Institute for Mediterranean Studies

Leda Papastefanaki

Professor of Greek Economic and Social History
Department of History and Archaeology, University of Ioannina
Department of History of Cities, Diaspora and Immigration in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea
Department of Mediterranean and Global Economic and Social History

Leda Papastefanaki was born in Athens in 1967 and studied history at the University of Crete, where she received her PhD (2002). She is currently Professor of Economic and Social History at the Department of History-Archaeology in the University of Ioannina and collaborating Faculty Member at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies/Foundation for Research and Technology. She is Board Member in the Greek Economic History Association (since 2010), while participates in the Historian’s Network for Women’s and Gender History/IFRWH and the (Greek) Network for the history of labour and labour movement. A founding member of the European Labour History Network (2013), she is since 2021 the Chair of the ELHN committee. She was co-coordinator of the “Feminist Labour History” (2013-2021), “History and historiography of remuneration in the long-term” (2013-2017), and “Labour in Mining” (2018-2021) Working Groups of the ELHN.

She has published the monographs: Ergasia, Technologia kai Fylo stin Elliniki Viomichania. I Klostoyfantourgia tou Peiraia (1870-1940) [Labour, Technology and Gender in Greek Industry. The Textile Industry of Piraeus (1870-1940)], Herakleion: Crete University Press, 2009 [in Greek] and I fleva tis gis. Ta metalleia tis Elladas, 19os-20os aionas [The vein of the earth: The mines of Greece, nineteenth-twentieth century], Athens: Vivliorama Publishing, 2017 [in Greek]. She has coedited, among others, the volumes Working in Greece and Turkey: A Comparative Labour History from Empires to Nation States, 1840 - 1940 (Series: International Studies in Social History, Volume 33, New York: Berghahn, 2020), with M. Erdem Kabadayı; Labour history in the European semi-periphery.  Southern and Central Europe, 19th-20th centuries (Berlin/Boston: Oldenburg De Gruyter 2021), with Nikos Potamianos; Women, Work, and Activism. Contributions to the history of labour in the long 20th century (Series: Work and Labor – Transdisciplinary Studies for the 21st Century, Central European University Press 2022), with E. Betti, M. Tolomelli and S. Zimmermann.

Her research interests focus on the social and economic history of industrialization and labour, social history of technology, mining history, history of occupational health, urban history, gender history, oral history, industrial archaeology, Jewish history, history of the Mediterranean, global history, public history.

Selected Publications