"Curating Africa in a Greek Museum" with Dr. Sophia Handaka, Benaki Museum

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present Dr. Sophia Handaka, Benaki Museum, Athens!

Join us Friday, March 20th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 2020, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86280173584), for her talk “Curating Africa in a Greek Museum: Identity, Representation, and the Politics of Display”.

This talk will be moderated by Dr. Eirini Kotsovili, Senior Lecturer, Department of Global Humanities.

Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded.

This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the
Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).

ABSTRACT

Drawing from the Benaki Museum’s collection of African art, the participatory exhibition Africa Amongst Us* unfolded at the intersection of visibility and absence, Greekness and Blackness, and the complexities of belonging and representation. The project engaged not only with historical narratives of Africa, but also with the political urgency of the present, foregrounding Afrodiasporic presence in contemporary Athenian society.

This talk reflects on this long-term project as an ongoing curatorial and ethical process, shaped by collaboration, co-design, and forms of co-authorship developed through working with communities. It approaches identity as something continually negotiated within the museum space—between curators, participants, objects, and audiences—while examining how African cultures are mediated within a Greek institutional framework and how museums operate as civic spaces where dialogue, knowledge, and social presence are continually reconfigured.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Sophia Handaka is Curator of World Cultures at the Benaki Museum in Athens and Co-Founder and Host of the CoMuseum International Conference. In both roles, she advances human-centred cultural practice and values-based leadership, positioning museums as key drivers of social transformation and a more sustainable future. Sophia holds a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford and has over twenty-five years of professional experience in culture, heritage, and museums. Her work spans exhibitions, publications, public programmes, research projects, partnerships, consultancy, public talks and university teaching. She is a member of the Hellenic U.S. Alumni, and Bosch Alumni networks, as well as Culture for Change, and a 2019 Fellow of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program. In 2023, she co-authored a policy study on Greece’s cultural and creative sector focusing on social impact (for diaNEOsis). Her recent exhibition (Benaki Museum, 2025) was widely recognised for its democratic and participatory approach.

MODERATOR BIOGRAPHY

Eirini D. Kotsovili studied History, Hispanic studies at McGill University (B.A) and Literature at University of Oxford (M.St, D.Phil), where she was also Junior Dean (Somerville College). At SFU, she is a Committee member of the Stavros Niarchos Centre for Hellenic Studies, the Institute for the Humanities, as well as an Associate member of the Department of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies and the Department of World Languages and Literatures. She leads the Memory and Trauma research cluster, together with Dr. Capperdoni and Dr. Horncastle (HUM Dept) and serves as an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Modern Hellenism. Her research and teaching interests revolve around the notions of gender and identity, Modern Greece (comparative/transnational approach) and contemporary cultural production reflecting on the relation between past and present within various socio-political contexts.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies