Lecture + Documentary Screening
Untangling the Culture of Agricultural Production in Pelion: The Historical Archive of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative (1916–2016) as a Field for Documenting and Reconstructing Mountain Space
Alexandros Kapaniaris
Thursday 30.4, 11:00
This presentation explores the culture of agricultural production in Pelion through a multilayered reading of the historical archive of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative (1916–2016), approaching it as a dynamic field for documenting and reconstructing mountain space. Through administrative documents, accounting ledgers, correspondence, and materials of everyday practice, the research highlights transformations in productive relations, forms of collective organization, and strategies for managing natural resources within a demanding geographical environment. At the same time, the analysis sheds light on the ways cooperative structures contributed to the formation of local identities and the integration of tradition into contemporary practices, offering an interpretive framework for understanding both continuity and rupture in mountainous rural landscapes.
Bio
Alexandros G. Kapaniaris holds a PhD in Digital Folklore from the Department of Preschool Education and Educational Design at the University of the Aegean. He has completed two postdoctoral research projects on archival ethnography at the Department of History & Ethnology of Democritus University of Thrace. He has taught courses on digital cultural heritage, digital applications and new technologies, and cultural management at the Universities of Piraeus, Ioannina, Western Macedonia, Democritus University of Thrace, and the Hellenic Open University.
During 2021–22, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of the Peloponnese, conducting research on archival ethnography related to migration.Since 2017, he has served as a Tutor-Counselor at the Hellenic Open University and, for the past two years, in the postgraduate program Digital Humanities, where he also coordinates the thematic unit “Digital Management of Cultural Heritage (ΨΑΕ60).
”From 2014 to 2021, he was the scientific coordinator of the project marking the 100 years of continuous operation of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative, documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle.” From 2018 to 2023, he was also the scientific coordinator of the centennial project for the Nea Anchialos Agricultural Winemaking Cooperative “DIMITRA,” documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “From Anchialos of Eastern Rumelia to Nea Anchialos of Magnesia: Memories of Refuge and Histories of Cooperation.”
In 2014, for his work “The Mayides of Makrinitsa,” in 2018 for “Digital Folklore and Education,” and in 2019 for the two-volume work “Zagora Agricultural Cooperative: A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle – History, Cooperative Values, and the Culture of Agricultural Production,” he was awarded the “Lysimachos Kaftantzoglou Prize” by the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Within the framework of the course PELION CHŌRA: Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
By The Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For online attendance contact memarkaki@uth.gr
Lecture + Documentary Screening
Movement, Production, and Memory:From Anchialos in Eastern Rumelia to Nea Anchialos in Magnesia through the Archives of the “DIMITRA” Cooperative
Alexandros Kapaniaris
Thursday 30.4, 14:00
This presentation examines the dynamic relationship between population movements, productive activity, and the formation of collective memory, focusing on the transition from Anchialos in Eastern Rumelia to Nea Anchialos in Magnesia. Through the archival records of the “DIMITRA” Cooperative, the study highlights the ways in which refugees reconstructed their economic and social lives, transferring knowledge, practices, and identities to their new place of settlement.At the same time, the presentation explores how production — particularly within the agricultural and cooperative sectors — functioned not only as a means of survival but also as a vehicle for preserving and reshaping memory and cultural continuity. In this way, productive activity contributed to the formation of a new local identity deeply rooted in the past.
Bio
Alexandros G. Kapaniaris holds a PhD in Digital Folklore from the Department of Preschool Education and Educational Design at the University of the Aegean. He has completed two postdoctoral research projects on archival ethnography at the Department of History & Ethnology of Democritus University of Thrace. He has taught courses on digital cultural heritage, digital applications and new technologies, and cultural management at the Universities of Piraeus, Ioannina, Western Macedonia, Democritus University of Thrace, and the Hellenic Open University.
