North Aegean Stories
Contributors
The Aegean Stories Vault is the collective product of numerous people, who have contributed to it. In this page you will meet those individuals and get a sense of their roles in this endeavour. And yet, people aside, this initiative would have been impossible without the generous support of institutions, both public and private. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation endowed SFU and UCLA with funds for a three year pilot program, aimed at throwing bridges between North American academic institutions and Greece. This program, known as Gefyra was integral in helping us bring together in Molyvos academics, students, and laypersons from Canada, the US, Greece, Turkey and Germany. Without it little of what you find here would have been possible. Student participation in this project was made possible by Kickstarter Grant awarded to Dr. Krallis’ “Molyvos Connections: A Social and Cultural Geography of the North Aegean” project by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Simon Fraser University (SFU). Supplementary funding in support of this project’s research angle, was provided by the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at SFU. The entire team of the Aegean Stories Vault is grateful for this essential support.
Dimitris Krallis was born in Athens where he lived during his childhood, teenage, and college years. At the University of Athens he studied political theory and at Oxford he took a liking for Byzantine social and political history. After four years dedicated to military service and to teaching at the American College of Greece in Athens, he moved to the US and the University of Michigan for his doctorate. Upon graduation, he joined the faculty at Simon Fraser University, where he teaches at the Department of Global Humanities. With his cousin Mariza Krallis, who like him draws her origins from Molyvos, they developed and manage the Aegean Stories Vault, a digital portal dedicated to bringing the history and culture of Lesvos and the North Aegean to both academic and lay audiences.
Born in Athens, Mariza Krallis graduated from the Department of Forestry & Natural Environment of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, completing graduate studies in Landscape Architecture. After a career in garden design and construction, environmental consultancy, internal regulatory compliance supervision, and in the catering business, she now manages a tourist accommodation in Mithimna, Lesvos, where she also resides. An active member of the local community, Mariza volunteers her time to cultural and environmental activities. Since 2020, she has researched, recorded, interpreted and documented her family archive. With her cousin Dimitris she developed and manages the Aegean Stories Vault, seeking to open the history and culture of North Lesvos to wider audiences.
With origins in Turkey and a doctorate from UC San Diego, Aytek Soner Alpan is a historian whose research concentrates primarily on modern Greece and Turkey, particularly on the experience of the 1923 Greco-Turkish population exchange. His book project entitled Trajectories of Displacement: A Comparative Historical Analysis of the 1923 Greco-Turkish Population Exchange offers a broad and long-term analysis of the Greco-Turkish population exchange with an emphasis on the refugee experience. Since the fall of 2024 Aytek has been working closely with Dimitris and Mariza Krallis to develop the Aegean Stories Vault. Fluent in both Greek and Turkish he provides Ottoman history and language expertise essential to this project.
Maria Mandamadiotou hails from Lesvos and completed her doctoral studies in History at the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King’s College London. Her research interests concern insular areas of the Mediterranean and the Aegean, and specifically its northeastern region, with an emphasis on how island populations are connected to the different nationalisms of the Eastern Mediterranean during the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2013 her book titled The Greek Orthodox Community of Mytilene: Between the Ottoman Empire and the Greek State, 1876-1912 was published by Peter Lang. Maria is an advisor, collaborator and content creator for the Aegean Stories Vault, where her deep knowledge of the history of the island provides essential depth and expertise.
Aneurin Ellis-Evans is a historian of the Greek world in antiquity who teaches Greek and Roman history at University College, Oxford. He first encountered the island of Lesbos while working on an inscription from Eresos during his master’s in Greek history at Oxford. His doctoral thesis on the history of Lesbos eventually became a study of both its own history and its relationship with the mainland opposite. It was published as The Kingdom of Priam: Lesbos and the Troad between Anatolia and the Aegean (2019). He continues to work on the history of the interface between the east Aegean and western Anatolia in antiquity, as may be seen in his second book, Alexandreia Troas in the Hellenistic Period: War, Finance, and Civic Identity (2025). For the Aegean Stories Vault he has contributed the narrative on the history of Lesbos in antiquity.
Christina Sgouromiti is a Faculty Member at the Athens School of Fine Arts, in the Department of Visual Arts and holds a PhD in Art Theory and History from the Athens School of Fine Arts and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of the Aegean. Her research focuses on artists’ communities from the turn of the century until 1960, in Southeastern Europe (2016, Cum Laude). After graduating with a BA Hons in Painting (2002), she completed the MA course in Drawing at Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts, London (2004). Since 2007 she has exhibited her work in numerous solo and collective shows and presentations, both in Greece and abroad.
Soloup (Antonis Nikolopoulos) is a well known caricaturist who collaborates with established newspapers and magazines in Greece. He studied Political Sciences at the Panteion University and obtained a PhD (Cultural Technology and Communication) by the University of the Aegean. He has published 13 books with comics and cartoons and his Phd on History of comics in Greece. His first graphic novel Aivali received the prize for the best comic and best scenario in 2015 Comicdom Athens. It is translated in French and Turkish and it is the first graphic novel to become the subject of a Benaki Museum exhibition that travelled all over Greece. Soloup was artist in resident at SFU under the auspices of Gefyra in the fall of 2025. While in Vancouver, he worked on archival materials from Molyvos in preparation of a Lesvos-centred graphic novel.
