PEOPLE INVOLVED
Professionals
Within the Bridging Generations project a lot of professionals were involved to implement the goals of the project. Down below you'll find a short bio of said professionals. We want to thank everybody as well those who chose not to be mentioned here for their contributions.
Prof Dr Georgios Agelopoulos
Prof Dr Georgios Agelopoulos studied sociology at Panteion University in Athens and Social Anthropology at St. Andrews University (MPhil) and Cambridge University (PhD). His research interests focus on Balkan ethnography, political anthropology and social and solidarity economy in Greece and the Balkans. In addition to his academic work, Dr Agelopoulos is a columnist in the Greek Press focusing on issues related to identity politics, higher education and social and solidarity economy. His publications include papers published at the Journals Balkan Studies, Social Anthropology, Εthnologie française, The Anthropology of Eastern Europe Review and the 3 edited volumes of 'Βalkan Border Crossings', published by LIT-Verlag (2008, 2011, 2014). In the project Bridging Generations he participated as a speaker in discussions during the transnational event of Thessaloniki.
Marie Luise-Baldin
Marie-Luise Baldin was born 1983 in Zittau, Germany. She studied sociology in Dresden and Chemnitz with specialisations in cultural and urban sociology. Since 2015 she works as a research assistant at the Institute of Urban Research, Planning and Communication in Erfurt. As an Intern in Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. and a former Sociology student she carried out the German interviews with eye-witnesses of WWII.
Prof Dr Henriette-Rika Benveniste
Prof Dr Henriette-Rika Benveniste studied History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed her doctoral studies in Medieval History at the Université de Sorbonne (Paris I, Panthéon). She is now a Professor of European Medieval History at the University of Thessaly. Her research interests include Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages, Jewish History and Historiography and History and Memory of the Holocaust. Her most recent book is Those Who Survived - Resistance, Deportation, Return of Jews from Salonika in the 1940s (Athens, Polis 2014). In the project Bridging Generations she participated as a speaker in discussions during the transnational event of Thessaloniki.
Barbara Bruno
Barbara Bruno is one of the founding members of YouNet and is now the head of the ‘European Awareness and active Citizenship’ department in YouNet. YouNet is a NGO focusing on European Citizenship and awareness and international learning mobility. YouNet is based in Bologna and due to the history of the region the topic of active European remembrance is crucial to them. YouNet cooperates with the Bologna Municipality, the Emilia-Romagna Region, several schools and museums and institutions specialized in history (i.e. Istituto per la Storia della Resistenza e della Società Contemporanea). In that capacity Ms Bruno is responsible for the coordinating of Italian narrations of seniors living in Bologna during the Bridging Generations project.
Hans-Peter Fischer
Hans-Peter Fischer is the chairman of the board of Kulturbuero Dresden e.V., an umbrella organisation of round about 50 NGOs from Saxony (Germany). He successfully studied Law and Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Dresden, was working as the manager of a social cultural center in Dresden, as project manager in several international and national projects as well as gallerist and curator of a number of art exhibitions. During the project Bridging Generations he organized the personal exhibition of Prof. Xenofon Sachinis within the gallery of the Department of Culture of the City of Dresden and participated in the conference in Thessaloniki.
Teodora Gârbovan
Teodora Gârbovan has a BA in Applied Modern languages (English/French) and a MA in European Literary Cultures. At YouNet she is in charge of Communications and Short Term Mobility programmes. She was a member of the film making team for the recording of the narrations of seniors living in Bologna on behalf of the YouNet organisation. She worked closely with Martina Manfreda and Gaëlle Fillesoye for the production of these films.
Béla Zsolt Gergely
Béla Zsolt Gergely contributes to shaping and guiding the strategic direction of international relations at the Municipality of Kistarcsa, Hungary as Program Manager in charge of international projects and initiatives. In that capacity he is responsible for the administration of several major EU-funded projects, including Bridging Generations.
Previously, Mr Gergely worked as Funding Consultant of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). Prior to joining BME, he served as Project Manager of Edutus College and Office Manager of the State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI) in Westerville, OH, a US think-tank dedicated to improving government–industry programs that encourage economic growth through the application of science and technology. He holds a BA degree in British and American Studies from the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj, Romania.
