In our final episode of season 4, we speak to Dr. Yannis Hamilakis, Joukowsky Family Professor of Archaeology and Professor of Modern Greek Studies at Brown University. Dr. Hamilakis has published extensively across a number of related topics, including the socio-politics of the past, memory and bodily senses, the ontology and materiality of photography, archaeology and nationalism, the archaeology of contemporary migration, and critical pedagogy in archaeology. He has led fieldwork and ethnography projects on the prehistoric to modern Aegean, including the Koutroulou Magoula Archaeology and Archaeological Ethnography Project, which conducts excavation at the Middle Neolithic tell site in central Greece. This project also includes a number of ethnographic and artistic components, including a theatre-archaeology program (discussed in the episode–you can find a video on the project below). Since 2016, he has also directed a field project on the archaeology of contemporary migration on the Aegean island of Lesvos. Dr. Hamilakis was recently awarded a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship for his upcoming project, “The Acropolis Otherwise: Undoing Monumental Racecraft,” which builds on his ongoing research on the Athenian Acropolis with the Other Acropolis Collective.
Listen in, as Dr. Yannis Hamilakis discusses the politics of the past and the critical and ethical pathways forward for archaeology and teaching in the face of hypernationalism and genocide.
Interested in more information? Check out these publications from Dr. Hamilakis.
Hamilakis, Y. 2004. “Archaeology and the Politics of Pedagogy.” World Archaeology 36(2): 287–309.
Hamilakis, Y. 2007. The Nation and its Ruins: Archaeology, Antiquity and National Imagination in Modern Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hamilakis, Y. 2008. “Decolonizing Greek archaeology: indigenous archaeologies, modernist archaeology, and the post-colonial critique.” In A Singular Antiquity, edited by D. Damaskos and D. Plantzos, 273–84. Athens: The Benaki Museum.
Hamilakis, Y. 2013. Archaeologies and the Senses: Human Experience, Memory, and Affect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hamilakis, Yannis. 2025. “‘Palestine Is Our Working Condition’: Border Pedagogy, Materiality, and the Corporate University.” Archaeological Dialogues 1–8.
Hamilakis, Y. and Ifantidis, F. 2016. Camera, Calaureia: An Archaeological Photo-ethnography. Oxford: Archaeopress.
Greenberg, R. & Hamilakis, Y. 2022. Archaeology, Nation, and Race: Confronting the Past, Decolonizing the Future in Greece and Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Looking for a transcript of this episode? Click here.
Academic Publications
Blouin, K, and B. Akrigg, eds. 2024 The Handbook of Classics and Postcolonial Theory. London: Routledge.
Herzfeld, Michael. 2002. “The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-Colonialism.” South Atlantic Quarterly 101(4): 899–926.
la paperson. 2017. A Third University Is Possible. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.
Niklasson, E., ed. 2023. Polarized Pasts: Heritage and Belonging in Times of Political Polarization. New York: Berghahn Books.
Smith, L. T. 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. New York, Martin’s Press.
Tuck, E. and K. W. Yang. 2012. “Decolonization is not a metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1(1): 1–40.
Open Access Resources
Appiah, K.A. 2016, Nov 9. “There is no Such Thing as Western Civilization.” The Guardian.
Peopling the Past Season 4, Episode 9 – Critical Futures for Ancient Studies with Mathura Umachandran
Everyday Orientalism – In Solidarity with Palestine: A Roundtable with the Critical Ancient World Studies Collective and Everyday Orientalism; and #EOPalestine – A Primer on Ancient and Medieval Palestine
Ward, Marchella. 2023. “ReOrienting Critical Ancient World Studies.” Podcast Interview on Radio ReOrient.
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