During 2021–22, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of the Peloponnese, conducting research on archival ethnography related to migration.Since 2017, he has served as a Tutor-Counselor at the Hellenic Open University and, for the past two years, in the postgraduate program Digital Humanities, where he also coordinates the thematic unit “Digital Management of Cultural Heritage (ΨΑΕ60).”
From 2014 to 2021, he was the scientific coordinator of the project marking the 100 years of continuous operation of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative, documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle.” From 2018 to 2023, he was also the scientific coordinator of the centennial project for the Nea Anchialos Agricultural Winemaking Cooperative “DIMITRA,” documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “From Anchialos of Eastern Rumelia to Nea Anchialos of Magnesia: Memories of Refuge and Histories of Cooperation.”
In 2014, for his work “The Mayides of Makrinitsa,” in 2018 for “Digital Folklore and Education,” and in 2019 for the two-volume work “Zagora Agricultural Cooperative: A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle – History, Cooperative Values, and the Culture of Agricultural Production,” he was awarded the “Lysimachos Kaftantzoglou Prize” by the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Within the framework of the course MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Wanderings Through the Countryside
By The Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For the link contact memarkaki@uth.gr
The publication “Digital Narrative Forms - Design and development of audiovisual, interactive and transmedia projects” by the authors George Papakonstantinou (Professor Emeritus, Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly) and Panagiotis Kyriakoulakou (Assistant Professor, Department of Product Design Engineering and Systems, University of the Aegean) was posted on Kallipos, an open academic e-books platform.
The work is dedicated to our dear friend and colleague Spyros Papadopoulos, Director of LECAD and President of Dept. ARCH, who passed away so early. His work continues to inspire and motivate us.
https://repository.kallipos.gr/handle/11419/15090?&locale=en
Lecture by Nafsika Papacharalampous “The Smellof the Greek Rural: Commensality and Identity at Times of Crisis”
Wednesday 22/4/2026 18:30-19:00 – Patari Metaptychiakou
Download the poster.
The lecture will take place as part of the collective workshop titled: “The Soup of the City and the Mountain: Edible Places and Other ‘Urban-Rural’ Encounters”
Short bio:
Nafsika Papacharalampous is a social anthropologist and Research Associate at the SOAS Food Studies Centre, University of London. For more than a decade, she has been researching changing food systems during times of environmental and economic crises. Her work focuses on cuisine, identity, memory, the senses and the past as ways of understanding social change. Her current research extends this work to food waste, social justice and sustainability in Greece. She is the author of “The Metamorphosis of Greek Cuisine: An ethnography of deli foods, restaurant smells & foodways of crisis” (Routledge, 2023).Nafsika is also a chef and consultant, working with artisan food companies, restaurants and food organisations. She also curates culinary experiences around Greek food. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, an MA in the Anthropology of Food from SOAS, and an MBA from the Athens University of Economics and Business. Website: www.nafsikacooks.com / @nafsikacooks
The lecture and the workshop are jointly organized as part of the following spring semester courses:
PELION CHŌRA: Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
Instructor: Metaxia Markaki
Cohabiting in the Garden: Architectures of Care
Instructor: Petros Phokaides
FOOD GEOGRAPHIES
Instructor: Thalia Marou
The Soup of the Mountain and the City - Edible places and other “urban-rural” encounters
Patari Metaptychiakou
Wednesday 22/4, 18:00
On Wednesday 22/4,we meet Nafsika Papacharalambous, a food anthropologist and chef, and we transform TAM into a large kitchen, where places and ingredients meet, mix, and recombine. The “soup” functions as a shared liquid field in which different elements, cultivation practices, and food relations are explored, coexist, and are transformed into a new edible condition and collective action.
INGREDIENTS:
The PELION CHORA team brings ingredients from the mountain.
