Glimpses of the 2019 Harvard Summer Program in Greece

On the 4th of August 2019 we bade farewell to the students of another successful Harvard Summer Program in Greece. Divided between the seaside town of Nafplio and the historical city of Thessaloniki, with intermediate stops in Olympia and Athens, Harvard Summer Program in Greece has proven to be the oldest and one of the most successful Harvard study-abroad programs. In fact, summer 2019 marked its eighteenth anniversary of continuous annual iterations since 2002. Harvard Summer Program in Greece is supported logistically and administratively by the Center for Hellenic Studies in Greece.
For five weeks students of the program stayed in Greece and attended intensive seminars from the field of Humanities that focused on the theme  “Migrations and Boundaries: Reconceptualizing Mobility in the Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond”, studying historical phenomena from antiquity to the present. At the same time, they visited prominent sites of archaeological and historical importance, thus enriching their first-hand experience from staying in Greece. During the last week of the program, students composed their final paper based on the knowledge, lived experiences, and stimulations they gained from the previous four weeks, combined with their personal research interests.
This year’s team consisted of eleven undergraduates from Harvard, one from Harvard Extension School, one from Pittsburgh University, two from Fudan University and two from Patras University, as well as nine program faculty members. Moreover, as in the past, the program’s participants were joined by two faculty members of Greek universities, who served as 2019 CHS-CCS Fellows, participating in all the activities of the third and fourth week of the program, after having been awarded fellowships by the Center; Katerina Panagopoulou, Assistant Professor of Ancient History at the University of Crete, and Victoria Ferentinou, Assistant Professor of Art Theory at the University of Ioannina, were this year’s fellows. Additionally, Harvard Summer Program in Greece 2019 welcomed three more guest professors who gave one lecture each with regard to the course’s topics.
The following video offers a few glimpses of the 2019 summer program’s participants and activities:

Like in the past, apart from the research fellowships for the two Greek universities faculty members, the Center for Hellenic Studies granted three scholarships to the two Fudan undergraduates and one of the two Patras University undergraduates; thus enhancing further the multicultural structure of the group –i.e. students from different countries and with different academic backgrounds- , which reflects the uniqueness of Harvard Summer Program in Greece and builds up its intercultural focus.

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