Panteion University

The objective of the paper is to examine the impact of economic branches on the growth of the Greek local economy using the economic base theory and relevant panel data and time series techniques. The paper applies yearly panel data from 1998 to 2017 and panel data models to analyse the multiplier effects of each economic branch in the overall local economy. Also, it implements quarterly data from the above period and time series models to picture the relationship between the local and export economic branches for each Greek region during the examined period. The paper applies the Spatial Panel Fixed Effects Lag Model and the Spatial Panel Fixed Effects Error Model as the suitable panel methods to depict the multiplier effects of each economic branch, next to the Pooled OLS and diagnostics checks for fixed effects and random effects results. In the time series analysis, the Johansen cointegration test results to a vector error correction model indicating the long-run relationship between export and local economic branches in some Greek regions. For the remaining regions, the Granger causality reveals the specific relationship in the short-run period. Education-health services and manufacturing present significant and higher multiplier effects on the overall local economy. A long-run relationship exists in the regions, where the basic primary sector as basic branches from the secondary sector show the most significant multiplier effects. On the other side, a short-run bi-directional causality appears in regions, where basic services picture the most significant effects in the local economy.

This study investigates the attitudes of young individuals aged 15–35 years toward digital communication, with a focus on digital skills, citizenship, and civic engagement. Utilising data from the European Social Survey (ESS) round 10 (2020), the research explores variations across over 30 European countries, examining responses to the ESS’s rotating module on “Digital social contacts in work and family life.” Key questions, such as exposure to misinformation and online political engagement, are analysed to uncover factors influencing young Europeans’ perceptions of information and communication technology (ICT). The study explores digital scepticism, optimism, and digital skills, linking them to civic participation and socio-demographic factors. Statistical analysis, including chi-square tests and multiple regression analysis, identifies predictors and disparities among countries. Correspondence analysis dissects interrelationships among categories, constructing plots to showcase proximity between factors. Evaluating Internet accessibility, civic engagement, and connectivity issues, the study also compares data with the prior ESS round (round 9, 2018) to assess changes over the past 4 years. Through empirical investigation, this study sheds light on young Europeans’ perspectives on ICT, offering valuable insights into the complex interplay between digital communication, civic engagement, and beneficial Internet time.

Reflecting on what it means to seek political presence and queer visibility in the affective economy of a public sphere, this chapter engages with the language of rights used by LGBTQI+ activists to answer back to interpellation and to legal accusations of harming the morality of Turkish society and Turkish family structure. It explains how their claims for rights reveal differing LGBTQI+ visions and desires for visibility and social inclusion. The main concern is with unpacking the dilemmas that activists face when confronted with the language of rights, which entails compromises. It addresses the relation between the demand for legal recognition and the desire for visibility as it mediates the political activism of LGBTQI+ people in Istanbul, and as they try to resist legal prohibitions, social exclusions and psychic displacement. To do so, it situates the analysis of desire within the ‘political economy’ of visibility that is defined both in terms of the effects of neoliberal processes of commodification affecting identity claims and gender performances and in terms of psychic processes affected by the cultural and legal regulations that discipline bodies and legitimise the civic and social policing of genders, sexualities, pleasures and intimacies.

This chapter focuses on the activist platform Birbirimize sahip çıkıyoruz and demonstrates that solidarity is a process based on dissensus (Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London & New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), rather than consensus. This activist platform—this alliance—aimed to make public claims, to set out publicly disputes over who is entitled to rights, rather than reaching consensus on a minimum base with regard to their ideological, political and other differences. This is how one can perceive the signature of feminist and LBT organisations in petitions supporting the lift of the headscarf ban, while their signature also means that they still oppose religion and veiling practices. Similarly, religious activists would claim to support LBT activists against exposure to suffering, violence and discrimination while arguing that same-sex desires are illicit and should be suppressed. Even if this paradoxical support has its own limits, it is argued that these limits have to be understood in a historical, political and social context that hinders even further the support proffered by women who have agreed to become allies, while still keeping a distance between them.

Thinking through the affective interconnection between bodies and spaces, this chapter analyses Istiklal Street as an ethnographic ‘site’ exposing the historicity of social struggles for rights. It analyses the ‘right to be in the street,’ that is, in a street that hosts demonstrations and protests every day, echoing demands for recognition and belonging, as well as differently projected affects, desires and hopes. It examines the importance of sustaining political alliances at the heart of an urban space encompassing the tension created between a secular polity and Islamic piety, between neoliberal economic projects and multicultural politics of tolerance, and between severe policing and other forms of violence. Focusing on the 2009 Pride March, it explains that this street also reflects the common struggle of many other activists to secure a political ‘space’ where their demands against violence, suffering, oppression and discrimination, as well as their different desires, will not be silenced.