What does an “edible mountain” mean, and how much of what we find in the markets of Volos—and the city more broadly—is produced in Pelion? We search for fruits and vegetables, cooperative products, or other materials connected to our study areas: herbs from the mountain; products from olive landscapes (oil, olives); fruits (e.g. apples) and vegetables from cultivated land; cooperative products (e.g. ZAGORIN); small-scale artisanal goods sold in Pelion’s tourist markets (e.g. Makrinitsa: kritharaki, hilopites, etc.). How far does the mountain reach? We bring mountain products and map the places they come from.
The COHABITING IN THE GARDEN team brings ingredients from the city.
What can one find at a street market, a small grocery shop, or a greengrocer? Are these locally produced in Thessaly, or do they connect to more distant geographies? Are they products of intensive agriculture and trade, or small-scale domestic production? We also look for “imperfect” vegetables or fruits—leftovers that might otherwise be discarded. Where do these products come from, how are they produced, and where do they end up if they are not bought?
The GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD team brings ingredients from the region of Magnesia.
How is food mapped within a specific geography? What networks of production, distribution, and consumption shape it? We look for products originating from different areas of Magnesia (mountain, plain, city) and reflect on their journeys—from place of production to the plate. What do these routes reveal about the relationships between the local and the supra-local?
The collective cooking will be accompanied by a talk by Nafsika Papacharalambous titled “The Smell of the Countryside: Co-dwelling and Identity in Times of Crisis”, and a screening of the documentary The Grocer (2013) by Dimitris Koutsiabasakos.
You are all warmly invited to cook, eat, and discuss with us edible places, unexpected “urban-rural” encounters, and fluid, hybrid geographies around a large table and a bowl of soup!
“The Soup of the Mountain and the City” is prepared and consumed collectively as part of the Spring Semester 2026 courses:
PELION CHORA. Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
Instructor: Metaxia Markaki
Cohabiting in the Garden: Architectures of Care
Instructor: Petros Fokaidis
GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD
Instructor: Thaleia Marou
Blended Intensive Program (BIP)
Architecture(s) of Care 3: Occupy, Poetically
International Summer School – Pietra de’ Giorgi, Italy
15th - 19th of June 2026
Join us for a one-week residency in the hilltop village of Pietra de’ Giorgi, in the rural landscape of the Oltrepò Pavese, Northern Italy. Architecture(s) of Care 3: Occupy, Poetically invites students and early researchers to explore architecture as a collective, situated and experimental practice. Rather than learning about a place, participants will learn by inhabiting it. For one week, we will live and work together in the village, engaging with its spaces, rhythms and community while contributing to an ongoing project of cultural reactivation centred on the reopening of the village’s historic cinema as a social theatre. The programme combines critical mapping exercises, spatial observation and conversations with local actors with a hands-on construction workshop, where participants will collaboratively design and build small architectural elements for the public spaces around the cinema. Walking, mapping, building and sharing everyday life become part of a collective ritual of learning and making, where design is understood not as a finished object but as a process of care, negotiation and radical imagination. Participants will stay together in the village in a temporary residency setting, with accommodation and daily lunch provided throughout the programme. If you are interested in experimental pedagogies, rural futures and architecture as a form of social engagement, this summer school offers a unique opportunity to think, build and inhabit together.
As part of the Master's Degree in Reuse of Buildings and Complexes of the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly, on Thursday 02/04/2026 at 17:00 [UTC+3] at MS TEAMS, an online lecture with a guest speaker from Label Architecture entitled "From Belgium with love" will take place.
Coordination: Fabiano Micocci, Dept. Arch UTh
CV
Label architecture is an architectural practice based in Brussels, a city they also call home. Their projects, on various scales, are as much an opportunity to play with existing space, from their common reference points, as not to take themselves too seriously while being serious about their work. An insatiable will to play with the obvious to maximum effect. Associates: Thibaut Rome, Michel Lefèvre, Christophe Pham, Andreas Vanysacker. Collaborators: Henri Winter, Alexis Le Gallo.
Apostolos Kyriazis
The Sky: The Anthropogenic and Natural Environment
Lecture
Wednesday April 01st 2026 18:00 (GMT+2) Room E
Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly
Pedion Areos, Volos
Lecture within the framework of the course Introduction to Architecture II.
