The Athens Dialogues

Newspapers and Magazine Articles on the Athens Dialogues conference

Vicky — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 10:32:41 +0000

Read what the Press has written until now on the Athens Dialogues conference:

The Athens Dialogues Conference Booklet

Vicky — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 09:39:45 +0000

Download the Athens Dialogues Conference Booklet [pdf]

Athens Dialogues Conference Assessment

Vicky — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:42:23 +0000

The Athens Dialogues, the international interdisciplinary symposium which concluded on Saturday November 27, was a great success. Staged by the Onassis Foundation, the conference was the opening event of the Onassis Cultural Centre, the new cultural space which is to be officially inaugurated in early December.

The Athens Dialogues were held on November 24-27 and brought leading academics, researchers and intellectuals to Greece from around the world to engage in an open, public, multifaceted and creative dialogue on the ways in which Greek thought can contribute to the solution of the problems facing contemporary humanity, and on the place of Greek civilization in the societies of today. The Dialogues were conceived of and implemented as an interdisciplinary and diachronic event, which is how 80 distinguished speakers came to discuss a host of questions from different academic perspectives, and to come up with answers relating to contemporary problems like democracy and governance, identity and difference, quality of life, science and ethics, word and art, stories and histories.

The symposium was attended by over 1,700 people at the Onassis Cultural Centre itself, while another 11,000 watched proceedings unfold online as individuals users. The conference’s live Web-link was visited 55,000 times over the four days, while the event was also relayed over the Internet in real time to 50 universities, museums and other venues around the world, from Mexico and Vancouver to Paris and the most far-flung corners of Greece.

Furthermore, over 1,500 written questions were received from the public—real and virtual—via e-mail, facebook and twitter, a significant number of which reached the section chairs, who incorporated them into the dialogues. The questions that remain unanswered will be posted online and addressed in the ongoing electronic dialogue.

During the symposium’s opening session, the President of the Organizing Committee, Professor George Babiniotis, explained just how innovative the Onassis Foundation had been in organizing a conference of this sort, and how important its fresh and interdisciplinary approach to the most pressing issues of contemporary humanity is as a means of transcending the fragmentation of knowledge which is now the norm.

The closing session attempted a synthetic evaluation of the issues posed during the conference, with a constructive dialogue between the chairpersons of the thematic sections which also featured the participation of the celebrated philosopher and intellectual, Simon Critchley, on the prospects opening up for the future.

As the President of the Onassis Foundation, Dr Anthony S. Papadimitriou, whose personal vision the symposium is, said in his closing address, the Athens Dialogues surpassed its organizers’ expectations and will be repeated in the future.

Dr Papadimitriou also said that: “the conference was a genuine success because it focused on the present and the future and not the past. That was the goal of the Athens Dialogues in 2010, and that will be the goal of the next Dialogues which—since as so many people have remarked, the Athens Dialogues could be called an Olympic Games for the intellect—will be held in four years’ time and focus on “Greek civilization in an open dialogue with other cultures”. This symposium succeeded, because it put the Internet to creative use, not as a source of information but as a means of networking academics involved with Greek culture, and of allowing literally thousands of people around the world to take an active part in its proceedings. Another reason we consider the Dialogues a success is that they successfully involved the different generations in an active and creative dialogue”.

Download the press release [pdf]

Live Webcast of the Conference

Vicky — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 12:02:02 +0000

The webcasting of the conference aims at allowing the dialogue to transcend the narrow spatio-temporal boundaries of the conference amphitheatre and to attain a public status with broad participation. The conference will be broadcast through an electronic platform to more than 35 collaborating Universities and Institutes in Greece and abroad. In addition, this electronic platform will allow the users to watch the conference in real time from their personal computers and to submit their questions and comments via SMS text messages or emails.

