Alexis Rappas holds a PhD in History and Civilizations from the European University Institute (2008), an MA in International Relations (2002) and a BA in Law (2022), both from Sorbonne University. Following his postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and Aix-Marseille Université, he joined the History department at Koç University (2013). He is currently serving as Associate professor of history and Associate dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities. He is also an editorial board member for the European Journal of Turkish Studies and for the Bulletin de correspondence hellénique moderne et contemporain. His research focuses on the impact of European colonialism in post-Ottoman settings. Dr Rappas is the author of the Runciman award shortlisted book Cyprus in the 1930s. British Colonial Rule and the Roots of the Cyprus Conflict. His subsequent publications, supported by fellowships in Paris (Université Paris Cité, Fondation Maison Sciences de l’Homme) and Princeton (Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies) as well as grants from Koç University and the Ecole française d’Athènes, have focused on the entanglement between property and sovereignty in British Cyprus, the Italian Dodecanese and French Mandatory Syria. He is in addition co-directing an Ecole française d’Athènes five-year research project on minorities in the post-Ottoman Mediterranean.

“Conversation is precisely the mode of interaction that is fast disappearing in our polarized world. It has been replaced by sermon, preached to an already converted choir and invective, no less unilateral in intention. The basic premise of a conversation is the acceptance and the desire to preserve a diversity of views and of opinions. Though it could lead to consensus, its purpose is to provide conditions for peaceful dissensus. I am particularly honored to be joining this Conversation on Rhodes and its past, which has too often been dragooned into the service of exclusivist metanarratives, be they colonial or nationalistic. A true conversation with the archipelago’s diverse cultural heritage may offer the gateway to more inclusive, and therefore more democratic stories.”

Alexis Rappas