Born and raised in Greece, Yannis Tentzeris is a Byzantinist whose academic training began in Thessaloniki, a city long regarded as one of the great centres of Byzantine culture and heritage. He completed his undergraduate studies in Archaeology and History of Art, followed by an MA in Byzantine Art and Archaeology, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is presently pursuing his PhD in Art History at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on the representation of the Passion of Christ in Byzantine wall painting, with particular emphasis on the Late Byzantine period (1261–1453). He joined the Aegean Stories Vault team in February 2026, contributing to the research and documentation of postcards from the Krallis family archive.
Born and raised in Manhattan, Ethan Schmidt is a Byzantinist, writer, and lover of books. With undergraduate studies in Medieval History at the University of St. Andrews, and an MSc in Late Antique, Byzantine, and Islamic Studies from the University of Edinburgh, he presently works on his doctorate in Byzantine History and Literature at Simon Fraser University. His research is concerned with the construction of imaginary worlds, or the evocation of lost worlds, in the literature and historiography of the long twelfth century (c.1080–c.1217), with a particular focus on the descriptive technique of ekphrasis. He joined the Aegean Stories Vault team in Lesvos in June 2024 and contributes reflections on the island’s nature and culture, but also creative writing inspired by the island’s deep history.
Nina Houle hails from Vancouver where she still lives on unceded Coast Salish territory. She is currently writing an MA thesis on depictions of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Mediterranean at large, within contemporary tabletop games. She began researching historical reception in tabletop games as an undergraduate, while completing the History Honors program at SFU. A lifelong lover of Greek history and culture, she is working towards a career as a reference librarian, assisting students and researchers in Hellenic Studies, archaeology, and other related subjects. As an aspiring librarian, Nina also worked at the SFU library organizing the McDonald Hellenic Collection. Nina joined the Aegean Stories Vault team when she visited Lesvos in June 2024. She has contributed reflections on the island’s Byzantine past.
Of Slovak and French-Canadian origins, Sam Adam lives in Vancouver and studies in the Department of Global Humanities where he encountered the Aegean Stories Vault at its inception, while talking to Dimitris Krallis on the sidelines of a Byzantine history class. Interested in the history of education during the time of the Medieval Roman polity, he has presented a paper on the subject at a recent conference in Sacramento and is studying classical Greek as he prepares for the next stage of his studies at the MA level. Along with Nina and Ethan, Sam joined the Aegean Stories Vault team in Molyvos in June 2024 and contributed entries on Greek education between nation and empire in late Ottoman Lesvos.
Emrecan Çelik completed his undergraduate studies in the Department of History at Middle East Technical University and was recently accepted to the M.A. Program in Ottoman History at the University of Crete, where he will continue his graduate studies. His academic interests lie in Ottoman social and economic history, especially questions related to markets, institutions, urban life, and forms of regulation in the Ottoman Empire. He joined the Aegean Stories Vault through his interest in Ottoman archival material and the history of the North Aegean. Here he reads, transliterates, and contextualizes the KFL’s Ottoman documents, while continuing to develop his broader interest in the social and economic worlds of the Ottoman Empire.
Gregory Tsolakis is a videographer and motion design artist from Greece, currently living and working in Thessaloniki. With over a decade of experience in photography, documentary filmmaking, and commercial video production, he brings both creativity and technical precision to every project. He thrives on learning through hands-on work and is passionate about visual storytelling and dynamic motion graphics. Each project is an opportunity for him to explore new ideas, push creative boundaries, and grow as an artist. Gregory has been a long-time collaborator of the New Media Lab at SFU’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies and joined the Aegean Stories Vault team early on.
AEGEAN STORIES VAULT
North Aegean Stories
- Achliptarouda
- Administrative Continuities
- Allilodiplografia
- Barbarossa
- Daphnis and Chloe
- Dowry Contract & Residence Permit
- Education in the Ottoman Archives
- Egyptian Photo Parlours
- Egyptian stories
- Eleftheriadis: Paris/London
- E. Schmidt on Painted Houses
- Figures from Byzantine Lesvos
- Global Fashions
- Lomemili and Genoese trade
- Conze and Humann in Molyvos
- Nature in Lesvos
- C. T. Newton in Mytilene
- Ottoman Yearbooks
- Postcards
- Smyrna Photo Parlours
- S. Adam on Education in Lesvos
- Seismic Shifts
- Thinking about the state
- War Trauma
- Seals, Authentication and Identity
- A Medical Diploma and a world of connections
- The Vampire of Mytilene
- Women and Memory in Molyvos
Historial Background
Art Creation in Place
- Dimitris Krallis
- Mariza Krallis
- Aytek Soner Alpan
- Maria Mandamadiotou
- Aneurin Ellis-Evans
- Christina Sgouromiti
- Soloup (Antonis Nikolopoulos)
- Yannis Tentzeris
- Ethan Schmidt
- Nina Houle
- Sam Adam
- Emrecan Çelik
- Gregory Tsolakis
This project was supported by an SFU FASS Kickstarter Grant, by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at SFU and by Gefyra, an SNF-funded collaboration between SFU and UCLA.
SUPPORTED BY