Tutors: Giannisi Phoebe, Kosma Anthi, Kouzoupi Aspasia, Lykourioti Iris
Bio
Apostolos Kyriazis was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1976. He holds a Diploma (BArch and MArch) in Architecture, an MSc in Urban Planning and a PhD in Architecture and Urban Regeneration from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has been a practitioner since 2000, with three awards in architecture competitions, two participations at the Venice Biennale of Architecture (2016 and 2018), one exhibition participation with the ECC in Venice, Italy in 2021 and numerous housing and urban planning projects in Greece, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.
He has also been an active Scholar/Academic since 2008. He worked as an Adjunct Lecturer from 2008 to 2013 at Schools of Architecture in Thessaloniki, Volos and Xanthi, Greece. He joined Abu Dhabi University as an Assistant Professor of Architecture in 2015 and he recently got promoted to Associate Professor. He has published and presented academic research in numerous Conferences and conducts Research in collaboration with other international institutions. His field of expertise is the Neighborhood scale, urban regeneration, urban morphologies, public space, informality, social housing.
He is also an enthusiast photographer with seven participations at group exhibitions and five international awards/distinctions. He currently lives with his family in Abu Dhabi, UAE.
THESIS EXHIBITION
selections from the February 2026 examination period
Tuesday, March 10 - Monday, March 30, 2026
Dept. ARCH exhibition hall | 9:00-21:00 daily
Designing Land: Kuklen Industrial Park and the Transformation of Plovdiv’s Peripheries through Global Production
Ina Valkanova
Thursday 26.3, 14.00
ONLINE
This lecture presents an in-depth study of a global production landscape on the periphery of Plovdiv—the Trakia Economic Zone. Building on discussions of material flows, networks, and social dynamics, it examines how land is transformed through interconnected material, regulatory, and experiential processes.
Focusing on the role of the private construction company Senit, the lecture traces how industrial development was initiated on former agricultural land and enabled through alliances between political, financial, and advisory actors. In doing so, it highlights the mechanisms of extended industrial urbanization. The case of Industrial Park Kuklen is examined through land ownership patterns, transactions, and management structures, revealing the political-economic frameworks that have shaped the area, alongside emerging practices of care and environmental repair.
The lecture further explores the evolving material life of the landscape, shaped by both human and non-human forces, where natural processes intersect with the controlled design of industrial infrastructures. By approaching industrial territories as dynamic and relational environments, it offers a multi-layered, more-than-human understanding of global production landscapes, challenging the notion that such developments occur on a tabula rasa or are governed solely by dominant economic and political forces.
Ina Valkanova is a researcher, urbanist, and activist. Her work explores the relationship between global production and local environments, focusing on a special economic zone on the periphery of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD from ETH Zürich (Institute of Landscape and Urban Studies) and a Dipl.-Ing. from RWTH Aachen University. From 2017 to 2019, she served as Coordinator for Investment and Innovation for Sofia’s long-term development strategy, Vision for Sofia 2050. Prior to this, she was Director of the international festival One Architecture Week in Plovdiv. Ina is a co-founder of Gradoscope, a Sofia-based collective focusing on urban and landscape process design in complex urban initiatives and redevelopment projects. She has taught at the University of Architecture in Sofia and at ETH Zürich, and has lectured widely across Europe, including at Copenhagen Architecture Week, Belgrade International Architecture Week, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and KU Leuven. Her work has been published in Steel Cities: The Architecture of Logistics in Central and Eastern Europe, Dimensions Journal, and Bauwelt, among others. She served on the jury of the 2025 New European Bauhaus Awards and recently co-curated the exhibition It Was All Fields Once, presented at CIVA and Track Brussels.
Within the framework of the course
MACHINE IN THE GARDEN: Wanderings through the Countryside
By the Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki
For online attendance contact memarkaki@uth.gr