Staff profile
Elena Miltiadis

Biography
I am a social anthropologist with experience in urban anthropology. I am an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology and a Module Coordinator in the Anthropology Pre-Masters Programme at the Durham University International Study Centre.
I am an Associate Fellow of the HEA.
My thesis, titled: "Urban Attunements: Potentialities of a City's Discomfort", explores the emotional afterlife of an Italian city called Latina, built by the fascist regime in 1932. I investigate the struggle of a community with a contested past and Latina's inhabitants' effort to see their city as a meaningful social space. My doctoral work is one of the first comprehensive and lengthy research projects to investigate fascism’s absent presence in contemporary Italy in such ethnographic depth and from a community’s perspective. It contributes to and expands understandings of how communities elaborate, negotiate, and give meaning to their existence through, against, and beyond their contested identities.
Before my PhD, I completed an MA in Social Anthropology (Research Methods) at Durham University. I also graduated with a BA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths College. Both my PhD and MA were funded by the ESRC.
Research interests
- Political Anthropology
- Places and Place-making
Publications
Journal Article
- Displacing displacement: narratives for a haunting historyMiltiadis, E. (2023). Displacing displacement: narratives for a haunting history. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 28(4), 451–465. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354571x.2022.2143635
Newspaper/Magazine Article
- Coronavirus: could emotional memories of this crisis affect our future behaviour?Miltiadis, E. (2020, April 24). Coronavirus: could emotional memories of this crisis affect our future behaviour?. The Conversation.