The introduction unravels the dynamics carried within and between feminist women inheriting the traditions and passions of the second-wave independent movement; female religious activists posing their rights demands and raising their voices against the conditions that have harmed them in society; and the struggles of an LGBTQI+ movement that has been actively visible although still understudied. More than that, it focuses on their alliances by arguing that activism is a performative and affective language of claiming rights’ demands and desires. In particular, it is explained that the affects of activism that are analysed in this book do not escape the structural imperatives of historicity, language and representation, and for this reason what becomes politically important for the ‘transmission’ of such political affects is incommensurability defined by the knowledge, or rather the acknowledgement, of how hard it is to make affect speak the language of differing political visions and desires. By providing a sound critique of universalistic, humanitarian, (hetero)normative and orientalising approaches to affect and human rights, the introduction analyses how authoritarian regimes and neoliberalism join forces to deprive social movements of a powerful bargaining card they have had until now, i.e. the right to have rights, which means the right to think and produce different forms of affective politics, solidarities and resistance. Moreover, it also suggests a different approach to existing methodologies of studying activism, i.e. approaching the study of activism as ‘fieldwork in philosophy.’

By posing the question of what do ʻweʼ dream about, the aim of this chapter is to bring together critical philosophical visions of social transformation and everyday life dilemmas of survival. To do so, it centres on the story of Ali, a transgender activist, who was fighting against transphobia, cancer and eventual death during the 2013 public uprisings at Gezi Park in Istanbul. Focusing on both the historic moment and this personal story, this chapter asks the following: what happens when bodies assemble to protest, resist and lay claim to an-other vision of liveable death, as well as life? More than that, how can one write about what haunts the public sphere if one first needs to trouble assumptions about what dies in death and what might need to survive life? Through these questions, it is explained that because of the fact that we are already implicated in each other’s lives and deaths, as it is argued throughout Affective Activisms, it is important to examine claims and desires for existence while situating these questions as aporias of local and international philosophical and political everyday activist struggles.

In line with arguments made by authors who problematise the notions ‘East’ and ‘West’ and also criticise the strict division between secular and religious affects and symbols, the fourth chapter addresses the context in which the so-called headscarf controversy emerged in Turkey. It examines, firstly, the language used in the media; secondly, court cases regarding the headscarf ban in Turkey including cases at the ECHR and the Turkish Constitutional Court; and, lastly, the political fight between the two opposing parties in Turkey over regulations regarding the headscarf ban. Focusing on an analysis of the formative and performative effect of public and official discourses ascribing a presupposed incommensurability between secular and religious worldviews demarcating them as a constant threat to each other, this chapter argues against this divide and explains that without perceiving them as the same, they are similarly accountable for making religious women appear as either vulnerable subjects in need of protection or dangerous subjectivities threatening the polity’s limits. Thus, it reviews questions of agency in relation to the possibilities that female religious activists have to raise differing political demands vis-à-vis their rights, while their political voices are implicated in the language they aim to contest and as their subjectivity appears to be both precarious and elusive, but also formative and constitutive of this field of hegemonic power negotiations.

This chapter explores the limits of language when one needs to translate ‘hope’ between the local and the transnational as well as legal/institutional and affective/political language after a woman’s death. It reflects upon ethnographic material from a silent feminist protest that took place in memory of an Italian artist who was raped and killed in Turkey while on a march for peace. Despite the plea by the artist’s family for feminist activists not to politicise her death either by attributing a local connotation to it, which would be turned against the Turkish people, or by translating it through a feminist vocabulary that would be used against the state, a few feminist women held a protest, a silent protest. By highlighting the performative components of political language in its tight relation to affective dispositions, it is argued that this silence was not speechless, but instead echoed the long history of the feminist movement in fighting against male violence and sexual harassment, as well as with the feminists’ (lost) hopes for changes and social transformation.

Background/Objectives: The accelerating global concern for the mental health of university students necessitates delivering intervention programs. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a 5-week blended counseling group program, with two integrated approaches, positive psychology intervention and cognitive therapy, toward undergraduate engineering students' depression, anxiety, and stress, from the Higher School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Greece. Methods: Participants with a mean age of 21.12 (SD = 3.68) were administered the DASS-21. A two-way repeated-measures design was used and the two factors were condition and time. The subjects underwent two conditions, the experimental (n = 40), consisting of the civil and mechanical engineers, and the control (n = 52), that encompasses the electrical engineers. The three dependent variables, DASS-21 factors, were measured at three time points, at the beginning of the program, midway through the program, and at the end of the program. Results: The effect of the interaction between time and the conditions on DASS-21 depression and stress was significant. In particular, the experimental subgroups showed lower depression and stress at the end of the program in comparison with the control group. However, they did not demonstrate significantly lower scores on anxiety. Furthermore, the two intervention subgroups did not exhibit any significant mid-and post-test differences on all measures. Conclusions: In light of the obtained results, it can be concluded that the group counseling blended cognitive positive psychology program is an effective intervention.

