Alexandros Sakellariou

• PhD in Sociology
• Senior Researcher at National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

This article focuses on the case of Andreas Laskaratos (1811–1901), a famous satirical poet from the Ionian island of Cephalonia (Kefallinia) and a representative of the Heptanese School of Literature. Laskaratos was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church of Greece because of his criticism of the religious establishment. Apart from his other writi...

Religion, Law, and COVID-19 in Europe investigates how the pandemic and the subsequent legal restrictions on collective activities influenced religious life in the region. The 19 in-depth country case studies combine legal and sociological analyses and reflect the plurality of religious and secular contexts. They detail how the pandemic curbed the...

In the wake of the ‘New Atheism’ movement, Greek atheists began to gain visibility in the 2010s through various media channels, social media platforms, legal activism, and the establishment of the Atheist Union of Greece. This article presents findings from qualitative research conducted through semi-structured interviews and participant observatio...

This article explores the results of a study on media participation on Twitter in 2018/2019 perceived as contributing to far right and Islamist radical ideologies, in 7 European countries. By combining online ethnography and big data approaches, we see that online far right extremism in Europe is active and ranks are growing, while Islamist extremi...

During the last twenty years, a significant shift has taken place in Greek society. On the one hand, the religious context has been altered due to the arrival of immigrants and refugees with different religious backgrounds. On the other hand, young people seem to distance themselves from religion and the Orthodox Church in various ways. With the ab...

It has been generally argued that Greece is a predominantly Greek-Orthodox society where the Orthodox Church still plays an important and influential role on societal and political issues. During the recent years, however, a series of social and political changes have taken place that could eventually lead to the secularisation of both the state an...

The purpose of this article is to investigate trends and variations of fundamentalism in the Orthodox Church of Greece. In order to achieve this, the article analyses discourses and practices of the Orthodox Church of Greece since the restoration of democracy in 1974. The main argument is that the church, as an institution, produces public discours...

The largest part of the existing literature with regard to Islamophobia in Greece focuses primarily on the policies, activities and discourse of politicians and political groups of the extreme right, Orthodox Church figures, state authorities, the media and the Internet. The purpose of this article is to cast light on an aspect which is frequently...

EUROPEANPOLICYBRIEF-DIALOGUE ABOUT RADICALISATION AND EQUALITY P a g e | 1 Understanding the nature of social media participation on Twitter in relation to (self-)radicalisation helps decision makers design counter-strategies and actions. DARE researchers investigated 'right-wing extremist' and 'Islamist extremist' discourse on Twitter between 2010...

The reports presented here concern the role of the Internet and social media in processes of self-radicalisation. The term self-radicalisation refers to a type of radicalisation process that designates the radicalising individual as the instigator of the process. The DARE study investigates self-radicalisation specifically in relation to the role o...

The reports presented here concern the role of the Internet and social media in processes of self-radicalisation. The term self-radicalisation refers to a type of radicalisation process that designates the radicalising individual as the instigator of the process. The DARE study investigates self-radicalisation specifically in relation to the role o...

Work Experience for Technical Education Graduates was a programme launched in Greece to provide education, vocational counselling and work experience to people aged up to 29 years who resided in regions of the highest youth unemployment. It was organised and managed by a consortium of social partners established for the purpose. Enterprises were gi...

Introduction The social, economic and working environment in Greece is defined by volatility and insecurity. The programme ‘An Integrated Intervention for Connecting Vocational Schools Graduates with the Labour Market’ was a cooperative action for addressing the issue of youth unemployment. The initiative was deployed in the eight Convergence Regio...

Despite substantial academic and policy interest in well-being there is no universally accepted definition of the concept. In the academic literature, it is used as an over-arching concept to refer to the quality of life of people in society. The purpose of this chapter is to present the findings of the MYWeB project regarding the conceptions of we...

This chapter presents a meta-ethnographic analysis of qualitative studies of youth activism in organisations where religion plays a crucial role—albeit not necessarily the most important. Taking theories of social capital as a starting point, the chapter explores how young people understand and experience their participation in religion-based organ...

This chapter explores the attitudes of young people to the EU in carefully chosen research locations in Greece, Germany and the UK. Euroscepticism in Britain has been fuelled by populist discourses. On the other hand, European identity has been part of German identity since World War Two. For Greece, EU membership has been seen as a road to moderni...

The article explores the “fear of Islam” through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article w...

This article focuses on the place and role of women in the ideology of the Greek neo-Nazi political party Golden Dawn (GD). The article considers the place of women in GD’s ideology as well as how GD envisages the role of women in society. It asks whether this vision of women’s role is reflected in the participation of women in the party’s activiti...

The aim of this article is to study the personal stories of female converts from Greek Orthodox religion to Islam as these are presented on the Internet. In particular, I focus on the way some Greek Orthodox women who live in Greece or who are from a Greek Orthodox background but live abroad are self-presented via a website authorized by the Muslim...

The contemporary rise of popular support for fascism is investigated in this article through an examination of Golden Dawn's remarkable appeal to a section of Greek youth. This leads to the problematization of mainstream explanatory and interpretive discourses that attribute Golden Dawn's electoral and political attractiveness almost exclusively to...

This paper is based on the findings of the MYPLCAE (Memory, Youth, Political Legacy and Civic Engagement) European research project. Among qualitative and quantitative studies a special attention was paid to specific religion-based groups in five countries (Greece, Portugal, Georgia, Latvia and Slovakia). These ethnographic studies took place in ea...

The presence of Islam in the West has caused continuous debates, especially after 9/11. Nowadays, millions of Muslims live in Europe, the US and Canada, but while for many people, Muslims are just another religious community, for others Islam is a major threat that imperils the Christian cultural heritage of the West, and calls into question the ci...

Το περιοδικό Κριτικά δημοσιεύει πρωτότυπες βιβλιοκρισίες ακαδημαϊκού χαρακτήρα, αποβλέποντας στην επιστημονικά έγκυρη και έγκαιρη αποτίμηση της αξίας πρόσφατων ελληνικών ή ξενόγλωσσων εκδόσεων από τον χώρο της φιλοσοφίας, καθώς και από συγγενείς κλάδους. Τα κείμενα που υποβάλλονται υπόκεινται στην αξιολόγηση ανώνυμων κριτών. Για το έτος 2012 οι βιβ...

This study focuses on the way people of Greek Orthodox origin, who have been converted to Islam, are self-presented via the media and the internet. The main goal is to study the reasons of their conversion, their social and religious background and the reaction of their family after their conversion. The research material is consisted of newspaper...

This paper highlights the issue of the Islamic mosque of Athens. It is argued that this issue has still not been solved, mainly due to religious reasons and the influential intervention of the Greek-Orthodox Church in state affairs. The Islamic community of Athens is treated as an 'invisible' community and as a consequence is obliged to worship its...