Institute for Mediterranean Studies

Konstantina Kalfa

Postdoctoral researcher
Department of History of Cities, Diaspora and Immigration in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea

Konstantina Kalfa earned her PhD in architectural history and theory at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. She is the recipient of numerous awards and highly-competitive grants, including the PI Research Grant from the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation and the General Secretariat for Research and Technology for her project Antiparochì and (its) architects: Histories of social forces, spatial politics and the architectural profession in Greece, 1929-74 (2018-2021).  Her publications on housing and architecture’s political economy and production mechanisms appear in edited volumes including Architecture in development: Systems and the emergence of the Global South, critically acclaimed as a ‘timely book address[ing] a major blind spot in contemporary architectural scholarship,’ and esteemed journals in the field: Architectural Histories; PLATFORM-Provocative, Timely, Diverse; the Architecture beyond Europe Journal; the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians; Rethinking Marxism and Architecture and Culture. Kalfa also co-created the documentary film Antiparochì-A short introduction, presenting her oral history research on the Greek land-for-flats system antiparochì and co-edited the Section ‘Small-scale building enterprise and global home ownership in the age of economic expansion’ of ABE Journal 19 (2022). She is the author of the book Self-sheltering now! The invisible side of the U.S. aid to Greece [in Greek] (Athens: Futura, 2019), praised in prominent daily journals and on the Greek State Broadcasting Corporation radio, and cited in a documentary, a theater play held at the esteemed Athens Epidaurus Festival, as well as in a series of Greek and international books and academic articles in peer-reviewed journals.