Yannis Stamos

Research topic during fellowship: Ancient Models for a New State: Greek Antiquity and Political Legitimacy in the Metaxas Regime (1936-1941)

Yannis Stamos completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2019, where his dissertation examined the political dimensions of literary criticism during the Metaxas dictatorship. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies (2020-2022) and the University of Amsterdam (2023). He also participated in a research group project on religion in literary criticism funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research & Innovation. His research examines the complex relationships between politics, ideology, and cultural production in Greece in the first half of the twentieth century, with particular focus on the Metaxas regime (1936-1941) and the Axis Occupation. Yannis has taught at several institutions, including the University of Vienna, the University of Thessaly, and Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, offering courses on Greek politics and culture, cultural studies, comparative literature, and Greek-German intellectual transfers. His research interests include the instrumentalization of culture, the role of intellectuals in authoritarian contexts, transnational ideological exchange, and the political mobilization of antiquity. His scholarship has appeared in edited volumes and academic journals including Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies and the Journal of Greek Media & Culture. At Harvard, Yannis is pursuing a research project titled “Ancient Models for a New State: Greek Antiquity and Political Legitimacy in the Metaxas Regime (1936-1941).” This study investigates how the regime selectively appropriated different aspects of Greek antiquity—including Minoan Crete, classical Athens and Sparta, and the kingdom of Macedon—for political legitimation.