Markou AIkaterini

Aikaterini Markou is Professor in Social and Historical Anthropology of   the Balkan Space at the Department of Humanities of Democritus University of Thrace. She studied in Panteion University and she is a graduate of the Department of Political Science. She completed her postgraduate studies at the University of Paris Χ-Nanterre and she specialized in Contemporary Social Sciences: Sociology, Anthropology, and History. In 2001 she received her PhD in Social and Historical Anthropology, at École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, in Paris. She attended seminars in the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asia Studies (CETOBAC) and at the same time she attended seminars in the field of Bulgarian Studies at the National Institute of Eastern Languages and Cultures (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales – INALCO) in Paris. She initially taught at the Department of Sociology at the University of Crete and, since 2012, she has been teaching at the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Thrace. She has collaborated with the National Centre of Social Research (Greece), with École Française d’Athènes (EFA) and she has participated in several research projects with the most recent one on the “Development of an Innovative System of Augmented Reality with Application to the Promotion of Cultural Heritage (Innovative Cultural Experience)” in collaboration with the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In 2013 she organized a two-day conference entitled: Religious Tradition, Social and Political Aspects of Bektashism-Alevism in the Context of Contemporary Muslim world, in Komotini. In 2018 she organized an international conference entitled: Aspects of the Balkan Cities from 1990 to the Present: Space and People, Culture and Tourism, in Komotini. In 2022 she co-organized (with P. Androudis and D. Loupia) the international conference entitled: The Ottoman Monuments in Greece Revisited. A Tribute to Machiel Kiel. Her research interests include historical-social anthropology and ethnology of the Balkans and more specifically the methodology questions of the ethnographic research, oral history and memory issues, ethnic identities and borders in the Balkans, and even more specifically politics and management of cultural heritage, anthropology of tourism and anthropological approaches on environmental issues. She has published numerous articles and studies in magazines, collective volumes, seminar records and she has participated in conferences both in Greece and abroad. From 2025, she is Director of the Interdepartmental Postgraduate Program in Local History, Culture and Architectural Heritage Protection: Interdisciplinary Approaches and Digital Applications.