Stefan Kiehne
Stefan Kiehne is the founder of Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. He studied Political Sciences at the Technical University of Dresden and has worked as an event manager in the field of cultural and art festivals since 1996. At Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. he has been working as a project, logistics and event manager and as the coordinator of the association’s team since 2004. He specialises in organising, implementing and monitoring international projects in the fields of art, culture and non-formal education.
In the Bridging Generations project he was responsible for the financial aspects and logistics of the project. Moreover, he was responsible for the organisation and implementation of the local and transnational events taking place in Dresden within the framework of Bridging Generations, contacting local stakeholders and making the project and its events in Dresden visible as well as disseminating its results.
Katja Krüger
Katja Krüger graduated in Gestalt Therapy and continued with studies in Psychomotor Education. The participation at the travelling exhibition ‘Experts in Life – Respect for Seniors’, organised by Caritas in 2010, motivated Katja Krüger to work with elderly people. She got qualified as a care assistant for dementia patients and started to work in this field.
She has always been personally interested in the topic ‘World War II – Trauma – Impact on Subsequent Generations’. With her participation at the project she fulfilled her desire to interview people about their lives, listen to them and share a little piece of their experience. As a volunteer in Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. she carried out the interviews with German eye-witnesses of World War II.
Manos Malamidis
Manos Malamidis is a historian, researcher and collector active for many years having collected one of the biggest archives about Thessaloniki's Occupation and Liberation; photos, documents and newspapers constitute a 22 volume archive of historical resources, focused on the period of 1941-1944. Manos Malamidis' archives and the online team ‘Memories of Thessaloniki - Connection to the Present’ with more than 4,000 members aim to raise awareness regarding the history of Thessaloniki.
“By learning about the history of our city civic consciousness and engagement is achieved. Thus, we respect our city and we make it grow. It's incredibly important to preserve the historical memory. If there is no historical memory there is no historical continuity. And it is historical continuity which helps people go forward without repeating the same mistakes.”
During the transnational event that was held in Thessaloniki (28-31 October, 2015) as part of the Bridging Generations project the historical archives of Manos Malamidis were displayed in the audio-visual exhibition ‘Thessaloniki's Occupation and Liberation (1941-1944)’. The opening of the exhibition took place on the 30th of October, 2015 commemorating the day of the city of Thessaloniki's Liberation (30th of October, 1944).
Monika Małobęcka
Monika Małobęcka is currently the specialist for Culture and Projects in the Community Culture Centre of Oleśnica and the manager of Oleśnica’s Community Chamber of Memories in the village of Boguszyce. There, she provides multigenerational workshops during which inhabitants discover, nurture and cultivate the memory of their ancestors who were resettled from the former Eastern Polish Borderlands after 1945 (aftermath of the Yalta Conference in 1945) to the area surrounding Oleśnica. Additionally, she collects and records through video biographical narratives of the oldest inhabitants of the area of Oleśnica and produces short videos, which are being collected in the Chamber of Memories for the future generations as an intangible cultural heritage -a basis in the process of creating a sense of collective identity for the community. She is a graduate of Pedagogy from the University of Lower Silesia in Wrocław, Faculty of Psychological and Pedagogical Support, where she is finishing her thesis project on ‘Memory identity: Narrative of a community’.
She participated in the Bridging Generations project as a researcher and interviewer.
Andras Mayer
Andras Mayer is one of the leaders of the community of the Teleki Shtiebel, Budapest. He takes part in all the projects of Jakab Glaser Foundation, the NGO of the synagogue where he is a member of the board. As a profession he is a photographer and photojournalist so naturally he is concerned with all photography and visual imagery of the projects. He is the Assistant Director (as well as the production assistant and cameraman) of the movie the community is making about the history of the Teleki Shtiebel. He holds a BA degree of Teacher of English as a Foreign Language of CETT, ELTE (Centre for English Teacher Training, Eötvös Loránd University) Budapest, Hungary. His responsibilities were video and photo documentation. He was the main film-maker of the Hungarians´ narrative interviews.
