Giorgos Varouxakis, Professor of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary University of London, will present the idea of the West on the occasion of his book The West: The History of an Idea. Are the West and Europe identical? Who counts as Western? Is this central concept of political thought and intellectual history currently in crisis?
Of Cretan origin, Giorgos Varouxakis studied History and Archaeology at the University of Athens before completing an MA in Legal and Political Theory and a PhD in History at UCL (University College London). Since 2006, he has been teaching at the University of London.
His research focuses on the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century political thought, with particular emphasis on the historical evolution of the ideas of “Europe” and the “West”. The author of numerous books, he co-directs the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought at Queen Mary and leads interdisciplinary programmes. He has also been affiliated as a research fellow with several institutions, including UCL, Princeton University, the Lichtenberg-Kolleg at the University of Göttingen, the University of Göttingen, and the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, among others.
His book The West: The History of an Idea (Princeton University Press, 2025) will be published in Greek by Patakis Publishers, translated by Andreas Pappas.
In collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Book and Culture (HFBC)
The lecture series is supported by Bodossaki Lectures on Demand (BLOD), the Bodossaki Foundation’s online lecture library (www.blod.gr), here
