Evaluating our work - Workshop, October 15-16, 2010

After spending the summer with recording interviews it was time to gather together, share our experience and evaluate the project in general. So it was decided to organize a workshop to the project "Sixty Years After. Memory of Greek Civil War Refugees in Czechoslovakia". The event was held at the Faculty of Social Sciences from October 15^th to 16^th. Overall there were nineteen speakers, both students and academicians that presented their work. But we had quite a lot of public audience as well. And I cannot forget to mention that we had the honor to have as a guest His Excellence Greek Ambassador, Mr. Konstantinos Kokossis, who is following our project from the very start and shows real interest in our research. We also had the pleasure to welcome two research scholars from University of Macedonia, Eleni Paschaloudi, Ph.D. and Giorgios Antoniou, Ph.D.

The workshop was opened by a speech that gave PhDr. Michal Kubát and also Mr. Ambassador welcomed all of the participants. Opening panel session, which was chaired by Mgr. Lenka Kopřivová (Memory of Nation) focused on narrations of Greek refugees. First spoke the coordinator of the project, Mrs. Kateřina Králová, Ph.D., who presented the aims and the structure of our project and summarized the basic facts about Greek community in the Czech Republic. Next panelists were PhDr. Ondřej Vojtěchovský from the Faculty of Arts, PhDr. Konstantin Tsivos, the Chair of Neogrezistik, and Mgr. Georgia Sarikoudi from the Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, who spoke about her anthropologic experience with narrators in Greece and reading aloud parts of her research diary she worked on in the Czech Republic. After the coffee break the first student session followed. Vladimír Kadlec, Jan Procházka, Yiannis Koreček and Paulia Dobosz spoke about their interviews and shared with us sometimes funny and sometimes sad stories. It was great to hear about other narrators and see how the rest of the students handled the interviews. Mrs. Králová and Mr. Antoniou commented on student’s presentations and by that closed the first part of our workshop. After hard work we rewarded ourselves with a dinner.

Saturday´s programme predicted a long day. We opened with the second student session. First speaker was Karin Hoffmeistrová, followed by Tereza Vorlová, continued by Martina Macáková and last but not least presented her narrators Lucie Kadlecová. The moderator of this panel was Mr. Tsivos and comments were given by Mrs. Paschaloudi who pointed out the good work that the whole team has done so far. After a coffee break a methodological session followed. Mrs. Paschaloudi spoke about her research on migration and Greek civil war refugees and Mr. Antoniou gave really interesting speech about memory and the Greek civil war. Very inspiring was also the contribution of Bubulina Sopanosová who talked about traditions and identifications of Greek refugees in the Czech Republic. Two sessions behind us it was the right time for lunch, which was served in nearby restaurant. We can confirm that our Greek guests enjoyed Czech cuisine represented by fried cheese and svíčková na smetaně (typical cream sauce with meat served with dumplings).

Back from lunch we sit down for the last time. At the round table participated Mrs. Paschaloudi, Mrs. Králová, Mr. Tsivos, Mr. Antoniou and our special guest Prof. Růžena Dostálová as a chair. It was time for evaluation of the past two days as well as of the project overall. All the comments were positive and new future propositions were made. It has been decided that we will publish our papers in a book and we may be invited to an international conference in Thessaloniki next autumn. So we have a lot to work on.

Martina Macáková