Gábor Mayer
Gábor Mayer is a professional programmer and project manager who works freelance for different Hungarian and international agencies and is specialised in online and mobile applications. He got involved in the life and survival of the last Shtiebel of Budapest, the Teleki ter shul in around 2000. Since then he is a committed member and activist in his free time. He helped to establish the NGO for Teleki ter and is the COB since. He manages and supervises the day-to-day activities, restoration, community building and event planning for the community of the Teleki tér shtiebel pro bono.
Gábor studied teaching computer science and computer engineering at Eötvös Lóránd University and University of Debrecen. He contributed to the process of video-making as a researcher and by finding the concerned eye-witnesses of WWII in Hungary.
Micaela Merli
Micaela Merli is an international Relations Officer. Micaela works for the Bologna Municipality and has a long lasting interest in local and international history. During the Bridging Generations project she was responsible for communications with local authorities such as Universities, research institutions and local authorities for the dissemination of the project and its´ visibility.
Piotr Michałowski
Piotr Michałowski is the head of the House of Culture in the Community Culture Centre of Oleśnica and a Board Member of the European Network of Culture Centre. He is a certified consultant of the National Centre for Culture – planning local development strategies for cultural institutions – and he is a co-initiator and secretary general of the Wandering Cultural Forum "Lower Silesia". He has a Master’s Degree in Cultural Studies (Musical Critics) from the University of Wrocław and from the Wrocław School of Jazz and Contemporary Music a degree in guitar class. Furthermore, he completed postgraduate studies in ‘Administration and Entrepreneurship in Culture’ (DWSSP "ASESOR" 2010). He is coordinating projects inclusive of all generations, but mostly for elderly people, and projects with an aim to encourage inhabitants of the community to establish new societies, promoting an idea of democracy and networking.
He was the representative of Gminny Osrodek Kultury Oleśnica as the culture manager of transnational events in Poland and had an audio-visual performance with the title ‘Different Crowds Clamour’ during the Bridging Generations transnational event in Dresden.
Roberta Mira
Roberta Mira has studied History at the Universities of Bologna and Florence; she holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary History and is a research assistant at the University of Bologna, Department of History, Cultures and Civilization.
She works and has written essays and books on Fascism and National Socialism, WWII, Nazi and Fascist war crimes, deportation and forced labour and the Italian Resistance movement, its memory and its influence on the Italian national identity. She is a member of the editorial and scientific boards of the e-journal of Contemporary History «Percorsi Storici». She is active in the Association of Italian Partisans and Antifascists ANPI (Associazione Nazionale Partigiani d’Italia), which is involved in preserving and transmitting the memory and the values of the Resistance movement in Italy. In this power she was participating on the transnational event in Thessaloniki and taking part in discussions, during the Bridging Generations project.
Dr Rena Molho
Dr Rena Molho is a Greek historian who focuses on the different aspects of Ottoman and Greek Jewish history and culture and more specifically that of the Jews of Thessaloniki.
In 1996, she acted as senior interviewer and coordinator in Greece for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and has videotaped seventy Greek holocaust survivors' personal accounts. From 2005 to 2007, she was the Greek coordinator for Centropa, a Jewish historical institute. Her book ‘The Jews of Thessaloniki, 1856–1919: A Unique Community’ received the Athens Academy Award in December 2000. She studied European history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and received a Doctor of Philosophy with distinctions from the University of Strasbourg.
During the Bridging Generations project, Dr Molho was a guide for the Jewish districts during the transnational event at Thessaloniki. She provided an overview of the history of the Jews in Thessaloniki from the 2nd century BC and up to the Second World War.
Matthias Neutzner
Matthias Neutzner is an engineer and social scientist, a researcher in the fields of history, politics of history and culture of remembrance. He is the founder and a chairman of MEMORAE PACEM, an intergenerational peace initiative in Dresden. He wrote several monographs and book chapters about the history of Dresden during Nazism and World War II and the related cultures of memory. From 2008 to 2012 he was an employee in the European science project 'Identity and Conflict - Cultural Heritage and the Re-construction of Identities after Conflict'.