The service will be available during the days of the conference (from 24/11 to 27/11) at www.athensdialogues.org, www.sgt.gr and www.onassis.gr

Athens Dialogues Reception in London

Vicky — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:35:55 +0000

Friday 5 November 2010, London – A lunchtime reception was generously hosted by the Greek Ambassador at his residence in Upper Brook Street, London in honour of the Athens Dialogues international conference on culture and civilization and the opening of the new Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens. Over 70 high-profile guests from the UK media, academic and business institutions attended the event, where speakers included Dr. Anthony S. Papadimitriou, President of the Onassis Foundation; Dame Averil Cameron, former Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine History at Keble College, Oxford; and the writer, broadcaster and historian Bettany Hughes.

Download the photos of the event [zip]

Athens Dialogues Press Conference

Elli — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:03:23 +0000

Download the Athens Dialogues Press Kit here.
Download the Media Registration Form here.

The Winners of the EUNIC Competition

Vicky — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:15:08 +0000

Culture Past, Culture Future: European Youth Competition successfully completed! Find out who the winners are. [pdf]

AD News

Nicholas — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:15:31 +0000

The registration deadline is extended to November 10th 2010.

New York Dissemination Meeting

Vicky — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 11:39:16 +0000

The Athens Dialogues New York Meeting was held on Saturday 17th April 2010 at 10.00 am. at the Onassis Cultural Center in the Olympic Tower, 645 Fifth Avenue in New York.

The purpose of the meeting was to familiarize eminent academics from New York with The Athens Dialogues, a major international and interdisciplinary conference that is going to take place in Athens on November 24-27 and will be the inaugurating event of the Onassis Cultural Center – Athens, a new multidisciplinary cultural space with the fundamental aim of presenting, projecting and encouraging contemporary Greek culture.

The 85 scholars and scientists from the broader New York metropolitan area who attended the meeting were invited to join the broader society of scholars around the world who are engaged in the Athens Dialogues Network, exchange ideas and questions, come to Athens to attend the Conference, and in general get actively involved in this ambitious project in the future.

His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios addressed the meeting and congratulated the Onassis Foundation and co-organizers of the Athens Dialogues on their initiative. The Ambassador of Greece to the UN Anastasis Mitsialis and the Consul General of Greece in New York Ambassador Aghi Balta were among the several distinguished guests.
The agenda of the meeting included presentations of:

• The main axis of the public benefit activities of the Onassis Foundation by the President of the Foundation Mr Anthony Papadimitriou

• The Athens Dialogues conference and its thematic sessions by the President of the Organizing Committee and former Rector of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Prof. George Babiniotis,

• The organization of the Athens Dialogues, the Athens Dialogues Network, and the EUNIC competition by the academic coordinator of the conference, Dr Niki Tsironis,

• The Website of the conference and the e-journal in which the proceedings of the conference will be published by Professor Kenny Morrell from the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University.

A special highlight of the meeting was the presentation of the “Quality of Life” thematic sessions of the Athens Dialogues by the Chairs of that session, Professors Dimitri Nanopoulos and Robert Harriss. In this presentation, those attending the meeting had the opportunity to see a paradigm of interdisciplinary cooperation of eminent scholars who, inspired by the classical tradition, seek new insights into major challenges of our times.

Oxford University Meeting

Nicholas — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 18:42:43 +0000

The Oxford meeting took place at the University of Oxford on Friday 15th January 2010 at 4.00 pm.

The scope of the meeting was to provide information about the International Conference entitled “The Athens Dialogues” which is organized in collaboration with the Accademia dei Lincei, the Deutsche Archaeologisches Institut, Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the Institut de France, the Osterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Oxford University and Stanford University. The conference will be the inaugurating event of the “Onassis Cultural Center” and it will be held on 24-27 November, 2010 in Athens, Greece.

The agenda of the meeting included presentations of:

Mr Anthony Papadimitriou, President of the ASOPBF, “The ethos and directions of the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (ASOPBF)”
Dr Christos Carras, Executive Director of the OCC, “A few words about the Onassis Cultural Center (OCC)”
Professor George Babiniotis, President of the Conference Organizing Committee and former President of the University of Athens, “The Athens Dialogues Conference and its thematic sessions”
Dr Niki Tsironis, Academic coordinator of the Conference, “Initiating a dialogue between generations and across continents”
Professor Kenny Morrell, Centre for Hellenic Studies – Harvard University, “The Athens Dialogues e-journal”