Goldsmiths seals landmark Crete partnership to transform support for LGBTQIA+ communities

Goldsmiths has signed a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Hellenic Mediterranean University in Crete in a move expected to significantly improve the way LGBTQIA+ people in Greece – and especially in Crete – experience health and social care services.

The agreement builds directly on the research and policy work of Dr Panagiotis Pentaris, whose studies on discrimination, legislative reform and professional training have already helped shape path‑breaking Greek legislation recognising LGBTQ+ families and have informed major national training programmes for social workers and other frontline professionals. 

Under the new MOU, Dr Pentaris will lead a programme of LGBTQ+ affirmative training for social workers and local authority officials in Crete – professionals involved in adoption, fostering, domestic abuse cases and wider social care for LGBTQIA+ individuals and families. The training is underpinned by a fully designed randomized control trial (RCT) to rigorously test its impact and build the evidence needed for long‑term systemic change. 

“Global data tells us that more than 75% of LGBTQ+ people experience discrimination at the hands of health and social care professionals,” said Dr Pentaris, from Goldsmiths’ School of Mind, Body and Society.

From legislative change to front‑line practice 

Dr Pentaris’ earlier research in Greece — including quantitative projects on political ideologies, religious fundamentalism and predictors of discriminatory behaviour — informed the recent legislative changes cementing legal rights for LGBTQIA+ individuals and families. That work then developed under major funding from the Bodosakis Foundation and EU partners under the PREVENT project, resulting in the training of around 800 professionals across Greece.   

Participants included social workers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, police officers and teachers, all trained in LGBTQ+ affirmative practice using a two‑phase model developed from his research. 

A proof‑of‑concept study focused on 66 school social workers in Crete, funded by the Greek Ministry of Education, demonstrated that this training model was both feasible and effective. That study — now written up and under journal review — laid the groundwork for the more ambitious RCT that will now be delivered under the new MOU. 

“We are moving from one‑off, goodwill training sessions to gold‑standard evidence,” Dr Panagiotis explained. “The randomized control trial allows us to show, with real rigor, how affirmative training changes professional behaviour and, crucially, how it changes the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people using services over time. That evidence is what convinces ministries and regional governments to ring‑fence and increase funding for this work.” 

The RCT will not only compare trained and untrained groups of professionals; it will also follow up directly with LGBTQ+ service users over the longer term, collecting their perspectives on how they are treated after staff have been through the training.   

 “We are centring the voices of people with lived experience,” he said. “Their feedback, months and years after the training, is built into the design. That makes this more than a pedagogical exercise – it makes it a mechanism for accountability.” 

Tackling discrimination in a conservative context 

Dr Pentaris is candid about the conservative social and political context in Greece, where deeply rooted religious and cultural norms have long shaped attitudes to LGBTQIA+ people and families. 

“Human rights for racially marginalised people, for disabled people, for trans people, for LGBTQIA+ communities are very recent — in the UK as well as in Greece,” he noted. “Most of today’s teachers, social workers and health professionals were trained in systems that either ignored LGBTQIA+ lives or framed them negatively. You cannot expect inclusive practice to emerge spontaneously from a curriculum that never prepared people for it.” 

His training model therefore focuses not just on knowledge, but on developing understanding and self‑reflection, addressing microaggressions, unconscious biases and ‘unintended harm’. 

“The aim is not to shame professionals, but to create enough self‑forgiveness that they can admit what they don’t know and start learning,” he said. “When everyone believes they are already an expert, there is no space left to grow – and LGBTQIA+ communities end up paying the price.” 

A win for Goldsmiths students and staff 

While the immediate beneficiaries are LGBTQIA+ communities in Crete and across Greece, the MOU also carries significant advantages for Goldsmiths’ students and academics, particularly in social work, community studies and youth work. 

The agreement is deliberately broad, creating a framework for:

• Student exchanges and placements, allowing Goldsmiths’ students to work on community projects and practice‑based modules in Crete, and vice versa   
• PhD fieldwork and co‑supervision, with Dr Pentaris already co‑supervising two PhD students at the Hellenic Mediterranean University and leading a working group of doctoral researchers in Greece   
• Staff exchanges, enabling academics from both institutions to spend concentrated periods working together on research and teaching   
• Joint funding bids and regional events, including small but strategic grants via the European Association of Schools of Social Work, on whose executive board Dr Pentaris serves.   

“Social work is an applied social science – our job is to prepare students to respond to the realities in front of them,” Dr Pentaris said. “But those realities are no longer purely ‘local’. Every classroom, every case load is shaped by migration, global inequality, digital culture, transnational politics and mobile communities. A partnership like this gives our students the chance to understand what practice looks like in a different system and then bring that insight back to their work in the UK.” 

He argues that for UK‑based social work students, exposure to overseas practice contexts is no longer a luxury, but a necessity. “If we keep our teaching confined to a narrow national frame, we are under‑preparing social workers for the world they will actually encounter,” he said. “Working with colleagues in Crete means our students can see how issues like gender‑based violence, LGBTQ+ rights, poverty and migration are tackled in another European context – and then critically reflect on what that means for practice in London, Leeds or Luton.” 

Beyond Crete: shaping global practice 

The work emerging from this collaboration will also feed into national and international practice guidance. Dr Pentaris has been commissioned by the Hellenic Association of Social Workers to write a national practice guide for social workers in Greece, drawing directly on his research and training programmes. Once approved, it will become a regulatory guide for practice across the country. 

In parallel, he is collaborating with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) in Geneva and Greece on a guide for doctors, nurses and health professionals working with gender and sexually diverse people, again building on the same body of evidence and training design. 

“The MOU gives us a formal structure to connect all these strands,” he said. “From local authority practice in Crete to international NGOs, from undergraduate teaching in New Cross to national guidance in Athens, the goal is the same: to ensure LGBTQIA+ people are treated with dignity, competence and care wherever they turn for support.”