Prof Dr hab. Mirosława Nowak-Dziemianowicz
Prof Dr hab. Mirosława Nowak-Dziemianowicz is a professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Wrocław. She specialises in general education as well as in family and school pedagogies. Her research interests include contemporary family, conflicts and conflict-prevention strategies, educational contexts of identity formation and interpretative methodology in social research (biographical and narrative research). She is active in the Open Education Society and she is a consultant for alternative schooling conceptions and curricula to the Polish Ministry of Education, including Arts High Schools and Academic Highs School in Wrocław.
Prof Dr hab. Nowak-Dziemianowicz was participating in discussions during the transnational event at Thessaloniki that took place as part of the Bridging Generations project.
Prof Pavlos Pantazis
Prof Pavlos Pantazis is a Social Psychologist and Associate Professor of the Film Department of the School of Fine Arts of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. He is a scientific coordinator and research associate in research programs. He has published 46 scientific publications (books, chapters in books, journal articles, papers in conference proceedings, scientific reports). In 1991 he wrote his PhD-Thesis on the topic ‘Life-stories and Migrant Plans of Rural Families. The Case of Kefalovrysso’ at the Department of Psychology of University of Ioannina, Greece. He has been a member of the organising/scientific committee in 20 Greek and international scientific conferences.
He worked at the Bridging Generations project as a Life Stories and Code of Ethics Consultant.
Kostis Papazoglou
Kostis Papazoglou is the director of the Ladino Choir of the Jewish Community in Thessaloniki. For some years now, he has been Director of the Department of Early Music of the New Conservatory in Thessaloniki where he has been very active as a teacher and in organising international seminars. Since June 2001, he is the artistic director of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Municipality of Kalamaria. In 1994, Kostis Papazoglou founded and directed the Days of Music in the Municipality of Arnaia and was also the founder of the early music ensemble ‘Concerto Ellenico’ and its chamber orchestra ‘Concerto Conservatorio’. In 1995, he founded –and still conducts– the choir of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, which specialises in conserving the Jewish tradition of the city (Sephardic melodies, religious songs etc.).
During the Bridging Generations transnational event in Thessaloniki he took part as a conductor and piano player of the Sephardic Choir of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki at the Teloglion Fine Arts Foundation.
Myrto-Helena Pertsinidi
Myrto-Helena Pertsinidi holds a MSc degree in International and European Politics (University of Edinburgh) and a BA degree in International Relations (Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean). She has been working in NGOs since 2008 specialising in project and event management, facilitating and coordinating international projects in the fields of non-formal education, art and culture. Since 2011 she has been working at Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. as a project manager, fund raiser, international projects and events coordinator and coordinator of the association’s team.
In the Bridging Generations project she is the coordinator of the project, responsible for its correct execution, coordinating the partnership and the communication with the partners involved, distributing tasks to the team of Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. and working closely with the researchers, film makers, sociologists, project managers, cultural managers and artists of the organisations involved in this project.
Stefanie von der Recke
Stefanie von der Recke was born in Odense, Denmark. She holds a Master’s degree in History and German studies from Copenhagen University. One of her main research interests throughout her studies has been the German societal and political commemoration of the Second World War. With a special interest in the different aspects of the memories of the Dresden Bombings during The War she worked as one of the creators and co-writers on the Bridging Generations project. Additionally, she contributed in the video-making process as a researcher.
Prof Xenofon Sachinis
Prof Xenofon Sachinis is currently Professor of Printmaking and Chairman of the Visual and Applied Arts Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Since 2014, he is Dean of the Fine Arts Faculty of the aforementioned Institution. He has published two books concerning the concept of contemporary printmaking and organised worldwide exhibitions of his art (in the USA, France, Spain, Sweden, Slovakia, Japan, Egypt and now Dresden, Germany).
Prof Sachinis participated in the Bridging Generations project as a representative of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He further participated as an artist, presenting in Dresden his Audio-visual exhibition ‘Memories: Occupation and Liberation of Thessaloniki at the Centre of Architecture of Thessaloniki’ and his Fine Art exhibition ‘ΚΑΠΝΟς’. He also gave a speech during the transnational event ‘Gedenken in Dresden’.
Dimitris Savvaidis
Dimitris Savvaidis has created together with other artists several short animation movies, documentaries and feature short films that have been shown in Greek and Foreign Animation Festivals. He had a TV show in 2010 -Cofix Wiggler- about comics and animation broadcasted in local TV channels and the internet.
He is the founder of the annual festival TAF (Thessaloniki Animation Festival) and co-organised many more cultural events in his town, country and also abroad. He was a guest speaker in UK Worchester seminar ‘Peace keeping through storytelling’ and is the cofounder of the NGO AddArt.
He teaches scriptwriting, directing, comics and animation in Thessaloniki since 2003. In the Bridging Generations project he contributed as director and editor of some of the Greek interviews.
Dr Marcin Starnawski
Dr Marcin Starnawski teaches sociology and critical pedagogical theory at the University of Lower Silesia. His research interests include ideology, prejudice and discrimination, social movements and cultural identity. He studied at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (1998–1999), Wrocław University (1999 – MA in sociology), University of Oxford (2000–2001, postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies). He received a PhD in social science from the University of Lower Silesia in 2014, based on the dissertation ‘Between Assimilation and Distinctiveness: Jewish Identity of Polish Youth after WWII’. Since 2002, he co-operated with NGOs, networks and informal groups in educational and advocacy campaigns. He is involved in the ESREA Network on Migration, Ethnicity, Racism and Xenophobia and an editor of the Recykling Idei journal.
Dr Marcin Starnawski was participating in discussions during the transnational event at Thessaloniki, part of the Bridging Generations project.
Ewa Staron
Ewa Staron’s main occupation since many years is dance, theatre, cultural animation and working with people. One of her main realisations –the creation of the Centre of Artistic Initiatives– is a friendly place for creative activities. Ewa has a permanent ‘need’ to “transfer [her] passion onto others". Her parents didn´t want her to dance so she applied by herself at a dance school. Afterwards, she was dancing for six years in Teatr Tańca „Step" (Dance Theatre "Step") where she founded her own dancing group. After dancing on stage she found her passion in that field. In the year 2000 she founded the Niezależna Manufaktura Taneczna (Independent Manufacture of Dance) in Wrocław.
Within the Bridging Generations project she directed and acted in a number of theatre performances concerned about WWII.
Maya Tsamprou
Maya Tsamprou studied Graphic Design and is a graduate of the School of Film Studies, Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (MA Film Arts). She has been working in the directing group of Greek fictional and documentary films, with preference to independent collective short films, nominated in film competitions and festivals.
She works as a researcher in projects where visual media are used in a social context. She has worked in the social psychology audio-visual project 'Chronicle of a winter' for the Aristotle University and in social film experiments as a researcher and director.
She worked at the project Bridging Generations as a researcher and cinematographer and as a Life Stories and Code of Ethics Consultant for all participants.
Olga Yocheva
Olga Yocheva has been a member of Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. team for 4 years. Her responsibilities revolve around video and photo documentation. She was the main film-maker of the German narrative interviews. She also produced four short documentary movies and several trailers about the project. Olga is a freelance artist working in a variety of fields including painting, performance and video art. She has organised several solo exhibitions. Furthermore, she has also participated in many cultural projects of an international and local level. She comes from Bulgaria, where she studied art and education.
Konstantinos Vattis
Konstantinos Vattis was born in 1984 in Thessaloniki, Greece. After he finished high school he attained in 2007 a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering but Art won him over. After seminars of Restoring Monuments and preserving culture through photography Konstantinos was multi-awarded for his talent in photography. He started extending his studies into his passion becoming a director. He took part in short films and in Documentaries in Greece and Europe. He is happy to experiment with his camera underwater, with air-shots and yet more extreme and artful ways of capturing the world.
Konstantinos Vattis was the film maker and director of the recorded narrations of the seniors living in Thessaloniki on behalf of the AddArt organisation. Konstantinos worked closely with Dimitris Savvaidis and Nikolaos Tromaras for the production of these films.