ARCHERS

The project aims to fight the unemployment among young scientists through further development of their research potential. This will create new opportunities for young researchers, thus, aiming at reducing or even reversing the so-called brain drain or, even better, at promoting brain circulation. The implementation of the project ARCHERS aims to support young doctoral students as well as post-doctoral researchers in the early stages of their career through training in the cutting-edge technologies in which the Institutes of FORTH excel both nationally and internationally. More specifically, the areas of interest in this project are the preservation of cultural heritage and the tackling of societal challenges such as environment, clean energy and health, i.e., interdisciplinary research fields within the high-quality competitive research activities of FORTH.

Research Project: Ship-building and Ship-repairing in Piraeus (Eleni Kyramargiou)

“Ship-building and ship-repairing in Piraeus” is a research project focusing on the development and decline of the ship-repairing zone of Piraeus in the second half of the 20th century. The project aims to contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage related to the ship-repairing zone and discuss the financial, cultural and social dimensions of the multifaceted world of entrepreneurs, workers and local residents that evolved around this industry.

Research Project: Rural restructuring into the Greek state. The operation of the wheat production chain in the interwar period (Giorgos Gassias)

During the interwar period, rural areas at the border of the Greek state were completely transformed. The two main pillars in this direction were: 1) the wheat varieties introduced by the Institute for Plant Cultivation, led by Ioannis Papadakis, and 2) the operation of the Central Committee for the Protection of Domestic Cereals (KEPES) since 1928. The main objectives of the ongoing research are the way in which these two organizations were linked and the achieved results.

Research Project: A port in transition. The modernization of the port infrastructure of Thessaloniki in the early 20th century (Thanasis Nasiaras)

The history of ports is a rapidly developing field of research that has attracted the interest of many researchers in recent years. Τhe port of Thessaloniki is a fertile and at the same time quite demanding field of research. Port activity has affected essentially the social, economic and spatial process of Thessaloniki over the centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century the city had become one of the most important commercial ports of the Ottoman Empire and later of the Greek state. Our research aims to study the infrastructure modernization of port during the first decades of the 20th century. The remodeling of the port at the beginning of the 20th century transformed its image and structure, reorganized its own space, increased its efficiency, optimized its transport dynamics, gained a new division of labor, and transformed a large part of the natural city ​​environment. Thus, in a sense, the study of the upgrading port infrastructure, based mainly, but not only, on the Historical Archive of Port of Thessaloniki, is an attempt to find out the interaction between technological development, economic growth and the natural environment. Finally, our aim is to make a contribution to the better understanding of the history of the city of Thessaloniki

Research Project: The effects of technology in the shipping businesses of the southeastern Aegean Sea area in the decades of 1850-1910. The example of Kasos (Dimitra Kardakari)

The subject of the research is the study of the effects in shipping of the southeastern Aegean Sea area and especially on the shipping of Kasos island from the second half of the 19th century, until the beginnings of the 20th, through the evolution of the technology on the sailing ships and the gradual transition to the new conditions that came about through the steam revolution. The 19th century was a defining period for the evolution of technology in maritime shipping businesses. From the sailing boats with steam engines up to the first steamship with lateral paddling wheels and double or triple exhaust (expansion), the maritime trade was carried out by sailing ships. The prevalence of steam over sail took form at the end of the century when maritime shipping finally became profitable and their wide use in European history was established. Furthermore, equally important were the first purchases of steam ships by members of the Greek Diaspora, merchants and ship owners that from the Black Sea to Port Said in Egypt they were in continuous communication with the network of their agents on the Greek islands. With our research we shall attempt to answer the question of how the advent of new ship technology as well as the wider technological advancements formed the maritime infrastructures and fleets as well as the economies and of the islands of the southeastern Aegean region such as Kasos that despite being an active part of the Greek shipping industry, were not actually part of Greek territory at this point in time