Christos Varvantakis

I have a background in social anthropology and sociology and my research focuses on the intersections of childhood and public life, media and activism, politics and urban environments, as well as on qualitative, visual and multimodal research methodologies.

I currently work as co-investigator for the ERC-funded Children’s Photography Archive.

I have experience in teaching qualitative, visual and multimodal methods for sociology, anthropology, psychology and education departments at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in diverse cultural settings including Goldsmiths, Freie Universität Berlin, University of Sussex, Jawarahal Nehru University and other Universities, as well as experience in organizing and running research methods summer schools and workshops in India, Germany, Greece and the U.K. I have undertaken research in Germany, India and Greece which has resulted to several books, journal articles and public writing.

I am co-editor of the journal entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, and head of programming of the Athens Ethnographic Film Festival (Ethnofest).

I was awarded a PhD by the Freie Universität in Berlin (Excellence Cluster ‘Languages of Emotion’), having previously trained as a sociologist (BA, University of Crete) and visual anthropologist (MA, Goldsmiths College).

Publications and research outputs

Edited Book

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan, eds. 2018. Political Activism across the the Life Course. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9780815385332

Kontopodis, Michalis; Varvantakis, Christos and Wulf, Christoph, eds. 2017. Global Youth in Digital Trajectories. Abingdon, Oxford; New York, NY: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-138-23603-5

Edited Journal

Varvantakis, Christos; Rozakou, Katerina; Anastasiadi, Ifigeneia; Karathanasis, Pafsanias and Aivaliotis, Konstantinos, eds. 2019. Critical Encounters: The "European Refugee Crisis", Journal of Anthropological Films, 3(2).

Book Section

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. ‘This Parenting Lark’: Idiomatic Ways of Knowing and an Epistemology of Paying Adequate Attention. In: Francisco Martínez; Lili Di Puppo and Martin Demant Frederiksen, eds. Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-knowing and Ethnographic Limits. London: Routledge, pp. 45-60. ISBN 9781350173071

Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. Η Ακρόπολη από μακριά: Απόσταση, εγγύτητα και αφή (Acropolis from a distance: Distance, proximity and touch). In: P Petsini and Y Stathatos, eds. Φωτογραφία και συλλογικές ταυτότητες: Ελληνικές φωτογραφικές μελέτες Ι (Photography and collective identities: Greek photographic studies I). Athens: Koukkida, pp. 159-178. ISBN 9786185333928

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Children as Photographers. In: Dan Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. London: Sage. ISBN 9781473942929

Article

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2024. Touching heritage: Embodied politics in children’s photography. Visual Communication, 23(1), pp. 119-141. ISSN 1470-3572

Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. Ethnographic film at the crossroads. Allegra Lab, ISSN 2343-0168

Aruldoss, Vinnarasan; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. Thinking with Feeling: Children’s Emotional Orientations to Public Life. Childhood, 28(1), pp. 56-71. ISSN 0907-5682

Conference or Workshop Item

Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. ''Turning out and turning up: ethnographic documentary film at the crossroads' (ETHNOCINECA 2021 - Keynote lecture)'. In: Ethnocineca International Documentary Film Festival. Vienna, Austria.

Audio

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: Introduction to the Study and the Podcasts (Episode 6 of 6).

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: A Day in the Life of an Ethnographer (Episode 5 of 6).

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: How We Went About Sampling (Episode 4 of 6).

Exhibition Catalogue

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. The Child's Gaze: Introducing the Children's Photography Archive.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos; Aruldoss, Vinnarasan and Prater, Claire Juliet. 2017. In Common.

Other

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos; Aspa, Chalkidou and Apgar, Marina. 2020. to archeio/the archive project: Greek Crisis Literature database. https://toarcheio.org/.