IIHSA - CAI Website

The Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens (IIHSA) was founded in 1995 and formally recognised by the Greek Ministry of Culture in 1996. In Ireland it is a company limited by guarantee with charity status (CHY 13738).
The core aims of the Institute are:

• to establish a distinctive Irish voice in the study of Greece and its culture from earliest times to the present day.
• to promote the mutual understanding of Greek and Irish culture through lectures and other events
• to maintain a permanent office and staff in Athens
• to develop research and study programmes, publications, and ongoing archaeological fieldwork.

The Irish Institute of Hellenic Studies at Athens is a collaboration of the following Irish Universities:
University College Cork
NUI Galway
University College Dublin
NUI Maynooth
Trinity College Dublin


LATEST NEWS 2021
Dear Friends and Colleagues,

You are invited to an IIHSA Online Lecture on Thursday 29th April at 5pm (Irish time)/ 7pm (Greek time) by Dr Alan Peatfield (University College Dublin) entitled "The Petsofas Peak Sanctuary: A Prelude".
The peak sanctuary of Petsofas in East Crete was the first Minoan peak sanctuary to be investigated in 1903 by John Myres. Rightly or wrongly Petsofas became the definitive site by which all other peak sanctuaries are compared or contrasted. As a consequence Petsofas seems to be the peak sanctuary about which we know most. We are discovering however, that this familiar site is unexpectedly enigmatic.
In 1971 and 1976 Costis Davaras himself excavated Petsofas as part of a programme of explorations of the peak santuaries in East Crete. The material from all of Davaras's excavations is now the heart of the East Crete Peak Sanctuaries Project wherein Christine Morris and I are committed to bring all this material to publication. As we complete the writing of Prinius, we have turned to Petsofas. In the past two years we have gathered and organised the material in preparation for a major study. Even with this preliminary work we have realised that Petsofas is a richer and more complex state than previously realised. It is this glimpsed complexity that we propose to share with you in this lecture.

Please register via Eventbrite and you will receive the Zoom link to attend the lecture nearer the time: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/annual-open-lecture-of-the-irish-institute-tickets-148732269221

Email:irishinstitutegr@gmail.com
Phone: (+30) 210-8848074


You are invited to an IIHSA Online Lecture on Thursday 15th February at 5pm (Irish time)/ 7pm (Greek time) by Dr Ellen Finn (Leverhulme Postdoctoral Study Abroad Fellow) entitled "Losing liminality: Turner’s theory of transition in the funerary archaeology of Prepalatial Crete".

From education to performance studies, geography to psychology, there are few disciplines which have yet to embrace ‘liminality’ in interpretative discussion, defined by Victor Turner as a precarious, interstructural position in social dynamics, frequently associated with pollution and taboo. Over fifty years since Turner’s development of the concept, this paper argues that the popularity of ‘liminality’ in archaeology has led to its interpretative depreciation, now so far removed from its theoretical origins that it has become an unhelpful synonym for all that is unfamiliar or anomalous, rather than the transitory process of becoming Turner proposed. Through the discussion of the Prepalatial tombs of Crete, it is illustrated that the uncritical invocation of the ‘liminal’ hinders the investigation of other interpretative lines of inquiry: questions of marginality, exceptionality, and the impact of our own unfamiliarity with bodily decomposition on our perception of the past. By highlighting the continued influence of the liminal – despite contradictory archaeological data – on our understanding of prehistoric practices and beliefs, it is argued that liminality cannot continue to be accepted either as a universally applicable concept or convenient metaphor, but must instead be recognised and critically evaluated as a fundamentally theoretical model.

Please register via Eventbrite and you will receive the Zoom link to attend the lecture nearer the time: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/iihsa-online-lecture-ellen-finn-tickets-136585467811

Dr Anna Moles
Assistant Director
IRISH INSTITUTE OF HELLENIC STUDIES AT ATHENS
Notara 51a, Athens 10683, Greece
irishinstitutegr@gmail.com
Phone: (+30) 210-8848074


NEWS 2019
The 2019 Newsletter is available at http://www.iihsa.ie/IIHSA%20Newsletter%202019min.pdf

Further information concerning happenings at Athens can be found at https://www.athensinsider.com

A major conference, which was cancelled because of Covid-19, will now take place online on 22nd September, 29th September and 6th October, details available at Scapecon2020.sciencesconf.org
This online conference is organised by the Universities of Groningen and Leiden and it concerns the study of the Aegean Bronze Age