The main objective of this Chapter is to discuss our current understanding of the SMEs financing area and to provide some future insights. The Chapter starts from the recognition that the SMEs financing field is a relatively new area, mainly developed during the last two decades. It then builds around our admission that there is no universal theory of capital structure, so that the SMEs financing question should be dismantled into different approaches. In this context, the Chapter first presents the main sources of business finance and then discusses the main categories of financing determinants for SMEs. Next, it explores the interesting question whether SMEs can actually choose among the various financing sources, thereby further elaborating the issue of financing constraints. The Chapter ends by risking a glimpse into the possible future states of SMEs financing, looking at issues like financial technology and financial inclusion/exclusion.

The scope of this chapter is to shed some light on the debate about the most productive and useful, for an economy, size of an enterprise, comparing large firms and SMEs. Since the concept of SMEs is not perceived in the same way internationally, it is crucial, to clarify what an SME is, by presenting definitions from the three biggest economies (E.U., USA and China). A few facts concerning the basic characteristics of entrepreneurship of the aforementioned economies contribute in better understanding each country’s business structure. The main part of the chapter focuses on the advantages of each type of enterprise (large and SMEs), which is simultaneously the disadvantage of the other type, thus underlying the complex function of the real economy. At the end, this chapter concludes that today, for a series of reasons, large businesses and SMEs are both of vital importance for the resilience and growth of every economy and society.

This study evaluates the economic usefulness of stock market implied volatility forecasts, based on their ability to improve the short‐run trading decision‐making process. The current literature aligns the forecast horizon with the frequency of the trading decision in order to evaluate different forecasting frameworks. By contrast, the premise of our paper is that these should not be necessarily related, but rather the evaluation should be based on the actual needs of the end‐user. Thus, we evaluate whether the multiple days ahead stock market volatility forecasts vis‐à‐vis the 1‐day ahead forecasts can improve the 1‐day ahead trading profits from VIX and the S&P500 futures. Our results suggest that indeed the 1‐day ahead trading profits are significantly improved when the trading decisions are based on longer term volatility forecasts. More specifically, the highest trading gains are obtained when using the 22‐day ahead forecasts. The results hold true for both VIX and S&P500 futures day‐ahead trading. Although there is no theoretical background regarding the fact that forecasting and trading horizons should not be aligned, we strongly motivate this potential issue, both from the statistical and financial points of view.

Aim: This study assesses nursing students' attitudes toward artificial intelligence (AI) and examines the role of personality traits in shaping these attitudes. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 159 nursing students from the University of Thessaly participated. Data were collected using the General Attitudes Toward Artificial Intelligence Scale (GAAIS) to measure attitudes toward AI and the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) to assess personality traits. Statistical analysis included descriptive and inferential methods, such as correlation and factor analysis. The significant level was set to p<0.05. Results: The findings revealed moderately positive attitudes toward AI (mean positive attitude score: 3.22 out of 5). Extraversion and openness to experience were positively correlated with positive attitudes, while maternal education was significantly associated with lower negative attitudes. Conclusion: Nursing students demonstrate a cautious optimism toward AI, with personality traits and education playing a key role in shaping their perceptions. Addressing concerns about AI through targeted educational programs could enhance students' confidence and willingness to adopt AI in their professional practice. These findings emphasize the importance of integrating AI into nursing curricula to bridge knowledge gaps and promote the effective use of AI technologies in healthcare.

Teacher well-being is a psychological asset for educators, often associated with job engagement and retention. However, sophisticated measures to comprehensively assess teacher well-being are still under investigation. This study explores the factor structure and cross-country comparability of the Teacher Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (TSWQ) among 393 early childhood education teachers from four European countries. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses generally supported the TSWQ’s proposed dimensionality, identifying teaching efficacy and school connectedness as two distinct latent factors, along with indications for the existence of a general, higher-order factor. Additionally, measurement equivalence was established at all levels across the four countries. Discriminant validity analyses highlighted culturally specific nuances in the relationship between teacher well-being and burnout. The findings underscore the TSWQ’s potential to advance theoretical and methodological research on teacher well-being and broaden the instrument’s applicability across diverse educational settings.

