Christos Varvantakis

Staff details

Position Research fellow
Department Sociology
Email c.varvantakis (@gold.ac.uk)
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

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2020. Children as Photographers. In: Daniel Thomas Cook, ed. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE Publications, pp. 406-408. ISBN 9781473942929

Dafermos, Manolis; Triliva, Sofia and Varvantakis, Christos. 2017. Youth tubing the Greek crisis: a cultural-historical perspective. In: Michalis Kontopodis; Christos Varvantakis and Christoph Wulf, eds. Global Youth in Digital Trajectories. Abingdon, Oxford; New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 69-95. ISBN 978-1-138-23603-5

Article

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2021. Touching heritage: Embodied politics in children’s photography. Visual Communication, 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

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2021. A ‘love song and lament’: walking the pandemic city with a spray can. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 4(1), pp. 1-9. ISSN 2516-5860

Pia, Andrea; Batterbury, Simon; Joniak-Lüthi, Agnieszka; LaFlamme, Marcel; Wielander, Gerda; Zerilli, Filippo M.; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Schubert, Jon; Loubere, Nicholas; Franceschini, Ivan; Walsh, Casey; Mora, Agathe and Varvantakis, Christos. 2020. Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, Integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences. The Commonplace,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2020. Can you hear me? entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 3(1), pp. 1-6. ISSN 2516-5860

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos; Chalkidou, Aspa; Corble, Alice Rose and Apgar, Marina. 2020. Unpacking and undoing ‘the crisis’: database activism for strange times. Discover Society, 80,

Varvantakis, Christos; Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2019. Photography, Politics and Childhood: Exploring children’s multimodal relations with the public sphere. Visual Studies, 34(3), pp. 266-280. ISSN 1472-586X

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Editorial. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 2(2), pp. 1-6. ISSN 2516-5860

Varvantakis, Christos; Rozakou, Katerina; Anastasiadi, Ifigeneia; Karathanasis, Pafsanias and Aivaliotis, Konstantinos. 2019. Editorial (Critical Encounters: The "European" Refugee Crisis). Journal of Anthropological Films, 3(2), e2902.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Fieldnotes for Amateurs. Social Analysis, 63(3), pp. 130-148. ISSN 0155-977X

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Aruldoss, Vinnarasan and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Learning to listen: exploring the idioms of childhood. Sociological Research Online, 24(3), pp. 394-413. ISSN 1360-7804

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2019. Another review process is possible. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 2(1), pp. 1-5.

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2019. Metaphors we experiment with in multimodal ethnography. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22(4), pp. 365-378. ISSN 1364-5579

Varvantakis, Christos; Dragonas, Thalia; Askouni, Nelly and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2018. Grounding Childhood (Trans)National Identities in the Everyday. Children & Society, 33(1), pp. 68-81. ISSN 0951-0605

Varvantakis, Christos and Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa. 2018. Multimodal ethnographies between curation and experimentation. entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 1(2), pp. 24-29.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2018. Νήμα στο χρόνο: πολιτικά βιώματα, μνήμη και βιογραφία (A yarn in time: political experiences, memory and biography). marginalia, 05,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2018. Entanglements that matter (Editorial). entanglements: experiments in multimodal ethnography, 1(1), pp. 1-4.

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Political activism across the life course. Contemporary Social Science, 12(1-2), pp. 1-12. ISSN 2158-2041

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Talking politics in everyday family lives. Contemporary Social Science, 12(1-2), pp. 68-83. ISSN 2158-2041

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2017. Children of the financial crisis. Discover Society, 44,

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Maglajlic, Reima; Zlotowitz, Sally and Varvantakis, Christos. 2016. The ‘refugee crisis’: social psychology, public engagement and social action. Social Psychology Review, 18(1), pp. 18-23. ISSN 1369-7862

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2016. (Im)possible conversations? activism, childhood and everyday life. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 4(1), pp. 252-265.

Triliva, Sofia; Varvantakis, Christos and Dafermos, Manolis. 2014. YouTube, young people, and the socioeconomic crises in Greece. Information, Communication & Society, 18(4), pp. 407-423. ISSN 1369-118X

Varvantakis, Christos. 2009. A monument to dismantlement. Memory Studies, 2(1), pp. 27-38. ISSN 1750-6980

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).

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: The Historical Contingency of the Research and Our Responses to It (Episode 3 of 6).

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa; Varvantakis, Christos and Aruldoss, Vinnarasan. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: Doing Ethnography in Three Cities, What We Learnt and How it Changed Us (Episode 2 of 6).

Nolas, Sevasti-Melissa and Varvantakis, Christos. 2018. ERC Connectors Study Podcast Series: Introduction to the Study and the Podcasts (Episode 1 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/.

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