Fotakis Achilleas

Assistant Professor

Academic field: Social and Cultural History, 19th-20th century

Official Government Gazette, Issue: 2261/07.05.2026, Issue C

Achilleas Fotakis is a graduate of the Law School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (2009) and of the pedagogical department of ASPETE (2016). He received his Master’s degree in Human Rights from the Law School of Birkbeck, University of London (London, 2010), and completed his doctoral dissertation at the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens on the creation of the Urban Police in Greece (2016).

In 2020, he completed postdoctoral research (scholarship, small-scale NSRF funding) at the same department on the postwar reorganization of police forces in Greece. In 2021, he completed postdoctoral research (HFRI scholarship) at the Department of Social Anthropology and History of the University of the Aegean on the legal significations of rape in twentieth-century Greece. In 2023, he completed postdoctoral research (Konstantinos Tsagkadas scholarship) on postwar Jewish life in Greece, hosted by the Department of History and Archaeology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

From 2022 to 2025, he taught through teaching-experience acquisition programs at the Departments of History of the University of Crete and Social Anthropology and History of the University of the Aegean. At the latter institution, he was elected Assistant Professor and has been teaching there since 2026.

He served as a member of the council of Research Network 31 of the European Sociological Association on Ethnic Relations, Racism and Antisemitism (2010–2017), and is a member of the scientific groups for the History of Crime and Justice (2018–), Police History Society (UK, 2021–), and Democratic Policing (Italy, France, Greece, Portugal, Spain, 2024–). He has participated in dozens of conferences in Greece and abroad since 2010. His research interests fall within the social and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with an emphasis on the history of policing, Jewish and Armenian history, and the history of sexualized violence.

Monographs

  • Red, Black and Blue: Police History and Memory 1941–1955, Themelio, Athens 2026 (forthcoming).
  • Mugshot: Photography and Discipline, 19th–20th Century, Isnafi, Ioannina 2025.
  • Urban Police: The First Steps in Interwar Greece, Themelio, Athens 2022.

Edited Volumes and Special Issues in Academic Journals

  • Co-edited with Dimitra Lampropoulou and Eleni Beze the special issue “Greek Jews after the War: Continuities and Discontinuities” in the journal Ta Historika, issue 80 [April 2025].
  • Ilias Petropoulos, On the Jews of Salonica, Kapon, Athens 2022.

Articles in Journals and Edited Volumes

  • “Information Sources in the Greek Police Forces, 19th–20th Century,” in Jonas Campion, Margo De Koster, Antoine Renglet, Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Police Intelligence, from Local to Global, from 1750 to the Present Day, Palgrave Macmillan, 2026. (forthcoming)
  • “Continuities of Control: Policing Women Prostitutes in Greece, 1922–1990,” in Sarah Frenking, Elisabeth Janik-Freis, Martin Göllnitz (eds.), special issue Frauen Polizieren, Werkstatt Geschichte 93 (September 2026).
  • “‘Your Papers, Please!’ A History of the Identity Card, 1943–1963,” in Efi Avdela and Vaso Seirinidou (eds.), On the History of Crime and Justice in Greece, 19th–20th Century: Institutions, Practices, Persons, Themelio, Athens 2026.
  • With D. Lampropoulou and G. Gkolfinopoulos, “Policing as Mobility Control: State Restructuring and Public Order in Postwar Greece,” Crime, Histoire & Sociétés / Crime, History & Societies, 29:1 (July 2025), 55–73.
  • “‘Reduced Performance,’ ‘Blacks,’ and ‘Dressmakers’: The Policing of Gender and Sexuality within the Security Forces in the Twentieth Century,” in Vidali et al. (eds.), Social Reality, Critical Discourse and the Penal Phenomenon: Contributions to the 2nd Conference of the Hellenic Society for the Study of Crime and Social Control, Athens 2025, 208–224.
  • “Antisemitism during the Years of the ‘Narrow’ Metapolitefsi (1974–1989): Methodology, Experience, Politics,” Ta Historika, issue 80, year 43, Benaki Museum / Melissa Publications, April 2025, 77–91.
  • With Dimitra Lampropoulou and Eleni Beze, “Introductory Note” in the special issue “Greek Jews after the War: Continuities and Discontinuities,” Ta Historika, issue 80, year 43, Benaki Museum / Melissa Publications, April 2025, 4–14.
  • “Legislation, Legal Theory and Law Enforcement on Rape, 1924–1974,” Aspasia: The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History 18 (2024), 47–63.
  • “Economy and Security beyond the Marshall Plan, 1945–1952,” Ta Historika, issue 79, year 42, Benaki Museum / Melissa Publications, October 2024, 175–200.
  • “Memories of WWII in the Greek Police (from the 1950s to the Present),” in Areti Adamopoulou & Anna-Maria Droumpouki (eds.), Monuments for World War II: Memory and Oblivion in the Balkans and Central-East Europe, Ioannina, University of Ioannina / Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation, 2024, 188–203.
  • “Significations of Rape in Greek Criminal Law, 19th–20th Century,” in D. Vasileiadou (ed.), ‘Against Their Will’: Significations of Sexual Violence in Modern Greece, Psifides Publications, 2024, 41–51.
  • With D. Lampropoulou and G. Gkolfinopoulos, “The Security of the Nation: Public Order and State Reconstruction in Postwar Greece,” Kathedra, journal of the Russian Society for Modern Greek Studies in cooperation with the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Philology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, issue 12:3 (2022), 94–112.
  • “The Creation of the Greek Police by the First British Police Mission,” Journal of the Police History Society (UK), 37 (2023), 95–102.
  • “The Blue Cadillac, the Geese and the Chickpeas: The Complex Relationship between Law and Crime in the History of the Police,” in D. Dimitropoulos and V. Karamanolakis (eds.), Mechanisms of Control and Discipline in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Institute of Historical Research / National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens 2022, 107–138.
  • “Christoph Gustavus-Sminck, The Nostalgia of Walerjan Wrobel: A Child before the Nazi Court 1941–1942 (2021),” book review in Synchrona Themata, issue 157, second series, year 44, December 2022.
  • “Nikos Alivizatos, Political Institutions in Crisis, 1922–1974 (1983): The Political Temporalities and Uses of a Book,” book review in Historika, issue 75, year 40, Benaki Museum / Melissa Publications, June 2022, 193–201.

Translations

  • Rae Dalven, A Matter of Survival, edited by Adam Goldwyn, Isnafi, 2024.
  • Rae Dalven, Marriages Are Arranged in Heaven, edited by Adam Goldwyn, Isnafi, 2022.
  • Adam Goldwyn, Jewish, American, Greek: A Biography of Rae Dalven / Rae Dalven: The Life of a Greek Jewish American, Isnafi, 2022.

Conference and Workshop Presentations [since 2025]

  • “Coffee and Cigarettes: An Armenian Perspective,” in More Stories about Things in Motion in the Eastern Mediterranean & Beyond, workshop organized by Angelos Dalachanis, Alexis Rappas and Mercedes Volait, École française d’ Athènes, September 26, 2025.
  • “Police and Public Relations: Police Magazines, Press and Correspondence with the Public, 1974–1984,” in Democratizing Public Space and Policing: Transitions, Circulations and Contestations in the 1970s and 1980s Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece), DEMOPOL 3 Workshop, École française d’ Athènes, June 10, 2025.

Interviews / Radio Discussions [since 2025]

  • With Petros Koris (program Leafing through the 20th Century, podcast of the digital journal Twentieth Century: Historical, Social and Political Review, produced by the independent media collective Alterthess), April 2025.

Contact

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