Food sovereignty discourse is gaining attention, yet it is open to contradicting interpretations as to its capacity to address systemic injustices of the corporate food regimes. In our attempt to contribute to a better understanding of food sovereignty and promote awareness within a hegemonic food system that is hostile to alternative economies, we acknowledge that a radical shift is needed in the way we imagine, frame and narrativize our food system and our role within it. Drawing from both global social movements and the rise of social and solidarity initiatives in crisis-ridden Greece reclaiming local and autonomous food systems, we rely on three concepts to develop knowledge co-creation: food sovereignty understood as the universal right to food, food commoning practices, and participatory research processes for food sustainability. We proceed further with the creation of a ‘Training of Trainers’ team engaging instructors involved in both formal and non-formal education in Greece to co-design a game-based educational tool on food sovereignty through serious gaming workshops. Key findings that emerge from this participatory research project include: the development of a shared language on food that questioned power inequalities; the idea of a community both autonomous and interdependent so as to achieve food sovereignty; and the role of collective imaginaries in allowing for diverse economies and alternative visions to emerge. Participation in a process of collective reflection challenged existing stereotypes, reimagined economy and community development and proved to be, in itself, a transformative approach to knowledge and an act of social change.

This study investigated how mental health, subjective happiness, and positive parenting interrelate among 489 Greek parents (76% mothers, 20% fathers) of children aged 7–13 years. We aimed to clarify whether these constructs converge strongly or remain relatively compartmentalized. Using a network analytic framework, we first estimated a graphical LASSO partial correlation network (38 nodes) and found 257 nonzero edges out of 703 possible (37% connectivity). The mean edge weight was 0.024, and centrality metrics were robust (Correlation Stability > 0.59 at r = 0.70). We then constructed a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) via Bayesian network modeling (1000 bootstrap samples, edge retention ≥ 85%) to infer directional paths. Mental health items (MHC–SF) correlated strongly within their domain (partial correlations up to r = 0.50), as did subjective happiness items (SHS) and positive parenting items (NPP). However, cross‐domain links were notably weaker, with partial correlations between NPP items and mental health or happiness rarely exceeding r = 0.20. One bridging link emerged from MH_11 (“warm and trusting relationships”) to N_16 (“good relationship with extended family”), r = 0.23, highlighting only a modest cross‐construct relationship. The DAG similarly showed that mental health variables exerted moderate directional influence on happiness but minimal influence on parenting nodes. Contrary to assumptions of broad reciprocity, these constructs operated in largely discrete clusters. Interventions should thus treat parental well‐being and parenting skills as partially distinct targets, emphasizing more tailored, context‐sensitive strategies for Greek families.

Background/Objectives: Quiet quitting, defined as employees fulfilling only the minimal requirements of their roles without extra effort or engagement, poses unique challenges in high-stress environments like hospitals where commitment directly impacts patient care. This study investigates the phenomenon of “quiet quitting” within the healthcare sector, with a specific focus on hospital staff in Greece. Methods: A cross-sectional design was employed, surveying 186 healthcare professionals from the General Hospital of Argos using the Questionnaire for Conflicts in Healthcare Organizations and the Quiet Quitting Scale (QQS). Results: Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses revealed that 62% of participants exhibited characteristics of quiet quitting, with “lack of motivation” scoring highest (M = 2.80, SD = 0.987) among QQS subscales. Significant correlations were observed between perceived reward fairness and motivation levels (r = −0.194, p < 0.01) and between management awareness of contributions and both motivation (r = −0.313, p < 0.01) and initiative (r = −0.192, p < 0.01). Logistic regression identified perceptions of management awareness as a key predictor of quiet quitting (p < 0.05). Conclusions: The findings emphasize the critical role of equitable reward systems and managerial recognition in reducing disengagement. Strategies to enhance employee engagement and resolve workplace conflicts are essential for fostering a resilient healthcare workforce.

Nutrition plays a crucial role in human and planetary health, as prevailing nutritional patterns significantly contribute to the global non-communicable disease pandemic. Moreover, the global food system is inextricably linked to planetary health deterioration. The relevance of nutrition for individual and planetary health is insufficiently addressed in German medical schools. Here, we present a two-week course for medical students in the 8th semester at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin on nutrition and fasting in the context of human and planetary health. The course was developed iteratively along the Kern cycle for medical curricula and underwent evaluation through a mixed-methods design spanning across two consecutive semesters. Assessment involved quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews. The main exploratory outcome was the overall module rating. Further outcomes encompassed in-depth evaluations of specific aspects, including content, teaching methods, instructor performance, and subjective experiential aspects. The conceptualisation resulted in a highly participative two-week course of 37.5 h. The main learning objectives aimed at the acquisition of technical competences and personal competencies in four areas: (1) the role of nutrition in health and disease; (2) the exploration of global food systems; (3) communication on subjects of nutrition; (4) culinary medicine. Various interactive didactic methodologies were used. 77.8% (n = 27) of the participants rated the course as very good or good. The conviction that nutrition influences health and disease increased over the course (Wilcoxon signed rank test, z = -2.82, p = 0.005, r = 0.57). In the qualitative interviews (n = 8) the course content, its didactical diversity and the positive group experience were appreciated. Our results indicate that it could be worthwhile to further incorporate nutrition curricula in medical education.