PhD candidate in Urban and Regional Planning, National Technical University of Athens

• Economic thought in Archaic Greece: the case of Pindar and Bacchylides

Researcher: Gianna Stergiou, Dr. of Classical Philology, University of Edinburgh, UK

Research Project “The Greek Revolution of 1821: Digital Archive”

On the occasion of two hundred years since 1821, RCH has been implementing since 2016 a large-scale bilingual (Greek/English) Research Project entitled “The Greek Revolution of 1821: Digital Archive”, which is funded, among others, by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation. Under this Project, a digital platform about the Greek Revolution of 1821 was created, in which the public can search for evidence items, archival and audiovisual material, as well as digital exhibits related to the Greek Revolution, such as scientific studies, works of art, everyday objects, folk songs, heirlooms, etc. This digital endeavor is implemented in the framework of the actions of the “Initiative 1821-2021” and marks one of the most important collaborative initiatives in the field of Digital Humanities, with the participation of reputable institutions, such as the National Library of Greece, the General State Archives, the Library of the Hellenic Parliament, etc.

In 2020, the following actions were completed:

• The transcription of a large part of the Fighters’ Archive that belongs to the National Library of Greece.
• The transcription of a large part of the Fight Archive that belongs to the General State Archives.
• The transcription and digitisation of the archival material of 3 collections (porcelain, flags, seals) that belong to the Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece.
• Three original research projects based on the existing archival material, in the following thematic areas: Historical Culture, Materiality and Memory, the World.
• The digital design and construction of the Digital Archive’s website, a single environment for the presentation of the digital archive which presents the content, sources, historical evidence, digital exhibits and applications of the Project.
• The digital design and construction of the Database interface.
• The digital design and construction of the interface of the educational activity “Ways of Remembering the 1821 Revolution – A Local History School Project”, which is implemented for the 4th consecutive school year. The aim of this activity is to familiarise students with the profession of historian, researcher and archivist in the modern digital era, through the documentation of evidence items related to the Greek Revolution that they identify in the wider area of their school unit.

The Digital Archive in numbers:

• 13,638 documentation tabs (documents, arts, music, books)
• 3,462 items from 13 archival and museum bodies throughout Greece
• 9,219 digitised files (images of documents, images of works of art, images of objects, and audio material)
• 21,229 keywords (thematic terms, individuals and legal entities, families, locations)

“The extremely particular circumstances under which all cultural and research institutions were forced to operate during the last year affected the activity plan of RCH to some extent, without, however, altering our core aspirations. The research teams funded by the Latsis Foundation continued their work with their presentations taking place online. In fact, viewing rates skyrocketed on account of the format of the digital conferences, thus setting an interesting precedent for our future plans. Moreover, as we come closer to the official presentation of the 1821 Digital Archive, the great collaborative project implemented by RCH, with the support of the Foundation, the ongoing circumstances confirm the importance of having opted for organising and presenting such plentiful material on a single platform to be used by both the general public and researchers, regardless of this year’s restrictions affecting a series of anniversary events such as exhibitions, conferences, etc.”

Dr. Ada Dialla

President of the Executive Administrative Board, Research Centre for the Humanities

Associate Professor of Modern European History, Department of Theory and History of Art, Athens School of Fine Arts